There's a first time for everything, and Winter NAMM 2009 sees Focusrite's first attempt at an independent VST / AU plugin collection with Focusrite Plug-in Suite. The UK companies first suite includes EQ, Compression, Reverb and Gating plugins meant for tracking and mixing.

All plugins are equipped with a wide load of factory presets, and from there, you can fine tune every parameter to craft your sound. Once you got it how you like it, you can save your custom presets for easy reuse.

For the compressor and gate plugins, Focusrite models their own hardware devices with the measurement of their own classically ear-tuned optos to reproduce the authentic vintage sound of 60s optical compressors. The gate operates in several modes as a stereo gate or in dual mono mode where one signal can be used to trigger the other signal's gate.

The EQ module in Plug-in Suite draws from the Focusrite ISA EQ curves with meticulous amounts of care taken in recreating the response accurately across the whole audible frequency spectrum. Even the control interface is designed to match with a six-band EQ; shelving high and low bands; parametric low, mid and high mid bands as well as low and high pass filters.

The final plugin, reverb, takes its cues from classic algorithmic studio reverb designs. It offers simple room size controls, pre-filter and "Air" to let you easily create reverb sounds.