Cypher2

The first plugin usually comes in your life the minute you’re not satisfied with a certain capability of your DAW. Naturally, you look for a less complex program that can do it better.

Some plugins are small and have well-defined functions, such as equalizing or taking a mono signal and splitting it to stereo. Others, however, are complex and beautiful instruments that you can use to create songs from start to finish. Such is the case of Cypher2.

The minute you open Cypher2, you realize that this was a good investment. I’m not trying to sound like an ad, but I think that many producers may agree with me that few things bring you as much joy as browsing a vast sound library. Cypher2 comes with 1,300 presets, neatly organized into categories such as bass, chords, drums, lead, organs, strings, special FX, and many more.

All those beautiful sounds can be modified with the help of three oscillators, two dual LFOs, two filters, three envelopes, and a few other tools. If you get lost in the knobs, there’s a visualizer tool right in the middle of the interface, which can give you a better idea of your waveforms, but it also allows you to shape your sound with almighty curves. And if that’s too much, well, relax, because this only the first of the three main sections.

If you’re ready to work on your composition, you should use the plugin’s advanced step sequencer. After you’re done (if ever), you can head over to the effects section and add more color to the mix. The interface is surprisingly user-friendly and comes with tooltips for everything, but if you tend to get distracted by all those adjustable parameters, just switch the display to easy mode, and hope that inspiration comes.

Remember that you’ll get most of this amazing plugin if you use it with a MIDI controller, which can be mapped without too much effort.