Friends,
Thought this worthy of a new thread on freebies. Comments about the Music Radar post claiming you can accomplish final production pro quality with freebies was received..uh..a bit less than supportive. Opinions from most that the free stuff is second rate, low quality and incapable of a real professional job. Dollar sign is the touchstone reveals the lack of quality. Megabux expenditure is needed to do anything credible. Maybe for good reason, and respect those opinions. Can’t claim my ears can really tell the difference if the plug is used with intelligenxe and appropriately.
I look back at Hendrix with a fuzz box and a spring reverb and a wah wah. Rare flange effect that took up a whole wall of hardware to achieve, now in a vst. Page with a tone control on the amp slashing out nearly immortal riffs that will be listened to long after any of us here are gone and forgotten.
The free feast is incredible these days, and some real quality stuff out there, if to my ears only. The list is quickly growing and increasing in quality.
What I’m asking is not some great freebie list, but trade secret freebies. Dan remarked that the free junk rarely does anything compared to the paid stuff, but rarely there is something that delivers a go to sound or effect.
If you don’t mind sharing, what’s out there free that is the rare gem you have discovered?
Can think of several. VSTI list is too big from free organs, strings, mellotrons, synthetic sounds. A couple contenders would be DSK synths and HG Fortune offerings (RIP):
http://www.dskmusic.com/http://www.vst4free.com/index.php?dev=HG_FortuneMelda freebies:
https://www.meldaproduction.com/MFreeEffectsBundleDistorque. Think Azurite was already mentioned. Vit C comp is excellent:
http://distorqueaudio.com/plugins.htmlReaper free plugs. Their comp, eq, Reafir, excellent gate, ReaControlMidi (anyone can get this better for any price, please clue me in)
http://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/P&M, though not free for the suite, can get a free stomp box for a like on Facebook and the good folks there said it’s okay to get multiple plugs. Dirt simple and powerful stomps like the California Tone, American Tweed, Echoflex are dynamite.
http://www.plugandmix.com/products/softwareScaled down version freebies like IK Amplitube free. Got to put up with the custom shop crap, but if you can’t do a pro job with this, trouble goes deeper than the software can deliver:
http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/amplitubecs/So many exquisite free reverbs out there. One of the hardest effects a couple decades ago to get right because of complexity, but now… Leslie Sanford’s reverb only one example:
http://www.lesliesanford.com/vst/plugins/Crap, the list could go on forever… Acon’s Multiply, Aegean Pitchproof:
https://acondigital.com/products/multiply/http://aegeanmusic.com/downloadsAbout anything made by Bootsy:
https://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/Forgotten gems by Tinbrook Tales. Righteous saturation and overdrive. Bet you guys didn’t know about these relics:
http://hem.bredband.net/t..dio/archive/archive.htm Any dynamite freeware contenders you guys use? Looking to get educated here. Assume that no replies means that there is nothing free anybody has found worth bothering with.
Best to all,
John