Resources
For producers
Forums and communities
- KVR Audio - the longest-running plugin database and the busiest forum, including its developer sections. Worth knowing that this catalogue links to KVR and deliberately does not harvest it; the reasoning is in the source terms review.
- Gearspace - pro audio and studio practice, with a long archive.
- VI-Control - orchestral and sample-library focused, and the place those questions get answered properly.
- LinuxMusicians - the community for audio work on Linux, where a good deal of the open-source plugin world lives.
- r/audioengineering and r/WeAreTheMusicMakers - broad, busy, and good for "has anyone actually used this".
- The REAPER forum and Ardour's discourse - two DAW communities that are unusually helpful about plugin behaviour rather than only about the host.
News and reviews
- Sound on Sound - reviews and technique, with a deep archive and a forum.
- Bedroom Producers Blog - free and discounted plugins, updated constantly.
- Rekkerd - release announcements, going back years.
- MusicRadar - mainstream gear and software news.
- Tape Op - recording practice rather than plugins specifically, and better than most things that are.
Getting plugins installed
- OwlPlug - an open-source plugin manager. This catalogue publishes a registry view it can read, because a catalogue and an installer are different jobs.
For developers
Frameworks
- JUCE - the C++ framework most commercial plugins are built with, and its forum, which is where its real documentation ends up.
- DPF - the DISTRHO Plugin Framework. Lighter than JUCE, permissively licensed, and the route to LV2 and CLAP with little ceremony.
- iPlug2 - small, C++, and quick to get a prototype making noise.
- Faust - a functional language for signal processing that compiles to every plugin format going. A different way in: you write the DSP and the plugin is generated.
- Cmajor - a language aimed squarely at audio, from people who had already built JUCE.
The formats themselves
- LV2 - the specification, in RDF. This catalogue's
parameter model is
lv2:portbecause of it, which is why an LV2 bundle's own metadata maps in here untranslated. - CLAP and the SDK
- the newest format, permissively licensed, and designed in the open.
- VST 3 - the developer portal, and the SDK.
Testing and measurement
- pluginval - the validator that hosts a plugin and tries to break it. This catalogue's own measurements come from it.
- clap-validator - the same idea for CLAP.
DSP
- musicdsp.org - the archive of algorithms and code snippets that predates most of the rest of this list.
- DSPRelated - articles, forums and free books.
- Julius O. Smith's online books - filters, physical modelling and spectral audio, free and complete. The reference.
- The Audio Programmer - tutorials and a large community aimed at people starting out.
Open source worth reading
- Ardour - a full DAW, and one of the few large audio codebases you can simply go and read.
- Surge Synth Team - a synth and an effects suite maintained in the open, and a good model of how to run an audio project.
- linuxaudio.org - the hub for the Linux audio ecosystem, its mailing lists and its specifications.
- Open Audio Stack - an open registry format for plugins. This catalogue publishes a view in it, so the tooling that reads it can read this too.
Why this page exists at all
A catalogue that tried to be the only place you go would be worse than one that tells you where else to look. The things listed here do jobs this site does not: they have people in them, they argue about what sounds good, and they answer questions that no amount of structured metadata will.
What this site adds is the part they cannot: the same facts about every plugin, in a form a program can read, that anyone may take and use. See Services for every way to get at it.