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Hi all.<br>
<br>
Just been looking through Sound On Sound for November 2010, and one
of the questions sent in by a SOS reader was:<br>
"What are the best freeware plug-ins?"<br>
<br>
As there has been some discussion on-list lately about what plug-ins
people like to use, I thought I'd pass along the information that
SOS came up with on this topic (a subscription fee is needed to view
the content on the SOS website otherwise). Also making this article
particularly relevant is the mention of the plug-ins that come with
Reaper by default, as well as mentions of some of the Kjaerhus Audio
Classic series plug-ins that were included in an archive of some
useful freeware plug-ins posted to this list earlier this week.<br>
<br>
Q What are the best freeware plug-ins?<br>
Published in SOS November 2010<br>
There are loads of freeware plug-ins floating around out there now,
so I find I’m getting swamped by choices. One site I checked out
listed 670 of them! I’d rather not slow down my sessions looking for
the perfect delay when just sticking with a good one and working
with it would be much more productive. I’ve checked out a few of the
ones mentioned in Mix Rescue and have been quite impressed, so I was
wondering whether you could give me some further suggestions for a
couple for each basic category of plug-in. In particular, I’d be
interested in any ‘go to’ freeware choices. I’m on a PC, so VST
would be best.<br>
Eoghan Brady via email<br>
<br>
Some good freeware and donationware VST equalisers: Cockos ReaEQ,
Bootsy Nasty CS, Antress Modern Black Dragon, and DDMF LP10.<br>
<br>
SOS contributor Mike Senior replies: First of all, you could do
worse than just download the ReaPlugs VST suite, which is a big
chunk of the Reaper plug-in complement and includes everything
you’re after, in one form or another. I’ve done whole mixes with
just Reaper’s plug-ins, so I can vouch for their effectiveness.
Other particularly worthwhile sets I’ve found are those from Antress
Modern (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://antress.er-webs.com">http://antress.er-webs.com</a>), Bootsy
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com">http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com</a>), GVST (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.gvst.co.uk">www.gvst.co.uk</a>), MDA
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mda.smartelectronix.com">http://mda.smartelectronix.com</a>) and Voxengo (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.voxengo.com">www.voxengo.com</a>),
which cover a lot of bases between them.<br>
But on to some specific things I like, all of which have proved
their worth in the heat of Mix Rescue! For general-purpose EQ’ing, I
do like Reaper’s ReaEQ a lot, but for extra colour, try Bootsy’s
Nasty series and the Antress Modern emulations. DDMF (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.ddmf.eu">www.ddmf.eu</a>)
have a great donationware linear-phase EQ called LP10, too. For
synth-style filtering, I usually just tend to automate ReaEQ, but
Camel Audio’s Camel Crusher (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.camelaudio.com">www.camelaudio.com</a>) and Ohm Force’s
Frohmage (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.ohmforce.com">www.ohmforce.com</a>) have more obvious attitude, if required.
As far as dynamics are concerned, ReaComp and ReaXcomp in the
ReaPlugs set are, again, good all-round workhorses, but things like
Georg Yohng’s W1 (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.yohng.com">www.yohng.com</a>), Buzzroom’s BuzMaxi 3
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.x-buz.com">www.x-buz.com</a>), Bootsy’s Density, Jeroen Breebaart’s PC2
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.jeroenbreebaart.com">www.jeroenbreebaart.com</a>) and the Antress Modern vintage emulations
all get regular use on my projects. ReaGate and ReaFIR are a solid
bet for most expansion and noise-reduction tasks, so I’ve never
really bothered looking elsewhere.<br>
My freeware fallback for chorus, phaser, and flanger effects is
Kjaerhus Audio’s Classic series, and although I could no longer find
a web presence for them at the time of writing, it’s still possible
to find the plug-ins hosted on other sites via Google. MDA’s Leslie
and The Interruptor’s Wow & Flutter (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.interruptor.ch">www.interruptor.ch</a>) are
cool for general modulation grunginess and I use those a lot. For
tremolo/chopper effects, try Tweakbench’s Cairo (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.tweakbench.com">www.tweakbench.com</a>)
or Oli Larkin’s Autopan and LFO Chopper (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.olilarkin.co.uk">www.olilarkin.co.uk</a>). When
it comes to distortion/saturation, there’s lots of good stuff and I
admit to being a bit of a collector in this respect. Some of my
favourites are Bootsy’s Ferric, GVST’s GClip and GRecti, Jeroen
Breebaart’s Ferox, MDA’s Combo and Bandisto, Mokafix Noamp
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.mokafix.com">www.mokafix.com</a>), Silverspike’s Rubytube (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.silverspike.com">www.silverspike.com</a>), and
Voxengo’s Tubeamp: so much dirt, so little time! For more outrageous
grainy and grungy effects, DBlue’s Glitch (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://illformed.org">http://illformed.org</a>) is
a good bet, as are Jack Dark’s outrageous Darkware series
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.gersic.com/plugins/hosted/darkware/darkware.html">www.gersic.com/plugins/hosted/darkware/darkware.html</a>) and
Tweakbench’s Pudding and Sideslip.<br>
The Interruptor’s delay plug-ins are good, as are GSi’s WatKat
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.genuinesoundware.com">www.genuinesoundware.com</a>), Tweakbench’s Maelcum and GVST’s
GDuckDelay. That said, I tend to use ReaDelay for basic delay
requirements most of the time. Smart Ambience is a great functional
reverb demo, but Christian Knufinke’s SIR
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.knufinke.de/sir/sir1.html">www.knufinke.de/sir/sir1.html</a>) with impulses from Echo Chamber
(<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.memi.com/echochamber/responses/index.html">www.memi.com/echochamber/responses/index.html</a>) takes the cake for
me in the freeware reverb department. For stereo image adjustment
and M/S processing, my clear favourites are Voxengo’s MSED and
Flux’s Stereo Tool (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.fluxhome.com">www.fluxhome.com</a>). The latter has one of the
best stereo vectorscope displays I’ve encountered anywhere. Speaking
of displays, Roger Nichols’ Inspector (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.rndigital.com">www.rndigital.com</a>) was my
metering and spectrum-analysis plug-in of choice for a long time,
although Voxengo’s SPAN is also good. I tend to use Schwa’s payware
Schope instead for most things these days, however. And speaking of
Schwa (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.stillwellaudio.com">www.stillwellaudio.com</a>), they have a great freeware bitscope
plug-in called Bitter that can be handy for digital troubleshooting.
The TT Dynamic Range Meter is great if you’re interested in the
mastering ‘loudness wars’; you can get it free on request via the
Brainworx site (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.brainworx-music.de">www.brainworx-music.de</a>).<br>
Finally, here’s a couple of odds and ends. Although I’ve yet to come
across a decent, simple, freeware pitch-shifter, if you’re after
freeware pitch correction, look no further than GVST’s GSnap, which
is pretty effective and has seen use in a number of Mix Rescues
before now. If you’re a fan of Aphex-style psychoacoustic
enhancement, also be sure to fire up Stillwell Audio’s exciter, one
of the plug-ins available within the ReaPlugs ReaJS host, which does
the same kind of thing. <br>
836679<br>
<br>
Published in SOS November 2010<br>
<br>
T<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<p>James Scholes</p>
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