Last month we ran What’s Your Favourite FabFilter Audio Plugin? Take Our Poll to find out more about the usage of FabFilter plugins. Having been around for 20 years the Dutch plugins wizards are commonly held to have advanced plugin design with their brilliant UI design. 20 years ago the skeuomorphic UI was at its peak and while plugins which look like hardware are still very much with us, the audio plugin has matured and designers no no longer feel its necessary to tip a graphical hat to rack gear and mixing consoles if they feel they can do a better job by allowing their software to be, well… software.

In the poll we asked two questions: Which FabFilter plugins do you use, and What is your favourite FabFilter plugin. The results are in and the winner in both categories is no surprise. As expected FabFilter’s all-conquering EQ plugin Pro-Q 3 is far and away the most popular and best liked product. But what about the second and the third? That’s what we were looking forward to seeing.

We had over 700 responses. Here are the results:

This question allowed respondents to nominate as many plugins as they needed. There’s absolutely no surprise that Pro-Q 3 is way out in front, this plugin is one of a select few which enjoys very significant ubiquity. But what happens in the top 5 is interesting. The Pro-L 2 Limiter was the one I expected to be in second place, as indeed it is. It supports widths up to 9.1.6 so its a popular choice with Atmos mixers but that doesn’t explain its popularity. It works beautifully and sounds excellent, that probably helps.

No surprise to see Pro-C 2 in third. It combines a UI which provides all the feedback you could wish for with compression modes which completely transform its character. Pro DS at 4th is something I am pleased to see as it’s probably my most used FabFilter plugin. De-essing is one of those tasks which can get difficult if you have to work too hard on it. The defaults work for me most of the time. In and out fast! I was expecting to see Saturn 2 do rather better than it did as I’ve always though it a wonderful plugin. But the question was what you use, not what do you like. The two questions are related but not identical and most of us use dynamics and EQ more than we saturate and distort.

The second question asked which was the respondent’s favourite FabFilter plugin. This question only allowed a single answer. The pie chart reveals what we expected in that Pro-Q 3 is again the runaway leader but my earlier thoughts on Saturn 3 are illustrated by it coming in third behind the big hitters of Pro-Q 3 and Pro-L 2. Notable too are how much better Pro-R 2 and Pro-DS did reflecting that the fact that we like something doesn’t mean it gets used the most. EQ, limiting and Compression are after all bread and butter processes which happen in every mix and this is reflected in the first set of results.

Conclusion

I don’t think its going to surprise anyone that Pro-Q 3 is popular. I think we knew that already. It’s popular for a reason. It’s very, very good. But there is more to FabFilter than just their EQ.

What do you think of these results?