What's the best free plug in you use with Sonar?

 
Bootsy's plugs aren't too fowl, pity he used SE to create them (high cpu hit) apart from that pretty damn good for free. Density is FAAAT!
 
www.rekkerd.org/bootsy-plug-ins/
 
 
Rombo ain't bad either
 
www.kvraudio.com/get/3556.html
 
Cheers.

Crystal.  It is completely free/no limitations
 
http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/download.html
 
What's Crystal?
... "Crystal is a semi-modular software synthesizer featuring both subtractive synthesis and frequency modulation (FM) synthesis. It offers abundant modulation control with over 90 parameters which may be modulated, multi-stage envelopes with graphical editors, extensive tempo sync of envelopes/lforates/delay times, built-in effects for chorus/flanging/comb filtering/echoes, and a band splitter for effects processing by frequency band. Not only that, Crystal has wave sequencing, granular synthesis, program morphing, MIDI learn, and imports soundfonts. The musical applications for Crystal are literally boundless".
 

Man, that's a (fun) loaded question.  I use mostly freeware plugins, and I've found a lot of stuff I think is great.

Probably my most frequently used one is Christian Buddes Electri-Q (posihfopit edition).  It's a multiband parametric EQ with a boatload of good and powerful features.  It's released as the free version to the full Electri-Q, by his company Aixcoustics.  I'm not crazy about the color scheme, but fortunately its skinnable and there are a lot of good alternative looks to be found with some searching.  A lot of his other stuff is really good/useful/interesting as well.  Some of it has been made available as part of another good suite of FX from BetaBugs Audio.

The Classic Series from Kjaerhus Audio are sort of the old stand-by's for your general FX needs.  For the most part they have the features you'd expect each effect to have and nothing else, but they consume very little CPU and sound very good.

The other old stalwart of commercial audio companies providing lots of useful free plugins is probably Voxengo.  Some of those are a little more esoteric than what you might expect, but it does include SPAN, which is one of the better spectral analysis tools out there for free.

Probably the grandaddy of the purely freeware dev groups is smartelectronix, some of whom have had plugins out for almost 10 years that still rival what's being put there today (in my opinion).

Also be sure to check out digitalfishphones, who have some of the better known dynamics plugins for free.

The last developer that I really like for an entire suite of plugins is GVST, who amongst other things offers the only completely free pitch correction plugin I'm aware of (and it works pretty well too).

One newer dev that I'm liking lately is AcmeBarGig, who seem to specialize in amp sims for metal, but have other less conventional ideas as well (like a guitar pickup emulator).

Anyway, to get more in-depth, here's some of my "go-to" plugins:

Analysis: Voxengo SPAN, smartelectronix s(M)exoscope (by Bram), GVST GTune
Ampsim: FrettedSynth FreeAmp 2.5/FreeAmp 3, Simulanalog Amps with GUIs added*
Chorus: GVST GChorus, Kjaerhus Classic Chorus, ag works CH-1*
Compressor: digitalfishphones Blockfish, GVST GComp/GComp2, TbT Saturated Driver, SSL LMC-1
Delay: Kjaerhus Classic Delay, Blue Noise Mountain Echo
Distortion: smartelectronix Cyanide 2.0 (by Bram),
EQ: Aixcoustics Electri-Q (posihfopit edition), KarmaFX Equalizer
Filter: Jeroen Breebaart Ferox, digitalfishphones Spitfish, ReaPlugs ReaFIR
Flanger: smartelectronix MDSPFlanger (by MDSP)*, Kjaerhus Classic Flanger, Nomad Free Sweeper
Gate: GVST GGate, digitalfishphones Floorfish
Phaser: Kjaerhus Classic Phaser, smartelectronix SupaPhaser (by Bram), Nomad Free Phaser
Reverb: smarteelctronix Ambience (by Magnus), Knufinke SIR 1.0, PSP Pianoverb, SinusWeb FreeVerbToo
Tremolo: Nomad Free Tremolo, BoJo Tremolo

NOTE: an asterisk (*) indicates potential bugs, your mileage may vary.

