VST freebies & cheapies, what do you like?

This stuff is pretty wicked.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/kriminal68/Karnage.html

I recommend it highly!

http://www.nomadfactory.com/products/free_bundle/
http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/classic-series.php

Couple of effects I forgot above:
PSP PianoVerb "reproduces special kind of reverberation originally provided by piano strings" and sounds real nice.
Voxengo Boogex is an amp simulation.

I've downloaded everything that looks interesting, and will stick the lot in my vstplugs folder tonight! More later, perhaps.

I used to sometimes before 4.6. Now that they've got multiple AU outputs not as much. The AudioEase VST wrapper is pretty good.

Soooo....any good sites for free MAS or AU plug-ins?

I know there's a program that creates an AU shell for each VST, try http://www.osxaudio.com if you haven't already, lots of links to free AUs and samples.

http://bram.smartelectronix.com/

The "Supaphaser" is great, you'll never touch the MAS phaser again.

http://www.soundhack.com/

I've been driving myself crazy trying to find a free VST I used to use called Crusher_CJF.dll. It's not that it's a great VST, but I've been trying to recover some old Fruity Loops tracks, and I apparently used it on 80% of them. Have googled it and all that turns up are dodgy and/or dead links.

If anyone happens to have it, I'd love you forever if you could email it to me.

Goldwave is an oldie but goodie and I also like Reaper OK.

i haven't tried it (yet) but there's a free line 6 pod plugin available this month for peeps with an ilok

http://www.line6.com/news/offers/864

Audio Damage have a freebies page. The compressor is pretty good and can go from subtle right up to "nuclear blast". The tremolo helps spice up organs and pads. The fuzz isn't that great on guitar, more useful as a "totally mess up your sound" effect.
http://www.audiodamage.com/downloads/

ah yes i've been meaning to try those. i have a couple of AD plugs, they're really really good.

are there any cheap AUs out there that emulate 90s romplers such as the roland SC-88? i know of the edirol hyper canvas but it's pretty expensive

anyone know of a sampling synthesizer plugin? i'd like to be able take a sample and spread it across the keyboard. i'm pretty you can do it in Ableton, but programming MIDI in Ableton drives me crazy and i'd love to find a vst that can do it in Cubase.

I was looking for a free VST harmonizer that sounds good and there it is: Pitchproof. It can even do chords.

is there any such thing as a vst that would allow me to vary the tempo of audio as it plays?

with or without pitch shifting? maybe put it into a free dj program like Mixxx, record, and import back into your DAW?

preferably without pitch shifting i think, though yeah that technique sounds useful too, thanks.

Btw free dj program would work for this as well:

anyone know of a sampling synthesizer plugin? i'd like to be able take a sample and spread it across the keyboard. i'm pretty you can do it in Ableton, but programming MIDI in Ableton drives me crazy and i'd love to find a vst that can do it in Cubase.

― precious bonsai children of new york (Jordan), Tuesday, May 21, 2013 1:04 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh, you mean just using it to pitch the sample and bouncing it out as audio? or something else? because that's what i normally do in my DAW, but it would be nice to trigger the samples via midi as well as sequencing audio files.

You can take a sample and map out cue points to a midi device, tho we may be talking about two diff things

I'm an idiot abt this stuff

ohh ok, hmm. i actually haven't messed with dj programs much because i'm an idiot about dj'ing.

also i downloaded a bunch of these free vsts yesterday, haven't checked them out yet: http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/downloads/

The VoS VSTs are awesome - you can make some fucked-up self-oscillations and time-pitch-shifts with their NastyDLA effect

It's also a pretty good delay effect.

Anything good going in the various Black Friday sales - soft synths, Ableton packs, etc?

soundtoys 5.1 for half price!!

bump for any Black Friday sales that are worth looking at?

