If you have a home studio, focus on making music and keeping things simple. Be careful that you don’t get carried away by going plug-in crazy! If you are using an outboard DSP processor (PCI card, Firewire or Thunderbolt unit), you can scale your system to do much more processing. If you are using onboard RAM for Digital Signal Processing (DSP), plug-ins are limited by your computer’s processing power. Your DAW software will require your third party plug-ins to be in a certain format, usually AAX, VST, RTAS, or AU. Most DAWs and associated plug-ins run on a Mac or PC and are cross platform compatible these days. These are usually very basic, but they’re still powerful. Typically these are compressors, equalizers, reverbs, delays, virtual synths, etc. When you purchase DAW software for your home studio, the developer usually includes a few basic plug-ins. This is similar to an outboard rack mounted compressor or EQ that is inserted on an analog mixing console channel, bus, or master output. Plug-ins are software additions for your DAW to enhance the sound of your recorded audio tracks and are “inserted” on a channel in the mix window of your DAW program.

What are plugins for music