Free VST recommendations?

[Brutalist]

Hi all,

Does anyone know of any decent EQ's, synth's & FX VST's and if there's any free downloads about?

 

[armelqb]

I have been using the Abstract Chamber VST for reverb and I have used it in 90% of my tracks, good stuff.

Link: http://www.signaldust.com/p-abstractchamber.html

 

[Neurogrind]

here are a bunch of nice freebies that i regularly use:

ANALYSIS:
-Voxengo SPAN for Spectrum Analysis
-Flux Stereo Tool for Stereo widt & phase analysis
-Stillwell Bitter to check bitdepth
-Smartelectronix s(M)exoscope to have a look at the Waveform
-TT Dynamic Range Meter to check how loud things are

FX:
-Xfer OTT - nice little multiband dynamics thing similar to the one in ableton live
-Flux Bittersweet & Sleepy Time Transient for Transient processing
-Voxengo's MSED to make things wider/more narrow and for M/S de-/encoding
-iZotope Vinyl for some vinyl ambience
-SIR for impulse response reverb
-Glitch - an all in one FX unit
-the NI Players package for all sorts of things incl. Guitar Rig 4 Players
-Smartelectronix PanCake 2 for stereo madness
-CamelAudio CamelCrusher (i've heared they shutdown their site, so might need
to search a bit for this one)
-Sonalksis FreeG (simple gain fader)
-Tone Projects Basslane to mono the low-end
-Smartelectronix Ambience for Reverb

VSTi:
-Synth1 (is even used by noisia)
-Eclipsis by VST Zone

this is just a little selection
....there are countless free VSTs all around the web and featured on countless
websites and blogs - just have a quick google search and btw: don't DL all sorts
of useless crap cuz you won't need/use a lot VSTs anyway. i know a lot freebies that
are poorly coded and make your DAW crash - get a nice little selection, make
sure the plugs work and learn them inside out (PDF manual...) - everything else
just uses up unnecessary hardrive space and takes ages to load...

hope that helps

 

[Optimal Prime]

Tone 2's Fire Bird 2 used to be a paid for plugin that they put out for free in the end some time in the past. I haven't used this myself but it was highly rated by someone I know who bought it originally.

https://www.tone2.com/html/download.html

Here's the link to the download page.

 

[Fluff]

U-He Tyrrell is a very nice free synth.
Check out www.bedroomproducerblog.com - loads of free stuff on there

 

[Zippolisko]

Literally everything from Variety of Sound is fucking excellent. One of my alltime favorite plugin is FerricTDS.
https://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/

FerricTDS:

Vladg plugins are crazy good too. Molot is a nice sounding compressor with a bit of a character to it, LimiterNo6 is my main limiter, it is so damn gooooood.
https://vladgsound.wordpress.com/plugins/

LimiterNo6:

And ofc everybodys favorite analyzer; Voxengo SPAN. And yeah, it IS an excellent analyzer.
http://www.voxengo.com/product/span/

SPAN:

 

[Mason John]

here are a bunch of nice freebies that i regularly use:

ANALYSIS:
-Voxengo SPAN for Spectrum Analysis
-Flux Stereo Tool for Stereo widt & phase analysis
-Stillwell Bitter to check bitdepth
-Smartelectronix s(M)exoscope to have a look at the Waveform
-TT Dynamic Range Meter to check how loud things are

FX:
-Xfer OTT - nice little multiband dynamics thing similar to the one in ableton live
-Flux Bittersweet & Sleepy Time Transient for Transient processing
-Voxengo's MSED to make things wider/more narrow and for M/S de-/encoding
-iZotope Vinyl for some vinyl ambience
-SIR for impulse response reverb
-Glitch - an all in one FX unit
-the NI Players package for all sorts of things incl. Guitar Rig 4 Players
-Smartelectronix PanCake 2 for stereo madness
-CamelAudio CamelCrusher (i've heared they shutdown their site, so might need
to search a bit for this one)
-Sonalksis FreeG (simple gain fader)
-Tone Projects Basslane to mono the low-end
-Smartelectronix Ambience for Reverb

VSTi:
-Synth1 (is even used by noisia)
-Eclipsis by VST Zone

this is just a little selection
....there are countless free VSTs all around the web and featured on countless
websites and blogs - just have a quick google search and btw: don't DL all sorts
of useless crap cuz you won't need/use a lot VSTs anyway. i know a lot freebies that
are poorly coded and make your DAW crash - get a nice little selection, make
sure the plugs work and learn them inside out (PDF manual...) - everything else
just uses up unnecessary hardrive space and takes ages to load...

hope that helps

Solid fucking list man! That Voxegen one, is it another name for Gliss EQ (that's the one I use for spectrum frequency analysis). And of course Synth 1 goes without saying; it'll always be a mainstay.

Gonna check out some of your other rec's.

Personally I would recommend the Proteus VX sampler; you can use it as a vst-i in pretty much any DAW, although it's a bit tricky to do so from time to time. Sadly don't know if there's a 64-bit version available.

 

[Brutalist]

Cheers for the feedback - Im going download these and lock myself away . Thanks again

 

[Neurogrind]

as far as i know voxengo SPAN and voxengo gliss EQ are two different things. i haven't used gliss eq yet, but SPAN is not an EQ but only
a visual representation of the spectrum with dedicated features for it's purpose

http://www.voxengo.com/product/span/

 

[JungleFever]

classic limiter is very good and free, your welcome

 

[Slapped]

U-He Tyrrell is a very nice free synth.
Check out www.bedroomproducerblog.com - loads of free stuff on there

I'd say that all the freebies from U-HE are worthwhile having.

Triple Cheese is wonderful for resonant sounds, and is really good for dark discordant type sounds and FX
Podolski has a nice arp section and is sweet sounding
Zebralette is also good for a whole host of stuff.

Also I'd recommend picking up just one issue of Computer Music magazine (It's a UK mag, but is available worldwide on Apples Newstand and Google Play). Not exactly free, but you will get access to quite an array of reasonably good synths, EQs, compressors and FX.

Also don't dismiss what's already in your DAW. I use Logic's compressor in preference to most other 3rd Party compressors.

 

[Optimal Prime]

Yeah that's true, CM mag is exceptionally brilliant for the price because not only do you get their entire catalogue of freeware CM plugins from the years gone by, but also the gigs of samples they provide for each individual issue and then a great piece of reading material complete with tutorials. Can't go wrong for £6 or whatever they are these days.