Not sure if I've already stanned for it in this thread but Trackspacer (a sidechained EQ) is incredibly useful for getting some space in mixdowns and a steal at £25.

https://www.wavesfactory.com/trackspacer/amp/

Ooh that looks really interesting, ty

Debating about copping their Spectre plugin too, which also looks cool (and is on sale)

This thing is free, and I use it ALL THE TIME:
http://www.alexhilton.net/A1AUDIO/index.php/a1triggergate

Thanks! I can recommend the free vst synths from u-he (some standalone, some stripped-down versions of paid products), they sound great.

Any more?

Gotta get into those. The other amazing free plugin that I use all the time is this:

https://vladgsound.wordpress.com/plugins/limiter6/

I think it sounds better than a lot of paid master bus plugins.

https://tytel.org/helm/
https://tal-software.com/products/tal-noisemaker

I've never actually used a UAD plugin before, thx for the heads up

I got their free channel strip and really like it, don't know if I'd shell out for this stuff tho.

Tbh I just want the compressor and maybe the tape echo, but if I'm gonna get one for $30 may as well get the bundle.

honestly, yes. I don't think you'll be unhappy with the LA3A. I like it just as much as the other UAD comps I have, the LA2A, 1176 collection and the Century strip.

Are they dramatically better than the analog obsession versions?

I'm fairly temped to pick up something off UA's site right now because any standalone purchase gets you the Pultec collection free (not that I need, since the Logic one seems alright and I still have yet to get my head around the Pultec thing anyway...)

AO is cool. I found their SSL buss comp to be amazing. STEQ is another great one. Didn't much care for their LA2A. I liked the idea of Frank but found it not so satisfying in practice.

For free stuff, they're great. On sale, UAD is better IMO.

(If I didn't use Logic with its more than good enough built in vintage comps/eqs I'd probably be a bit more excited about AO)

I can't live without my AO eqs and Comper, but they're much better than stock for me.

Which ones do you like the most?

Blended EQ and Harqules are my go-tos for color, and I've gotten use out of a ton of the other ones of various ilks.

Gotta say I don't love some of these UA plugins at first blush, but maybe it's me. Little things like the Lexicon reverb still being audible even when the mix fader is all the way dry (not that you'd ever want that but it seems a little weird), and I couldn't seem to adjust the synced rhythmic values on the space echo, or get it as wet I wanted. Maybe these are too-faithful recreations and I'm used to versions that have made them easier to use and added more parameters? The LA3A seems cool so far.

New mode for Valhalla Supermassive, less colorful/odd than the other modes and kind of sounds the most like Eventide Blackhole of the Supermassive modes to me.

Jordan- try the Lexicon on a send, you'll be much happier I think.

UAD currently has a free download of their 1176 FET compressor

For free it's a must have. UAD's freebies are great.

I caved and bought the S.K.Y. Keys plugin after being bombarded with ads for it, after poking around it's a pretty fun little instrument with plenty of potential, well worth the £24.

Soundtoys new reverb is free for the next month, $99 after

https://www.soundtoys.com/

!!!
Thanks milo, I love the soundtoys stuff...

It's really cool, I had an Amen break loaded into Amigo when I downloaded it and spent a long time just playing with the pink cursor dot that can shift it from regular reverb to a kind of bloom to reverse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imubcby-rkw

Wow, this looks incredible

classic, I didn't think I needed another reverb but couldn't resist this one, it's really cool and different. I don't think my other reverbs can set times of beats/bars like this one can? sounds good AND cool AND weird, AND the controls aren't overly complicated like a lot of verbs. and FREE! awesome.

I noticed the license shows up as a "promo" license and wondered if it's actually a free trial

My iLok license shows up as normal w/ 2 activations except it's not transferrable. If it's time limited it shows up as a trial in iLok.

If you did their machine authorization promo might be their no resale term?

That makes sense. Hope so, because I haven't even had time to use it once..

First off, I use that Soundtoys reverb all the time now. It’s awesome for big, cloudy and time sync verbs (as opposed to natural, ambient treatments). What a nice giveaway.

