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11 great free
VST plugins
The vast amount of freeware plugins nowadays is a great
luxury but it may sometimes be hard to find the tools
that do the job best. A plugin folder bulking with hundreds
of free plugins can sound great to some but my personal
experiences show this is more of a burden than a help
in effective music production. That’s why in this
article I’d like to highlight a couple of free
plugins that are absolutely worth downloading and probably
perform as well as many shareware counterparts. On purpose,
I picked some of the less well-known plugins, since
any surfing music producer should have checked out the
excellent free plugins from Kjaerhus, Camelaudio, Voxengo,
Versionist and Ohmboys by now.
The following free plugins are some of my personal favourites
consisting of a software phaser, preamp, tape delay,
compressor, equalizer, reverbs, amp simulator , glitch
effect, Rhodes emulation and pad synthesizer. You might
want to check out the other plugins from these programmers
too.
Supaphaser (Phaser)
- 3 to 23 stages phaser with feedback.
- phaser operation is controled by a mixture of LFO
and envelope follower, both configurable.
- enhanced stereo effect.
- pre-phaser distort or saturate.
Windows/ Mac
donationware
Download this plugin at: http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=1
Arcdev dubbox (Tape Delay)
A virtual tape delay, loosely modelled on the venerable
Roland Space Echo. Does a fairly good
job of emulating the tape saturation, unpredictability
and wild self-oscillation of the real deal.
Features main echo and 'second-tapehead' sub-echoes,
as well as adjustable vintageness
(tape hiss, motor inertia, tape and motor age).
Windows only
Freeware
Download this plugin at: http://web.aanet.com.au/stk/arcDev.Dubb.Box.v2.RC1.rar
Preamp emulator (Tube Preamp)
Crow Preamp emulates the way tube preamps behave and sound. It
will add the typical
saturation and warmth of real tubes to your digital tracks!
Crow preamp emulator is very easy to use, and there are only a
few parameters for you
to handle: input level, tube drive amount, tube type selection,
output level and a power switch.
Windows only
Freeware
Download this plugin at: http://www.mcrow.net/Preamp
Emulator VST.htm
TLs Saturated Driver (Distortion)
Something inbetween a Limiter/compressor to shape them
peaks....
- Adjustable input gain between -16db to 16db . input
signal should stay below 0db.
- Adjustable Attack from 0% to 100 %.
- Adjustable Release from 0% to 100 %.
- Adjustable Driver from 0% to 100 %.
- Boost mode to use a "warmer" algorithm.
- 2X mode to produce more agressive results.
- 10 presets to get started.
- Plugin Latency: 0 samples
- Supported samplerates: 44.1khz - 192khz
Windows only
Freeware
Download this plugin at: http://hem.bredband.net/tbtaudio
Electri-q (Equaliser)
'Electri-Q' 1.6 is a simple, intuitive, but powerful
minimum phase EQ, which makes it
very easy to adjust the magnitude of any audio material.
Due to its flexibility, it can be
used on every track or even as a mastering equalizer.
The plugin offers two different algorithms. The algorithm
'Analog' was modelled on a
transistor based circuit of a real analog EQ. On the
other hand 'Digital' is a pure and
neutral digital EQ without any coloration. 'Electri-Q
1.6' has up to 64 bands and offers
several filter types.
- intuitive GUI
- up to 64 bands
- two basic algorithms ('Digital' and 'Analog')
- additional algorithms ('Scream', 'Linear Phase' and
'Maximum Phase')
- 64-bit Assembler optimized
- Economy Mode for less CPU Usage
- all basic filter types (Peak, HighShelf, LowShelf,
Highpass, Lowpass, Bandpass, Notch)
- 80+ special filters
- Mono/Stereo (linked)
- Draw Filter Curve Estimation
- exact edit of frequency, gain, bandwidth
- neatless Add/Delete of a band
- Psychoacoustical Spectrum Analyser
- customisable Default
- A|B compare
- import/export posihfopit presets
- 72 Presets
Windows only
Freeware
Download this plugin at: http://www.aixcoustic.com/index2.php/Electri-Q/13/0/
Dblue glitch (Glitch Effect)
Glitch chops up your audio in real-time and applies a variety
of effects which can
either be chosen at random, manually sequenced, or a mixture of
both. The sounds
it generatesrange from quite subtle to extremely bizarre, depending
on how much
you tweak the controls.
