The Most Useful Free Plugins for Your DAW

There’s nothing wrong with seeking out a better deal. And what is deal is better than free?

There are countless free plug-ins out there, but since DAWs come with more than enough of their own basic plugins to create great-sounding tracks, why bother searching them out?

One reason is to get a specialized plug-in not included in your DAW. Or maybe you’re just keeping it simple and using a free or “lite” version of a DAW that came bundled with a hardware purchase, like Cubase LE or Ableton Live 10 Lite. These lite versions can be improved upon using plug-ins available for free.

There are even full-featured DAWs available for free; Cakewalk by Bandlab is a great example. (This is the Windows-only program formally known as Sonar.) It’s super powerful with no limitations and is continually being updated and improved upon. Combine a full-featured free DAW like this with a collection of quality free plug-ins and you’ve put together a high-end recording and mixing software platform at no expense!

Of course not every free offering is worth the effort, so I’ll save you some trouble by writing about the ones I have currently installed. Ones that are seeing at least occasional use on my system. This article will cover audio plug-ins only, but note that there is a world of free soft-synth instrument plug-ins out there also!

If you want a Big List of Free Plugins, we’ve got that too. But this smaller curated list focuses on some of the most useful tools that you’re unlikely to find in your DAW. I’ll list the following developers in no particular order:

Blue Cat Audio

Blue Cat Audio offers a whole free bundle of plugins.

Blue Cat Audio offers “Blue Cat’s Freeware Plug-ins Pack II”.

There are seven products in the bundle: chorus, flanger, guitar amp simulator, frequency analyzer, gain, phaser, and EQ.

The amp sim is nice, and the website tells us it is “Inspired by legendary guitar amplifiers from the real world”.

You can kind of tell which legendary amplifiers are being emulated from the look of their respective GUIs (and the sound of course). The free version doesn’t include any reverb or stomp pedals like you get with paid versions, but it’s a solid go-to guitar amp simulator.

I discovered the Blue Cat bundle while on the hunt for a spectrum analysis plug-in, which is probably my favorite entry here, but all seven effects are useful.

The plug-ins are available for Mac and PC, in VST, RTAS, AAX, and Audio Unit plug-in formats, for both 32- and 64-bit architectures. Nothing is expected from you to use them; no registration, no giving your email, no newsletter subscription. Just download and use!

Variety of Sound (VOS)

The plug-ins on my system by Variety of Sound (VOS) include NastyDLA and ThrillseekerXTC.

Nasty DLA is a tape-delay that does chorus and echo effects. It is filled with features to “color” your signal like saturation and tape hiss. It has high- and low-pass filters, and can sync to tempo.

Variety of Sound’s NastyDLA

This plug-in is 32-bit Windows VST format, but it can be run on a 64-bit system using bridging software. And some DAWs do natively recognize 32-bit plug-ins and display them right along with the standard 64-bit ones.

Also on my system by VOS is ThrillseekerXTC. This effect falls into the “Exciter” category and is “all about adding weight, vibe, and attitude back to the sound”. It’s good for dull-sounding individual tracks or to sparkle up a master bus.

Those are the two Variety of Sound offerings that see use on my system right now, but VOS has many other choices. See the complete collection here.

iZotope

iZotope’s Vinyl plug-in has been on my system forever. The latest incarnation can be downloaded here. It’s available in AAX (64–bit), AU, RTAS (32–bit), VST, and VST3 formats. You have to create an account to download Vinyl, but iZotope is a respected company and I wouldn’t hesitate.

So what is Vinyl? In iZotope’s words, “Vinyl simulates the dust, scratches, warp, and mechanical noise reminiscent of yesteryear”. I recently used it on a Lo-Fi project. It provides more control than simply mixing in a record scratch loop. You can choose a recording year (1930-2000) and RPM Speed (33, 45, 78) to emulate. Along with that, there are individual faders to mix in any amount of mechanical noise, wear, electrical noise, dust, scratch, and warp depth!

While you’re there getting Vinyl, you’ll find three other iZotope freebies: Ozone Imager, Visual Mixer, and Vocal Doubler. Check them out here.

Plugin Alliance

Plugin Alliance offers a bundle of 6 free plugins with every new free account.

Plugin Alliance gives away six free plugins with every new signup for a free account, and each is minimalist version of some of the tools you’ll find in their roster.

SPL’s transient tool and graphic EQ are especially useful, but so are the Brainworx entires like the Cleansweep, bx_solo and thebx_subfilter for reshaping lows. It even comes with a custom virtual amp head.

