Music it’s your hobby or it’s your vocation and job? Once you’re up on this roller-coaster you’ll be always on hunt for new hardware, software and plug-ins to enhance your productions. It’s a never ending investment, there’s always (at least) one more thing that you need immediately! Most of these stuffs are pretty expensive, but you can get always some amazing free stuffs as well. Free – but keep in mind, those people invest time, work and money to develop those products, so, donations always will be much appreciated!
At very first you MUST have the plug-ins by Variety Of Sound. Some of them are much-much better then some plug-ins you have to pay for. Seriously. ThrillseekerLA not only introduces way smooth gain riding capabilities but first and foremost features a non-linear amplifier stage which is based on a non-linearity with memory yielding creamy signal coloration duties. Thrillseeker VBL is an emulation of a “vintage broadcast limiter” following the classic Variable-Mu design principles from the early 1950′s. Thrillseeker XTC is all about adding weight, vibe and attitude back to the sound. It delivers all the character of an analog signal path and provides what digital processing usually is hard pushed to, including a rich low-end experience and that vibrant ‘expensive’ top-end. FerricTDS is a pretty cool tape dynamics simulator which simulates some dynamic effects as can be obtained with some high quality tape gear. Density mkII was primarily designed to work in a typical stereo audio group mixing situation or for summing and to glue all things together in an unobtrusive way. NastyVCS offers everything you need to shape your channels dynamics and tone. It offers a dedicated input stage featuring crunchy pre-amp saturation and a brickwall safety limiter in the output stage. The preFIX is a pre-mixing and audio alignment tool which typically takes place upfront the mixing process. It provides a clever tool set to clean-up, fix and align audio tracks concerning overall frequency correction, phase alignment, spatial stereo field corrections and routing. BaxterEQ is an incredible smooth shelving EQ. BootEQ mkII is an equalizer and pre-amp simulator combination which provides some nice and musical signal coloration effects. TesslaSE adds some gentle and pleasant saturation effects to the incoming audio. TesslaPro is a signal saturator with added transient control. The Rescue plug-in is a gadget which offers envelope dependend signal amplification and saturation in a mid/side configuration. NastyDLA – A classic chorus echo device with tape-delay simulation. The epicVerb – it’s a very efficient digital reverberation simulator.
Get the Variety Of Sound of plug-ins.
It’s not uncommon for commercial software and plug-in developers to give away free cut-down versions of their products or stand-alone effects/modules from their suites. When comes down to mastering suites some people will go for iZotope’s Ozone, other for IK Multimedia’s T-RackS. I prefer T-RackS, but that doesn’t mean that Ozone is not a good option as well. If you’re a registered user on the IK Multimedia website you can get for free the T-RackS’s Classic Equalizer module. The Classic Equalizer module, it’s a 6-band parametric mastering EQ that’s part of the T-RackS Classic bundle, and we’ve also provided you with the T-RackS Metering Suite, which contains a host of useful and detailed displays including Peak, Perceived Loudness, Phase, and RMS meters, plus a Spectrum analyzer with Peak, RMS and Averaging indicators. Both the EQ and meters can be instantiated as separate plug-ins in your DAW.
Get the T-RackS’s Free Classic Equalizer.
The virtual “next-door neighbor” to the T-RackS Custom Shop, is the AmpliTube Custom Shop. There you can find a free version of AmpliTube, which includes 24 pieces of gear including a digital chromatic tuner, 9 stomps, 4 amps, 5 cabs, 3 mics, 2 rack effects. When you download and register/authorize the software, you’ll get a fully functioning “standalone” app with a built-in 4-track recorder, plus you get the plug-in version for your favorite DAW. No matter what your computing platform (Mac/Win), you’re covered. If you are tracking your guitars directly to computer, you will definitively need this one!
Get the free version of AmpliTube.
Togu Audio Line (TAL) have a serious of worthy free VST and AU plug-ins for MAC and Windows. It’s useful to include in your work-flow their pretty famous vocoder, dub delay and bitcrusher, but you may enjoy the advantages also of their reverb, flanger, phaser and filter.
Get the free TAL vst’s.
Ohm Force Frohmage it’s one of the “oldest” plug-ins I know (and use). Frohmage delivers warmth, dirt and much more at a professional audio quality. This is an excellent low-pass filter plug-in. There are 15 additional bands, each of which has delay on it for phasing-like effects, plus a distortion stage for those moments when you want some added crunch.
