Why spend thousands on fancy instruments if you don’t have to? You can make incredible music without spending a penny. These 10 FREE Plugins deserve a place in your DAW!
Bertom EQ Curve Analyzer is a free analyzer / signal generator plugin to analyse the frequency and phase response of any plugin (or hardware).
It started as a developer tool but has been simplified so that it doesn’t require a complicated setup to work. You just have to “sandwich” the effect(s) you want to analyse between TWO instances, the first one set as the signal generator and the second one as the analyzer. Then set the latency if necessary.
It’s particularly useful as a learning tool to see what classic EQs are doing for example.
It’s a Lightweight Saturator:
BPB Saturator is a freeware saturation effect designed by Bedroom Producers Blog. They aimed to create a colorful analog-style saturation tool that is lightweight and easy to use. BPB Saturator boosts and warms up your audio without slowing down your CPU.
It’s a Versatile Saturator:
With BPB Saturator, you can apply tube-style and tape-style saturation to your audio. Use them separately or combine both saturation types for a cumulative effect. Pass the audio signal through a virtual tube preamp and tape machine. They also included a pair of transparent filters to help remove unwanted frequencies.
It’s a BPB Saturator:
Inspired by the popularity of their BPB Dirty Filter effect, they set out to create another free VST plugin for BPB readers. You can use BPB Saturator as a subtle saturation effect, a distortion tool, or a soft-clipper on the master bus. We recommend BPB Saturator as a quick tool for warming up virtual synthesizers, adding crunch and bite to drum machine sounds, simulating analog tape with tape saturation and filtering, or obliterating your audio with plenty of tube distortion.
Add the smoothest high end you’ve ever heard without even a hint of harshness. Fresh Air is a dynamic high frequency processor that breathes new life into your mix with just two knobs.
Fresh Air combines serious audio processing behind a gorgeous facade. Based on vintage exciter circuits and advanced dynamics processing, Fresh Air lets you add just the right amount of brilliance & shine to your mix in simple interface you can start using right away.
Fresh Air adds brilliance & excitement to your top end without even a hint of brittleness. They’ve combined several advanced parallel processes under the hood to magically elevate individual tracks or lift your entire mix with stunning clarity.
Filterjam is a multi-band resonant filter delivering weird ringmod-like filtered sounds. The input signal is divided into 4 bands that are then summed or multiplied together according to the selected mode. Filterjam can be very harsh or gentle, it can add brightness or depth to synth sounds, but it can also completely mangle acoustic sources.
CompExp is a compressor expander based on the design of a compander chip designed for telephone lines and used in many electronic devices to reduce the noise.
The chip works with a fixed threshold (in their case is internally set to -18dBFS) when the “amount” knob is at a value greater than 1 the gain is increased by the specified factor if the signal is below the threshold, and decreased if above. If the chip is set to work as an expander, the contrary happens, the gain is increased if above the threshold and decreased if below.
The system is designed this way to permit dynamic compression on telephone lines and compressor and expander are used together in this configuration, but they found that these models sounds interesting by themselves.
LABS is an entire collection of free sample instruments put out by Spitfire Audio.
There are a lot of studio drum samples that sound really processed. But for more intimate stuff, this LABS drum set works nicely because it sounds less produced.
There’s a wurlitzer, a charango, tons of amazing sounds that you can do a lot with. If you make music on your computer, you should get it. It’s really that good.
Step into music production with KOMPLETE START, a curated selection of studio-quality instruments, effects, utilities, loops, and samples for the low price of nothing at all. Play over 2,000 customizable sounds – drums and percussion, bass, acoustic instruments, synths, pads and atmospheres, effects, and more. These products can be loaded and played using the KONTAKT 6 PLAYER, REAKTOR 6 PLAYER or KOMPLETE KONTROL software, which are also included in the bundle.
Ever wanted that vintage electric piano sound from the 80s? You’re in luck. With 3,000 presets, Dexed will keep you busy for a while. Those presets can be tricky to load though, so watch this video if you can’t find them.
Surge used to be a premium synth, but not too long ago, Vember made it open source.
It’s a hybrid synth allowing subtractive synthesis as well as wavetableand FM. It’s really a sound design powerhouse!
With 1,010 preset patches, 183 wavetables, and tons of effects, it’ll be a long time before you get bored of Surge.
U-he’s Zebra is one of the most popular synths on the market. Zebralette is their self-described “trojan horse,” to get you hooked on Zebra’s sound. And it sure works! Zebralette may only have one oscillator, but it sounds amazing.
There are 300 presets and tons of effects for more advanced sound design. Zebralette is a must-have for any synth enthusiast.
