Waves has been part of mixing workflows for so long that you can find their plugins in pretty much every studio at this point. What I’ve found over the years is that some Waves plugins genuinely earn their place in your template while others are easy to skip, and the catalog is big enough that beginners often don’t know where to start.
The plugins below cover compression, EQ, saturation, dynamic processing, and tape emulation that I actually reach for in real mix sessions, not just stuff that looks impressive on paper.
These seven plugins are the Waves tools I’ve leaned on across countless mixes. Here’s what I’d recommend.
1. Waves IDX Intelligent Dynamics
