Level: Beginner to Advance
Last updated: 16th Jan, 2024
Here is a list of free plugins that is worth your time to check out!
1. Melda Production MFreeFXBundle
This is one of the most complete and useful free bundle you can find. The bundle includes a whopping 37 plugins! It ranges from simple equaliser to advance loudness analysers. It even include utilities plugins such as notepads for note taking. They also offers many other paid plugins which are very useful too. With that being said, we do highly recommend the MFreeFXBundle especially if you are just starting our in music production and you are serious about it.
2. Tokyo Dawn Lab
They offer a total of 4 free plugins with an advance paid version of it. We have tested both and all we can say is their plugins are worth every penny. These are very nuanced and fun to use. It is great for beginners to advance engineers.
Here are the free plugins:
TDR Molotok : Which is a full featured compressor with eleven compression flavours. The interface is easy and inspiring to work on and it very versatile. Even though it is free, it rivals many other paid compressors in the market.
TDR VOS SlickEQ : This is a three EQ bands with additional 18dB/Oct high-pass filter. There is nothing simple about this EQ. It offers four different types of modelling; 'American', 'British', 'German' and 'Soviet'. On top of that it also offers five output stages; 'Linear', 'Silky', 'Mellow', 'Deep' and 'Toasted'. With those parameters, it will allow you to create a total of 20 different flavours of EQ!
TDR Kotelnikov : This is a transparent wide-band dynamics processor. It has the ability to manipulate the huge amount of dynamic range, while carefully preserving the original of the signal. It is can be use to subtly control the dynamic when working with classical, jazz and other natural sounding acoustic material or applying extreme settings for electronic or rock music.
TDR Nova : This is a parametric equaliser, dynamic equaliser, frequency dependent compressor, multi-band compressor and a wide band compressor. It can be use to equalise and control the dynamics of an audio signal simultaneously. This is can be very useful when it comes to control of complex audio signal such as drum bus or final mix bus.
TDR Prism : This is a frequency spectrum analyser. It comes with a wide range of tilting and weighting options, supports sidechain inputs, external files, and links to other plugin instances. The freely resizable interface is also really helpful and it also supports full screen mode. If you don't have a frequency analyser in your plugin collection. This will be a good addition.
3.Valhalla
They specialise mostly in time-based processing with an added twist. Currently, ofter 3 free plugins that are really fun to use.
Valhalla Super Massive : It comes with 18 different reverb algorithms. Most of the reverbs algorithms are not subtle or natural sounding. Think of this plugin as more of a sound design and effects type of plugins.
Valhalla Freq Echo : Only way to describe this plugin is that is trippy and psychedelic. It does have a very specific and interesting sound to it.
Valhalla Space Modulator : It is a super flanger. It has 11 algorithms to let you experiment and have fun with.
Link: https://valhalladsp.com
4. Voxengo
In some ways similar to Melda Production, Voxengo provides a big collection of 15 free plugins that are very useful. Some of our tops favourites includes the Boogex (Guitar Amp Simulator), MSED (Mid-side encoder/decoder) and SPAN (RTA meter). We highly recommend you to download this bundle .
5. Blue Cat Audio
Blue Cat Audio freeware provides you 8 plugins that includes modulations, eq, RTA meter and guitar amp simulator. We love their modulation effects and RTA meter. Also do check out their audio tools, they have some very interesting and useful plugins such as the patch works, which allow you to easily re-route and create parallel processing within one plugin.
6. Softube Saturation Knob
This plugin may look simple but it packs a punch!. If you need some extra grit or distortion in your signal, look no further. It is still a staple in many engineer's workflow since.
7. Plugin Alliance PA Free
Arguably of the better plugin company to invest your money with. The pay for subscription and get to choose to keep some of the plugins makes a lot of sense for many engineers. For protools users, these plugins can utilise the HDX DSP power when available freeing up more processing power from your computer. However before you start throwing your hard earn money into. We recommend you to try their free bundle first.
8. Izotope
They have three high quality audio plugin that is very useful in music production. The Vinyl, Imager and Doubler. If you need some radio effects with clips and pops generator, look no further!
9. Klanghelm
They also have three plugins that are pretty cool. Two compressor and a saturation plugin. Our personal favourite is the MJUC jr. It is a compressor with some musical colour.
10. Audiority
Audiority focuses on creating guitar related plugins. They have an impressive collection of plugins. We have tried some of them and they never let us down. You can also use these for other of audio signals not just guitars! Here are the links to the three free plugins:
Dr Drive : Dr Drive is an analog simulation of a modern overdrive inspired by the Horizon Devices® Precision Drive™.
Dr Phase : Dr Phase is an analog simulation of the epochal MXR® Phase 90™ phaser pedal introduced in the early 70s and used by countless musicians.
L12X Solid State Amplifier : L12X is an analog simulation inspired by the Marshall® Lead 12™ solid state amplifier of the late ‘80s.
11. Toneboosters
Toneboosters have a variety of plugins you can purchase but out of those, they provide two very interesting and useful metering plugins for free!
Goniometer : This plugin gives you a visual representation of the spatial sound field, stereo balance, left/right balance spectrum and correlation spectrum in real time. It is the perfect tool to ensure mono down-mix compatible, an absolute must for mobile entertainment.
Spectrogram : This plugin gives you a visual representation of the audio spectrum; see what notes and frequency ranges were active over time. There are 2 modes in this plugin in, the spectrogram and spectrum analyser mode.
12. Green Oak Software
Tungsten : It is a delay plugin with lots of fun and crazy settings! The interface looks very inspiring and cool to work with. This plugin can create your normal delay sounds to spacey ambience to drones effects. It is definitely work trying it out!
Cesium : At the core, this is a chorus effect plugin. However, you can get some really bizarre and weird mangling sounds from it. If you are looking for a chorus/flanger/vibrato effects with a twist. This is for you.
13. Slate Digital
Revival : The result of years of research into what makes things sound ‘better’, Slate Digital’s Revival is a new type of Sonic Enhancer. Borrowing aspects of tubes, tape, transformers and world-class analog filters.
The Monster : The Monster emulates the classic “all-buttons-in” extreme compression sound of the famous vintage FET limiter hardware. If you like our content, please subscribe to our Youtube Channel and follow us on Instagram
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