I recently downloaded Cakewalk by Bandlab. I used to have Sonar 8.5 Producer, and I miss the VST instruments I used to have. There are some free VST synths available on the web. I thought there must be one that has a popular following of people who create new patches and share them. What VST plugin instruments have other Cakewalk users found that give a lot of variety of sound for not too much expense?

First of all, I'd recommend re-installing Sonar 8.5 Producer. That way you'll get all your VST instruments back for use in Cakewalk by Bandlab.
 
As far as free ones, there's loads about.
 
I personally like these:
 
http://www.dskmusic.com/
 
Elektrostudio used to do a fantastic range of free analog emulations, but the website seems to have gone. You can get them at http://www.vst4free.com/index.php?dev=Elektrostudio - actually http://www.vst4free.com is a great resource for loads of free VSTs.
 
One of my favourite free VSTi's is Cobalt by Leslie Sanford. It's a bit like a Korg DW8000 / Kawai K3 crossover:
http://www.lesliesanford.com/vst/plugins/
 
GTG synths are also not bad:
http://www.gtgsynths.com/plugins.htm
 
You can get a free Yamaha XG synth here: http://veg.by/en/projects/syxg50/
 
Note that most of these are 32 bit. I've personally not had issues with this, but some of them might not play well with Cakewalk's BitBridge. Investing in JBridge is a good option.
 
 

Piano
https://www.xlnaudio.com/demos
 
P-Bass
https://www.amplesound.net/en/pro-pd.asp?id=19
 
Acoustic guitar
https://www.amplesound.net/en/pro-pd.asp?id=7

Dexed - very good Yamaha DX7 emulator. Not quite as hard to program as the DX7, but still very complicated - FM synthesis tends to be like that. Luckily it comes with a lot of DX7 patches.

tlw
Dexed - very good Yamaha DX7 emulator. Not quite as hard to program as the DX7, but still very complicated - FM synthesis tends to be like that. Luckily it comes with a lot of DX7 patches.

Was watching this the other day. FM has always put me off, but I'm starting to think again

Kamikaze

tlw
Dexed - very good Yamaha DX7 emulator. Not quite as hard to program as the DX7, but still very complicated - FM synthesis tends to be like that. Luckily it comes with a lot of DX7 patches.

Was watching this the other day. FM has always put me off, but I'm starting to think again

These two articles were the breakthrough for me in FM programming:
 
Great article on how to approach programming an FM patch by focusing on each element of the sound:
https://old-homepages.abdn.ac.uk/d.j.benson/dx7/manuals/prgrmdx7.pdf
 
This page explores how to use modulator frequency ratios to create square wave, sawtooth etc:
 
http://web.archive.org/we...tx81z/fm_overview.html
 
 

I go to this site:
https://www.kvraudio.com/
Good source for everything DAW.

+1 on the KVR site.
 
Plus check out Bedroomproducer dot com.
They have a running list of free plugins and instruments
 
bedroomproducersblog.com/free-vst-plugins/
 

synth1 for starters.. 25k presets for it
 
also look on the deails / software forum..  I posted "surge" the other day , which is now free
 
Plugin boutique do freebies, £1 sales also.

OBXD is a pretty good Oberheim emulation, easy to use and 64-bit. Not a lot of presets available, but it's so easy to program you really don't need them.