Essential Plug-In Rundown

I will spend the next couple of days covering some plug-ins that I think are essential for any electronic music producer. By covering, I don't mean reviewing, I mean describing what they do, telling you why I consider them essential and why you're gonna want to take a look at them.

• 2C-Audio Aether
  The single best reverb plugin there is. In fact, it's so good, you'll want to throw it on every single track you have, simply because it sounds so freakin' gorgeous.
• LennarDigital Sylenth1
  The gold standard in soft synth plug-ins. A few years ago, nobody had heard of this plugin, but now everybody uses it. Why? A big marketing campaign? No. A enormous amount of features? Definitely not. No, Sylenth1 made a name for itself just by sounding amazing.
• Izotope Ozone 4
  The only mastering suite you have to bother getting. It does everything and it does everything really well. What more could you want?
• Native Instruments Komplete
  There is no better value-for-money to be gotten in the world of audio applications. 500 Euro will get you every sound ever conceived by man, and so much more.

These are the 4 plug-ins that I use most. I have others, not many, but still a few, that I could include here, but I'm just not sure about. Auto-Tune has saved my life quite a few times, but its appeal is limited. Spectrasonix Omnisphere and Trilian are both all-in-one solutions for amazing sounds but I thought I already have enough sounds at my disposal to spend full retail price on these. Anyway, it is quite possible that I decide to add more plug-ins to this list. Look out for my first article, on Aether!