Cablesguys are one of the more interesting purveyors of plug-ins out there, and they’ve been showing off some interesting stuff with their lineup.
These things can be a bit hard to describe, just in theory – okay, so you’ve got VolumeShaper and TimeShaper, which shape … volume .. and … time.
But in practice, you begin to see some really compelling possibilities coming out of this approach and user interface.
With VolumeShaper, one recent plug-in, you can take hi-hats out of an existing loop (meaning this is also a must-have plug-in for remixes, for example).
TimeShaper can be used for special effects, like faking vinyl scratch-style effects without using vinyl.
Their YouTube channel, fairly quiet for some time, has been popping with new plug-in tutorials. See here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/CableguysOfficial/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=1
And you can try some free trials of each of these tools. I remember watching these developers way back with their first MidiShaper years ago. It’s great to see how they’ve evolved.