Get Ohm Force Frohmage.
SHEPPi Algorithm. Open Ambience Project has released SHEPPi (Stereo Haas Effect Ping Pong Inverter), a free spatial enhancer plug-in for Windows which is based on the K-Stereo concepts of Bob Katz. If you wanna enhance your mix, make it sound deeper and/or wider, SHEPPi Algorithm just might be the right tool you’re looking for!
Get SHEPPi Algorithm.
UpStereo is a FREE stereo enhancer with 3D interface. It is a simple, useful tool which makes your mixes sound bigger, in stereo width and loudness.
Get UpStereo.
Can NOT have a quality audio project without a quality reverb. Magnus Jonsson Ambience is a reverb that rivals the quality of the best commercial reverbs and and there’s a good selection of presets too.
Get Magnus Jonsson Ambience.
Another important “gear” it’s the compressor. Rough Rider is a modern compressor with a bit of “vintage” style bite and a uniquely warm sound. Perfect for adding compression effects to your drum buss, it also sounds great with synth bass, clean guitar, and backing vocals, but – as they say – Definitely not an all-purpose compressor.
Get Rough Rider by Audio Damage.
Voxengo SPAN is a free audio spectrum analyzer plug-in for professional music and audio production applications. SPAN supports multi-channel analysis and can be set to display spectrums from two different channels or channel groups at the same time. You may specify Fourier block size in samples, FFT window overlap percentage, spectrum’s visual slope.
Get Voxengo SPAN.
CamelCrusher is a free ‘colouring’ multi-effect plugin. It offers two characteristically different distortion sounds which can be blended together to create a wide variety of tones and textures. Great for guitars, drums and anything you can think of! There’s also a warm, smooth analogue-style low-pass filter with buckets of resonance. Assign a MIDI controller and start tweaking! Finally, let’s not forget the easiest-to-use compressor you’ll find anywhere. It can ‘phatten’ up your sound as quickly as you can turn up the ‘Amount’ knob!
Get CamelCrusher.
If you’re into breakcore or any other type of (hard) core, Glitch must be one of the essential tools of your sonic arsenal. Glitch has evolved over the years into an all-singing, all-dancing sequencer-based glitch effect with the potential to turn your tracks into unrecognizable shells of their former selves with its nine built-in effects and filter section. Audio is broken down into slices, and then different effects can be applied to each slice.
Get Illformed’s Glitch.
Tracking and editing guitars and bass guitars digitally sometimes took off the edge from those recordings. Ignite Amps developing in-house highly detailed digital simulations of tube and solid-state electronic circuits that can process the sound in real time and provide the most realistic possible results, using really advanced mathematical algorithms based on analog modeling. NadIR is a Zero Latency Convolver for cabinet simulation; TPA-1 is a cstom tube poweramp; NRR-1 is a custom 3 channels tube preamp; TSB-1 is a Benevolent custom “Tyrant Screamer” Pedal; The Anvil is a custom tube preamp (circuit design by Andy Zeugs); PTEq-1a is a Vintage Tube Equalizer; SHB-1 is a Bass Tube Amplifier; and TS-999 is an Overdrive stomp-box. All of these vst’s are FREE and available both for Win 32 bit and Win 64 bit, respectively for Mac.
Get Ignite Amps.
SimulAnalog Guitar suite it’s a suite of vst plugin with amplifiers and analog processors for guitarists, containing the simulation of: Boss DS-1 (Distortion stompbox), Boss SD-1 (Super Overdrive stompbox), Tube Screamer (Overdrive stompbox), Oberheim PS-1 (Phaser stompbox), Univox Univibe (Modulations stompbox), Fender Twin 1969 (Guitar amplifier), and Marshall JCM900 Dual Reverb (Guitar amplifier).
Get SimulAnalog Guitar suite.
The LePou Plugins are some useful amplifier simulators both for 32 and 64 bits versions of Windows and Mac as well as AudioUnit versions (32 and 64 bits) for Mac. You can choose from several different amplifiers, I think definitively you will find some sounds you will like.
Get the LePou Plugins.
Hope you have found what you were looking for! Now it’s time to make some noise, have fun!!
