Who said that quality must necessarily be related to an exorbitant price? To dispel this myth, here is a selection of 10 plugins, including effects and virtual instruments, which have nothing to envy to commercial and noble products.
Multi platform
The following plugins can be used both in the environment Windows and Apple OS X. Click on the plugin title to go to the manufacturer's download page.
Sound Damage Rough Rider
Compressor with a vintage style and a warm sound. Designed to “pump” the sound of rhythm tracks, this compressor is great for adding punch to the drum set and for synthetic bass.
George Yohng's W1 Limiter
Free clone of the Limiter Waves L1. I have been using this plugin for years and am fully satisfied with it. The interface is too spartan, but the results that this little gem manages to bring out are truly excellent.
Martin Eastwood Mverb
Great free, high quality ed reverb open-source based on Dattoro's figure-of-eight algorithm. The interface is simple and intuitive and the sound is truly amazing.
Melda Production MCompressor
This developer has contracted the generosity virus. In the “Free audio plugins” section of his site you can download over a dozen excellent effects totally free. Noteworthy is M Compressor, which combines compressor and maximizer in one plugin. The features are countless, worthy of more famous friends, ranging from the modification of the compression curve (to have different dynamic effects) to up-sampling up to 4x to obtain a crystal clear sound. I recommend downloading the full range of effects released by the author.
Teragon Audio KickMaker
Do you need new kicks for your tracks? Here is a very useful plugin designed exclusively for this purpose. KickMaker it uses four independent oscillators and a large amount of effects to allow you to create your own custom kicks.
Togu TAL-Elek7ro
We would have to write whole pages on plugins made by Togu Audio Line. It is really great to see so many totally free and, above all, acoustically satisfying instruments and effects. For this column I have chosen TAL-Elek7ro, a virtual analog synthesizer with some interesting features such as, for example, LFOs that can go up to 400Hz, allowing for wild modulations. I highly recommend readers to indulge in a wild download of this developer's full range of plugins.
Yellow Tools Independence Free
With over 2GB of library, this edition of the well-known Yellow Tools sampler can only be tempting. The only limitations are the number of audio files you can import, to create your own custom sounds, and the lack of support for third party plugins. The library contains 2.5GB of instruments selected from the Pro version of the same series, such as drum kits (both acoustic and electronic), basses, guitars, pianos, synthesizers, ethnic instruments, grooves and so on.
Mono platform
These other plugins are only usable on Windows or OSX. Click on the plugin title to go to the manufacturer's download page.
Nebula 3 Free (Windows)
Based on the series Volterra Kernel, this amazing plugin allows you to emulate different types of analog devices such as equalizers, filters, microphones, preamps and so on. The free version is limited to the included library only and has no editing capabilities.
Vacuumsound ADT - Artificial Double Tracking (OSX)
La ADT technique was developed by Abbey Road Studio engineers to make John Lennon's life easier by not having to physically record the same track twice. This plugin recreates this simple, but effective effect, based on the technical parameters of the machines of the time.
Variety of Sound BootEQ mkII (Windows)
This developer releases a number of great plugins in VST format that are totally free and well-made. So I point out this equalizer and analog preamp simulator with nice signal coloring. Recommended to download the full range of plugins released by the author.