Also, I've found  Tom Gersic's Free Plugin Database  to be one of the more helpful resources on the Internet for finding new and old free plugins to use.

Sonik Synth II
 
The free sounds are useful, romper room intuitive interface.....
 
But you'll have to buy the full version if you want the complete library of sounds.
 
 
Kjaerhus for basic fx plugs, quite useful and very easy on cpu.

MinimogueVA and Rez v2.0

z1812


I particularly like the Mini-Erhu and Mini-Dizi.

Agreed, These and the other Kong audio stuff is very good if you need Chinese sounds.

Bionic / Analogic delay and Endorphin turn up somewhere in most of my projects.

Most of the other ones that I have (and there's a few ;-)) are mostly character distortions and filters that get used as the need arises to make something a bit more interesting. I'm looking forward to playing with the acmebargig stuff, thanks Moseph!

Child

+1 on DigitalFishPhones - the "air frequency" and "air level"  controls on BlockFish rock!

Moseph
Also be sure to check out digitalfishphones, who have some of the better known dynamics plugins for free.

A1, as you happily download gobs of free plugins, bear in mind that a great many - perhaps a majority - free VSTs are of poor quality, unstable or horribly inefficient. 99% of all SONAR crashes I have experienced over the years have been caused by free plugins. I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm, just be forewarned.

Here are a few quality freebies:
Kjaerhus Classic Chorus
Jaroen Breebaart Smash Pro (not free, but extremely cheap)
Luxonix SFX-1310
Voxengo SPAN (a must-have)
SIR Convolution Reverb (only if you don't have Perfect Space)

Add to the cost of free plugs the time you will need to spend to learn how and when to use them. So many plugins, so little time.

A simple one but very useful is FreeG. It's 'only' a gain control but can be inserted between plug-ins and can be automated. Think of it as giving you  two stages of level automation - great if you don't want to use offset mode on all tracks.

I use it on the master bus in almost all projects when tracking to drop the level of the song relative to the singers own voice in the cans. (set it up for -15dB say, then enable for tracking, disable for playback)

Sonalksis FreeG

Another vote for Voxengo SPAN - used on at least 50% of projects.

But *please* - use the included plugs especially the sonitus ones! They really are good quality. Getting to know how and when to use them will give you much more control than flitting from one freebie to another.

Good hunting - and don't forget to remove the ones you don't use when you've tried them. It's so easy to accumulate a litter of VSTs.

Cliff

Thanks guys! Keep them coming.
 
Yeah, I know that alot of the "free" stuff may not be of the highest quality, but then again, just because you "pay" for something doesn't guarantee it works fine either. I know there are tons of free ones out there, I was just curious what some of you are using, I'm sure that helps weed out most of the garbage.
 
Looking forward to trying lots of these.

bitflipper


A1, as you happily download gobs of free plugins, bear in mind that a great many - perhaps a majority - free VSTs are of poor quality, unstable or horribly inefficient. 99% of all SONAR crashes I have experienced over the years have been caused by free plugins. I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm, just be forewarned.

Here are a few quality freebies:
Kjaerhus Classic Chorus
Jaroen Breebaart Smash Pro (not free, but extremely cheap)
Luxonix SFX-1310
Voxengo SPAN (a must-have)
SIR Convolution Reverb (only if you don't have Perfect Space)

+1.  Bitflipper's comments sum it up. There's only a handful of freeware plugins that can be used with confidence. The Classic Chorus and Voxengo Boogex are two. Many sound great but when it comes to a complex mix they are either too inefficient or unstable.
 
Cheers,
Max. 

Sandford PhaserCM
http://www.lesliesanford.com/SanfordPhaserCM.shtml

So many different parameters, allowing a large variety of phasing effects.

I"m surprised not to have heard anyone recommend Antress Modern Plugins - They are now at version 4.75 and most if not all have been ported to 64 bit.

A collection of hardware emulations from a variety of compressors, pre-amps etc etc.
http://antress.er-webs.com/