Voxengo PHA-979
In a market bloated with 'emulations' of classic gear, it's rare to find juicy sounding plugins that capture the best qualities of 'classic', offer some flexibility and don't break the bank. In the universe of more tweakable plugins, here too only a few offerings stand out.
After years of working with hundreds of plugins from numerous companies, I've found only a handful of offerings that keep me coming back. One of those companies that still hold a top spot is Voxengo. Their plugins are 'analog' without being slavishly limited to a given hardware model; flexible but not overloaded with 'feature bloat'; affordable without sacrificing sound quality; and have excellent & consistent GUIs to work with. A winning combination.
There is definitely a place for well designed emulations of classic gear, but when you require some flexibility and/or modernity, Voxengo is great choice. Their uniform GUIs also promote actually listening to the music!
Voxengo also has an easy robust activation system (no dongles), exceptional reliability (I've never had a Voxengo plugin crash my DAW in 14 years) and full 64 bit floating point processing*.
i came across voxengo plugins a while ago, and gave them a try. i have to say, these are some great plugins. i am currently using the free Stereo Touch and free SPAN plugins as well as the (very reasonably priced) PHA-979 plugin, i am interested in the Voxformer,Redunoise, and GlissEQ plugins.
i have talked with Aleksey Vaneev a few times,and he is a really nice guy. he knows what he is doing, and is very helpful.
+1 for Voxengo's amazing VST Plugins!
It's pretty simple why Voxengo plugins are so good - Alexsey has a better ear compared to other developers.
His plugins sound so 'musical'. I've used many other plugins that technically perform their designed function, yet somehow just don't sound good.
I now have a whole set of expensive plugins that are just taking up drive space. They simply don't sound as good as thier Voxengo counterparts.