Klanghelm

Klangheim has three free plug-ins on offer, and two of them are installed on my system: DC1A 3 and MJUC JR.

DC1A 3 is billed as “a compressor that just works”. It has only two knobs: input and output. Four switches toggle different features. “Deep” activates a high pass filter, “Relaxed” allows for peak or RMS compression, “Duel Mono” lets you compress left and right channels independently, and “Negative” enables a negative compression ratio.

Klanghelm’s DC1A 3. 

The other Klanghelm free compressor I’ve installed is MJUC JR. This is an emulation of a “variable-mu” vintage vacuum tube type compressor. This style is good for a master bus as it provides smooth and warm leveling with a bit of saturation and harmonics.

Speaking of saturation, also by Klanghelm is IVGI, a distortion & saturation plug-in. All the free Klanghelm plug-ins have “big brother” full-featured versions, should you outgrow the freeware.

Klanghelm plug-ins support Windows and Mac platforms, and both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.

Tokyo Dawn Records (TDR)

TDR has three freebies: a dynamic EQ, a compressor, and a mixing/mastering EQ. I’ve installed the two EQs.

Tokyo Dawn Record’s Nova.

The mixing/mastering EQ is TDR VOS SlickEQ, which has a lot of features for a free offering. There’s an output stage with various saturation models, auto gain, oversampling, and four different EQ models (American, British, German, and Soviet).

The dynamic EQ is called Nova. A relatively new type of EQ plug-in, changes made in a dynamic EQ affect the chosen frequencies only when a threshold is reached, as if your EQ was mixed in with a multi-band compressor. So rather than continuously processing a signal, your EQ changes only take affect at a certain threshold. This is good for taming frequencies that are jumping out only occasionally.

Nova has many features, including both dynamic and parametric equalization, frequency-selective compression/expansion, multi-band compression, and wide-band compression. Available as VST, AU, and AAX plug-ins, this is one to download the manual for!

These two EQs, plus other TDR plug-ins are available here.

Native Instruments (NI)

NI’s Supercharger is also a tube compressor emulation. It’s for Windows (VST, AAX 64-bit only) and Mac OS X (VST, AU, AAX 64-bit only). It’s free when you download “Komplete Start”. Komplete Start is a collection of instruments, effects, loops, and samples and also is free. Download it here.

Supercharger boasts a simple one-knob interface and the ability to warm and color your signal.

Full Bucket Music
1208 Audio Plug-ins

1208 Audio’s Reviber.

Next up is Reviber by 1208 Audio, a two-knob exciter/enhancer that does Mid/Side processing and will “Revibe damn near anything”.

The free and donation versions are the same, with the donation being just $4.99. It’s available in Windows 64-bit VST2 and VST3 formats. Also free by 1208 Audio are five different EQs, available here on their website.

Full Bucket Phaser is a stereo simulation of a classic analog phaser; it supports Windows and macOS (32-bit and 64-bit). Check out this simple, solid, go-to choice for all your phasing needs here.

Auburn Sounds

Auburn Sounds offers three current freebies (plus a few legacy products), out of which I’ve installed the reverb, Panagement 2.

But this is much more than a reverb. I use this plug-in for its “Binaural Distance Panner” feature.
This lets you position a track anywhere in the sound field, including forward and backward (distance modeling). Panagement is a useful plug-in and I see myself upgrading and purchasing the full version.

Auburn Sound’s Panagement 2.

Julijan Nikolic

By coincidence I’m ending with a plug-in that would most likely be the final link in a plug-in chain, the Youlean Loudness Meter 2.

Using a loudness meter in conjunction with reference tracks can help greatly in getting your mix to a comparable level than that of a commercial release.

Basically, it gives you real-time information on the “LUFS”, or Loudness Units Relative to Full Scale. It also gives information on true peaks and dynamic range, and contains presets with recommendations for LUFS and true peak levels for many TV, film, gaming, and online streaming standards. This plug-in is very deep and full-featured for a free offering, and another one to read the manual or view tutorials on to get a full understanding!

Julijan Nikolic’s Youlean Loudness Meter 2. 

These are the free plug-ins that I’ve found useful, filling holes around software that I’ve purchased from major companies.

We owe a big thanks to companies providing the fruits of their hard work to us at no charge. At times it can be difficult to generate income from music and recording to put back into your setup, so getting a high quality tool for free is certainly helpful to making better recordings!

Michael Nickolas is a music creator, musician and author working in Massachusetts. Recent TV placements include the Lifetime Network’s movie “Deadly Hack”, Netflix’s “You” and NBC’s “The Voice”.

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