2025 Sound Design Plugins Year in Review
First off, let me just get this out of the way, I regret that I didn’t do one of these for the past 2 years. Life has been hectic, but these are fun and great time capsules to remember when things were released. Ok with that out of the way, 2025 was quite a monumental year for plugin releases, many of the all time classics got updates and quite a few new plugins were launched as well. We seem to have entered a new era of power synths, one that makes me hope most other companies wont even try to compete. Partly for my own sanity, but also because I think these “power” synths can basically do everything at this point.
What we need is more focussed niche products that tackle singular sound design tasks. I also think we need more exploration of UX/UI, and this is better done with a simple plugin than starting out with a full modular. Different devs and teams should explore various workflows and user-control interactions. How can we get our ideas from our heads to our fingers to our mouse to the UI to our ears. Pretty UI is one thing, but innovation in modulation/signal routing and sound exploration has loads of territory left to discover. Then take these new ideas and apply them to the next generation of mega synths.
I’m excited by these releases from 2025, there’s loads of sound design potential. Along side these major updates were some unique creative independent designs. It’s quite amazing just all that has been done in the last five years alone, I feel a level of mystery I haven’t felt for awhile, there’s loads more to explore now and so much variety leading towards totally different approaches for everyone. I should mention that I don’t think everyone needs every tool, you should get what suits you best, I write these reviews so you can compare similar plugins without being told you “need” any of them, or being told “this one is best” by someone who hasn’t even tried the alternatives. I plan to write more about this soon, but I just don’t want anyone feeling like I’m saying “go out and buy all of this” when you may or may not need it. That said, I have affiliate links where applicable, and if you do want to support me and plan on buying a plugin anyways, please feel free to use them.
Zebra 3
Let’s address the elephant in the room, or zebra in this case. While Zebra 3 isn’t officially released in 2025, the public beta is available for everyone. Given that it is downloadable and usable, I’m including it on this list. What a great step for software synthesizers, many of us have been waiting a long time for this one. The new additive engine is incredibly powerful and morphable MSEGs just opens up so many doors.
Serum 2
I think Serum 2 is safely the largest release of the year, it’s hard to weigh it against Zebra, they are quite different synths. Both are incredibly capable and powerful and their updates have expanded them so much. The new spectral engine is a lot of fun and granular is a nice addition to Serum. I love the new effects system and the built in sequencer opens up so many doors for presets (read my article on why I love sequencer presets if you are interested)
Absynth 6
Yet another update, this time more of a resurrection as we all thought Absynth was cancelled. This update was mostly a UI upgrade with a cool preset browser. I’m hoping they add more, but Absynth sounds as great as ever and the new visual style makes it less painful to use.
Review: https://www.databroth.com/blog/absynth-6-review
Affiliate Link: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/4-Synth/15917-Absynth-6?a_aid=61c378ab215d5
Hate
Dawesome released a “sequel” to love, Hate is a fun multi-distortion plugin with a wavetable distortion at its core. Personally I think there is too much overlap with Love, as you get reverbs and chorus and other effects in Hate, so I’d hope maybe Love can get an update giving it some more exclusive features. I love (haha) the variety of distortions available in Hate, especially some of the weirder ones like raspator and mal-sync.
Kontrast
Another release from Dawesome was Kontrast, an image based wavetable synth that lets you reshape the wavetable scan line. The included sequencer is a lot of fun and the more minimal layout brings faster creativity compared to the growing complexity of previous Dawesome synths.
Portals for Beam
This was surprisingly one of my favorite updates of the year, Portals adds the ability to create feedback loops inside of Beam. This opens up so many sound design options when combined with the previous effects available for Beam. This also came out alongside Taps which added a much needed delay to Beam and rounded out the effects selection.
Review: https://www.databroth.com/blog/portals-and-taps-new-nodes-for-lunacy-audio-beam
Smear
I’m a huge fan of spectral effects and I love Lese’s UI designs, so I was excited to see them come out with Smear. While the results are more on the subtle side, being able to stack spectral processors, apply motion and target frequency bands gives Smear a pretty wide range of creative applications.
Review: https://www.databroth.com/blog/smear-review
Affiliate Link: https://lese.io/plugin/smear/?srsltid=AfmBOooZCt2DfPyhNWICccixmws3KPmJCtTWjecrmZC_fcgzMeb9E1gT
Transfigure
Sugar Bytes seems to release a new plugin every year, and they almost always have something interesting to add to the collection. This time around they gave their take on a spectral effect. Transfigure is a bit of a tricky one, it has a cool sound and can be used for some wild spectral destruction. There’s a lot to discover with this one, so I hope someone really digs into it and uncovers some new sound design techniques.
Review: https://www.databroth.com/blog/transfigure-review
Affiliate Link: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/53-Multi-Effect-/16368-Transfigure?a_aid=61c378ab215d5
Sine Machine
So glad Sine Machine finally came out, I love innovative takes on additive synthesis. I’m looking forward to either new updates or new plugin ideas from Melatonin because this synth has a very emergent sound design spectrum for such a small palette of controls.
Solstice
Spectral synthesis is even less common than additive, and Solstice does some cool things with it. This one is a bit limited and really depends on the samples you feed into it, but the results can be very unique and unlike anything else. I feel like I’d love to see this engine incorporated into something deeper. At the same time, simple tools are always a blast.
Atelier
What a surprise Atelier was, a cool modular environment with only a few module types, but capable of some very unique and wild sounds given the modulation system. Atelier abandons quite a few traditional synthesis techniques in favor of some new approaches that lead to very original results. I almost think of it as a modern day Buchla for the software world, not in terms of synthesis or sound, but in the spirit of doing things radically different from the norm.
Evoke
Minimal Audio’s take on an auto tune vocal processor, not really my cup of tea, but there are some fun transforming effects. I’d love to see voice actors dip their toes into sound design with tools like this.
Review: https://www.databroth.com/blog/evoke-review
Affiliate Link: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/54-Vocal-Processing/15793-Evoke?a_aid=61c378ab215d5
Ohmicide S
I think this one may have flown under many people’s radar, the classic Ohmicide distortion got re-released with some new distortion types and more routing options. I really love some of the distortion modes in Ohmicide and I’m glad to add this to my growing collection of multi-mode multi-band distortion units.
Review: https://www.databroth.com/blog/ohmicide-s-review
Affiliate Link: https://ohmforce.com?ta_aff=FCSBCGIOGB
Launch Control XL
Not software, but a great controller for software, I’ve been anticipating the BCR 32 for years now since it's announcement, and while this isn’t quite that, at least I can actually lay my hands on this one. It also gave me a new appreciation for sliders.
Review: https://www.databroth.com/blog/launch-control-xl-3-review
Affiliate Link: https://www.zzounds.com/a--3979412/item--NOVLNCHCNTRLXL3?siid=373335
This list obviously doesn’t cover everything that came out last year, it doesn’t even cover everything I reviewed from last year, but these were some notable releases that cover many of my sound design interests. We also got two free updates for Pigments as well as a new Beta for Bitwig. I believe Logic got a solid update as well and not in the world of sound design, but Blender 5 came out this year as well. I have plenty more reviews on the way and there’s more fun stuff coming this year (2026). Also, I hope you are aware that I will still be reviewing and covering older plugins that I haven’t got around to yet.
If there’s anything you learned about just now, let me know.