Here’s a much less fun one but useful and also free:

https://en.antelopeaudio.com/free-plugin-claim/

They are giving away their EQ based on a Maag EQ4 ($1200 per channel in hardware). This is a very easy to use and very musical fixed band EQ. It has one hell of a special trick though, which is the “air band” (Antelope Audio call it the sky band). This high shelf adds a really nice and modern sheen without fatiguing high end, it starts lifting in the high mid frequencies. It can give you a modern glassy polish on lead vocals, or bring up buried synth parts, etc. And use the rest of the EQ for fool proof broad shaping. Anyway try it! It’s free! It’s definitely worth it for free!

I will say that the registration process and yes- requires another plug in manager- is slightly annoying.

Haaa, I've Spaceblender on everything lately. It's perfect for making weird, uncanny environments.

Did anyone grab the UAD Showtime amp? It expired on Oct 31 so sorry if you missed it. I generally don’t care for amp simulators whatsoever, had POD 2.0, XT, Helix- have a Neural DSP one right now that is whatever, but this UAD one is pretty good, maybe the best of its kind for clean to Neil Youngy Fender tones. The room ambience sounds really nice. So far I’ve only used it for overdubs and stuff that’s already really processed, it’s good for giving depth and overdrive to yet another guitar/synth track in a busy mix. Sounds that originate as guitar but go through rounds of plug in etc processing and get too glassy and spiky can be nicely brought back down to earth with this thing- it overdrives in a pretty natural way, like all these fucking things it overdrives way too much too soon, though.

I got it but haven't tried it yet. The UAFX Lion (Marshall Plexi/Super Bass) amp pedal (and presumably plugin version) is very good but the UA pedals needing the phone app to do half the things it can do is a horrible decision. On the pedal there are three cabs (or maybe six after registration) - if you use the app, there are a bunch of presets with different cabs or mixes of cabs that you can't do on the pedal itself. If your phone goes to sleep, you have to wait a minute for the app to reconnect to the pedal before you can change presets (or enable/disable the Marshall bright cap on the amp, etc.).

Aberrant DSP's All Things Lofi plugin Cataclysm is pretty cheap ($25) and sounds good but I don't know if I'll actually use it enough to spend even $25. Multieffects plugins tend to get forgotten, I'd rather just load up Valhalla's modulation plugin and VintageVerb if I need an ensemble chorus into reverb.

I agree on the app stuff. I rely on my H9 these days and well both of what you said, the connection is not rock solid over bluetooth, generally need to hardwire midi for tempo sync stuff, either way very dependent on the app which won't be supported forever, and I have no reason to think the pedal won't last a long time. I really want to upgrade to the h9000 someday, but considering how sophisticated that is, without a touchscreen that's another piece where you're absolutely dependent on the app. And the H9k is a serious chunk of change.

oh and on Valhalla- Supermassive is the best free reverb/delay/mod plug in for vast sounds, sounds incredible like all Valhalla, shocking that it is free. 1000% recommend

I don't really like the glitchy examples, but a delay/sampler that you can program like a step sequencer is a fun idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDOyyVl_e7w

Also I recently got Cableguys Snapback and it's kind of stupidly good for adding transient samples, almost feels like cheating.

Parrot looks super up my alley.

Not free, but I'm extremely psyched about this, it's like the part of Pigments I'm most into but easier to use and with some cool unique modes -
https://aqeelaadamsound.com/b/outgrowth

Haven't played around with these yet, but they look pretty cool

https://ineardisplay.com/

Found via this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6GptvgQLyw

Pretty good (and free!) version of the Alesis MIDIVerb II... The MDV-II from Temecula DSP:
https://www.temeculadsp.com/mdv-ii

Universal Audio just dropped a bundle of 8 analog-emulation plugins for free! no idea why, maybe an exposure thing, but damn it's a good opportunity if it's still open.

I think these are ones that they offer free on a recurring basis, but definitely a bunch I didn't have. Thanks for the heads up!

looks like it's tied to Luna? Like they're trying to get people to download and try their DAW?

yeah, I got the plugins, but no way I'm touching the DAW