I'm surprised nobody mentioned the UJAM Finisher series yet.

I know most experienced people consider UJAM stuff garbage, or at least newbie bait. But hell, I'm a newbie. When I want to experiment with some quick FX presets, they have quite a lot to offer. And some of them I even keep coming back to.

They have minimal control over the presets, and practically no insight into what exactly they are doing, but at least they are newbie friendly. You slap them into your track, scroll through the presets, it works or it doesn't.

Not the best, but worth a mention at least.

 

Native Instruments Guitar Rig Pro.
For all that effects insanity and mayhem

 

They can be a good option, sometimes they just don’t really push things off the deep end enough. These are great for adding more medium level of movement to make tracks interesting but aren’t fully equipped for sonic destruction

 

I would recommend this too, but I see it more as a bread and butter multi effect with all the essentials plus some extra, they only seemed to recently add some more crazy effects but there’s enough here you can push it to the extreme

 

Audio damage I would recommend too, there’s a couple things like Other Desert Cities and Replicant and something like Kombinat4 if it’s available on desktop yet

 

FabFilter Volcano 3 is a filter effect plug-in with smooth, vintage-sounding filters and endless modulation possibilities.

 

Which ones?

 

I commented a lot here on how i'm a bitch for channel strips and i dig Lifeline from Excite Audio for as multifx rack. It won't glitch things up, but dirties things up in a way i like.

 

Not the original commenter, but for sheer soundmangliness Morph and Orange Vocoder are great. You feed them two signals and either something divine (if you're clever) or absolutely hellishly mangled (if you're clueless, like me) comes out. I suppose one could read the manual to figure out what all of the algorithms on offer actually do, or just randomly try them out to see which sounds the coolest.

Though you can do with just one signal though as both have a carrier signal for processing, Orange Vocoder has a simple synth and Morph has a sample player (with additional processing, just in case). And the vocoder is a great vocoder too if you're into such things.

 

The paid plugins they make are pretty good, but the reason I mentioned them is because they are free aka legacy. I liked BigSeq2 and Automaton. They are kind of like early Sugar Bytes effects and you can definitely glitch with Automaton.

Here is a free plugin I ran into along the way recently: https://korneffaudio.com/product/power-grid-disruptor/

I was price checking some ones that arrived as a bundle and noticed it. Is it cool? well, it's weird, and free. The $300+ "retail price, but 0 for today" should likely be taken as a joke about developers who actually do that stuff.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned these guys yet, but you can get most, if not all, of them for free: https://freakshowindustries.com

Here's another free plugin, but it is a saturation plugin that can add some heavy distortion, pretty usefuly for kick drums like Hardstyle. DJ Swivel BDE (big distortion engine) might be better, but it is paid.

https://codalabs.io/szechuan/

 

Last edited: Jun 3, 2026 at 6:32 PM

Audiomodern Loopmix - needs an hour watching the tutorial video but is very powerful, you can remix up to 6 loops aphex-twin style.

 

Some guys said it's an April fool's joke, all settings sound the same. Could be cool tho.

 

Feakshowindustries is the perfect moniker for Freakshowindustries.

 

Ah, while we're here talking glitches and distortions, and seeing that VCV/Cardinal has been mentioned then for those taking that route I can wholeheartedly recommend the pitch to CV modules. The theory is simple: feed it audio and it spits out CV pitch information and a gate signal. Now, these aren't the very carefully tuned versions you find in Melodyne and friends, these vomit pitch information as if their life depended on it.

Ok, playing clean monophonic lines (like a clean guitar or a simple mono synth patch) and they're often quite accurate. Feed that information to an oscillator and you get a nice bass enhancer (-1 oct, triangle osc), a chorus (filtered square/saw, slight LFO pitch modulation), extra fuzz with a square wave, or use a attack/decay envelope to make the transient clickier. All good clean fun.

Patch in polyphonic sounds or unpitched stuff like drum loops and all hell breaks loose. This is a surefire way to make your chords sound like screaming banshees or turns percussion into circuit-bent madness.

For a simpler way (both in operation and variety) there's "mda Tracker" from the venerable mda plugin set. It's just a simple pitch follower and an oscillator with an envelope. Still, all sorts of weird underwater bleepy tones are there for the taking. Especially if you do rhythmic sounds and follow it with "Repsycho!" which is a pitch shifter that chops sounds before shifting for greater accuracy. Try a +1 oct in Tracker and -1 oct on Repsycho for, well... glitches. Don't expect your rhythms to be in time after that.

 

Thank you for tickling my fading brain from it's slumber. YES! How could I forget? All of these are awesome if you want to mangle your audio into oblivion. And yes, you can get them all for free! (at least I did).

 

KORG KOASS PAD for mac / win.