VST freebies & cheapies, what do you like?

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

Channel robot are giving away The modernist glockenspiel and the odernist kalimba. I do love me some mallet sounds. These seem nice. Bit of a cpu hit though?
https://audioplugin.deals/free-download-the-modernist-collection-kalimba-glockenspiel-by-channel-robot/

Glitch1- an oldie but a classic. 32bit only :(
http://illformed.org/

xp - ooh, I've been getting into sound libraries for screwing with in samplers, downloading those now

UVI's (free) Workstation comes with a handful of pretty good instruments, though I haven't really found any free compatible sample libraries (vs all the free Kontakt libraries out there).

also in that realm Spitfire's free Labs
https://www.spitfireaudio.com/labs/

O yeah those spitfire things look interesting! thanks
also: https://www.cinematique-instruments.com/pages_instr/page_klang.php

needs full kontakt though

I copped those glockenspiel and kalimba instruments, even though I have made many of my own sample packs using many of my own kalimbas & glockenspiels

https://projectsam.com/library-category/the-free-orchestra/

Dexed - DX7 emulation that loads DX7 patch files.
https://asb2m10.github.io/dexed/

I was looking for a good flanger, wishing Valhalla had one, and then found out they have one that's free if you fill out a survey! I've never been happier to respond to a company survey.

I've never really used a flanger. What's it good for?

Highly recommended skins for U-he's free synths making them more readable -
Triple Cheese - https://github.com/dozius/triple-cheese-themes
Tyrell N6 - https://plugmon.jp/product/interstellar-for-tyrell-n6/

It's a filter effect, the wiki defines it as "produced by mixing two identical signals together, one signal delayed by a small and gradually changing period, usually smaller than 20 milliseconds."

But I stayed away from it for years, maybe because I associate it with the snare breakdown in Lenny Kravitz "Are You Gonna Go My Way"? Then I heard this record, where a lot of programmed drums are run through some sort of shifting filter that I thought might be a flanger, and wanted to give it another go:
https://towheadrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/pure-energy

Thanks for the u-he skins!

has anyone played around with magenta/nsynth yet? i'm downloading now. it's free Max/MSP instrument from google, which uses machine learning to blend timbres from tonal samples, so you can combine the qualities of any two instruments, etc etc.

https://magenta.tensorflow.org/nsynth-instrument

see also: https://nsynthsuper.withgoogle.com/

https://www.discodsp.com/obxd/

Emulation of an OB-Xa - there's a buy link but it's really just a donation

It's pretty sweet, but has the same issue with discrete pitch jumping when you turn the Osc pitch knob, which makes playing with osc sync sound weaker than the real instrument. I'm using it for a pad sound in one of my tracks right now, though!

the same issue that a lot of soft synths have, I mean.

I can confirm that the Valhalla Space Modulator is sick, highly recommended.

"ValhallaSpaceModulator is FREE for anyone who has purchased a plugin directly from Valhalla DSP! "

Had you already bought something from Valhalla Jordan, or was the survey enough?

Ah, I've bought a couple things from them, yeah. $50 a pop and some of the best reverbs and delays I've ever used though.

^^ I use their shimmer and delay plugins on everything.

It's essential to the category of youtube videos that I would categorize as "ambient music made with cheap synthesizer and Valhalla Shimmer".

(related to but distinct from "ambient music made with cheap synthesizer and BigSky pedal")

don't forget "ambient music made with mutable instruments clouds either in module or vcvrack form."

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