MusicRadar Tech’s Plugin Bangers of 2025: No Filler, All Killer

Acon Digital’s Remix Drums isn’t just another AI stem splitter—it’s a scalpel for your beat surgery. Forget the basic drum/guitar/synth splits you’ve seen in DAWs; this thing goes granular, letting you carve out kicks, snares, hats, toms, cymbals, and even an “other” category. It all happens live in the plugin, so you can solo, mute, pan, and tweak volumes without frying your CPU. For anyone restoring crusty old demos or just wanting forensic control over their drum tracks, this is a revelation.

Of course, it’s not perfect—try separating congas from toms and you’ll hit the limits of 2025’s AI. But the sensitivity controls let you dial in what you need, and for most mixes, it’s bloody close to magic. At the price of a takeaway, Remix Drums is a no-brainer for anyone who wants their beats clean and their workflow dirty. If you want to see it in action, the video demo will make you a believer.

Serum 2.0 from Xfer isn’t just a facelift—it’s a full resurrection of a synth plugin that’s been haunting dancefloors for nearly two decades. The new version adds a granular engine, multi-sample and sampler engines, plus a spectral engine that lets you dive deep into the frequency abyss. It’s all about sound quality and surgical detail, and the best part? It’s a free update for existing users. If you’ve ever owned Serum, you’ve just been handed a sonic bazooka at no extra cost.

Sure, the new engines aren’t totally unique in the plugin world, but Serum’s implementation is slick and sounds massive. The update puts Serum right back at the top of the synth plugin food chain, and if you haven’t loaded it up lately, now’s the time. For the full lowdown and some tasty sound examples, the video is where the real action happens.

Valhalla’s FutureVerb is what happens when you lock a reverb and delay in a room for eight years and let them mutate. This plugin fuses reverb and echo modules, letting you blend them in wild, modern ways. Whether you want pristine ambience, pitched reverbs, or that classic 80s gated smack, FutureVerb delivers. The interface is pure Valhalla—simple, upfront, and ready to slap on anything.

At $50, it’s a steal, and like all Valhalla plugins, it’s as easy to use as it is hard to stop using. You’ll want to slap it on every channel just to see what happens. But trust me, the real depth of FutureVerb’s algorithms is something you need to hear in the video—text can’t do those lush tails justice.

Spectrasonics Omnisphere 3 is the synth equivalent of a sonic supercomputer—now packing over 41,000 presets and a warehouse of sample content. It’s a beast for sound design, layering, and just about any genre you throw at it. With 36 filter types and a truckload of effects, it’s the kind of plugin you could get lost in for months.

But let’s be real: the install size is massive, and some might grumble that this feels like a pile of incremental updates rather than a revolution. Still, if you’ve got the drive space and the patience, Omnisphere 3 is a must-have. The video gives you a taste of just how deep this rabbit hole goes—don’t blame us if you lose a weekend to preset surfing.