Windows only
Freeware
Download this plugin at: http://illformed.org/glitch/?page=downloads
Freeamp2 (Guitar Amp)
Advanced Graphical User Interface, designed by Rick Christy (KvR
grymmjack)
with Guitsyn, a built-in guitar synth.
- Choose from seven different amps types.
- Seven different eq's, all have there own controls for comparison.
- Six speakers, plus bypass, adjustable by the mic placement.
- Separate MIDI volume control, can be placed pre or post amp.
- Host Sync and Tap Tempo for Tremolo and Delay
- Noise gate.
- Tremolo, Triangle and square modulators.
- Two compressors, pre and post amp.
- Wah can operate by MIDI CC, plus has auto features.
- Drive pedal, with a choice of seven overdrive types.
- Chorus with added filter.
- Flanger
- Phase Shifter
- Delay and Reverb
- 128 factory presets.
Windows only
Freeware
Download this plugin at: http://frettedsynth.asseca.com/ampsims.html#FreeAmp2
Ambience (Reverb)
Ambience is a reverb that rivals the quality of the
best commercial reverbs.
Windows and Mac
donationware
Download this plugin at: http://www.smartelectronix.com/~magnus/#effects
SIR (Impulse Response Reverb)
This is a reverb device that works with "impulse-responses".
Impulse-responses
are generated by recording short broadband signals and
their corresponding
room-reflections. What you get contains the information
needed to reproduce the
same room with other signals.
Windows only
Freeware
Download this plugin at: http://www.knufinke.de/sir/index_en.html
MrRay 73 (Rhodes)
MrRay SeventyThree is a Rhodes Mark I emulation. This
version of MrRay is
characterized by a series of "imperfections"
introduced in order to capture, with
the highest possible fidelity, the sound of a Mark I.
There are mallet noises, wooden
noises, metallic artifacts and changes of volume for
each single note. Also, the lower
notes have a particular "growl" when you hit
them hard, and when you hit more keys
really hard, you'll hear them "vibrating",
originally due to the instability of the harp
assembly inside the real instrument. You won't hear
the exact same sound twice
when you play it. When keys are released you'll hear
the noises produced by the
"dampers" which stop the vibration of the
tines.
Windows only
Donationware
Download this plugin at: http://www.soundfonts.it/?a=downloads
Protoplasm (Pad Synthesizer)
One of the special features of this synthesizer is a very easy
to handle
modulation-system with 8 LFO/S&H-outputs plus adopted Transition
system
and unique Supermodulation (SMOD). There are even patternlike
LFO-waveforms
as modsources so You can do quite amazing and complex modulations
with only very few
settings.
Basically this synthesizer is best suited for highly vivid pads,
atmopheres and
textures but you can also do standard synth sounds like bass,
leads etc. More than
1200 patches included with Pro version, free version with 128
patches.
The basic features are:
- three digital PCM-wave oscillators powered by 150 different
waveforms (96 in free version)
- each oscillator's level can be modulated by different sources
- adopted Transition System with 3 modes
- new: Super Modulation for osc. and both filters
- new: Filter-FM for both filters with adjustable sources from
all osc.
- new: Shape function for S&H seed source
- one LP filter (24db Lowpass) with adjustable Boost and ADSR
EG
- one HP filter (12db Hipass) with adjustable Boost and ADSR EG
- two shapeable LFO with patternlike waveforms (bpm-synced)
- one shapeable standard LFO (bpm-synced)
- one shapeable Sample & Hold with pattern (bpm-synced)
- each LFO and S&H provide an additional Mix-out for mixed
LFO-shapes
- one ADSR EG for VCA
- adjustable level for direct, LP and HP output with separate
pan each
- stereo-delay for PingPong effects (bpm-synced)
- User-Waves for oscillators via Wave files and Soundfontfiles
(SF2) loadable
Windows only
Freeware
Download this plugin at: http://www.hgf-synthesizer.de
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