Free Fridays — Freeware Plugin Picks! Mastering EQ, Virtual Amp, “Pedals”, More

Audio and music lovers of all kinds, gather around for the fifth installment of Free Fridays! This week’s edition brings us a digital recorder and sonic enhancers to get our tracks Crunck in the club. Get you some!

J1000 VST Plugin – “ALPHA” Parametric Mastering EQ

Today’s first freeware plugin is a mastering EQ that offers a variety of options to ensure your mix sounds the best it can through the use of Mid/Side processing. As J1000 puts it:

You betta take advantage of ALPHA's full capabilities when mastering!

“ALPHA is parametric equalizer made for advanced mastering tasks. It is concieved to be the only EQ you’ll need to achieve the desired spectral balance. Since mid/side channel processing is the best way to handle the most of contemporary music, the whole concept is based around it. It doesn’t skew stereo symmetry and often you’ll be able to tweak vocals, kickdrum, snare or bass (mid channel) and to create more spacial stereo image by boosting desirable frequencies on side channel. Also, it offers spectrum shifting with three predefined filters for bass, midrange and treble.”

Igor Nembrini – Crunck Free Virtual Guitar Amp

Next on the list is a Windows only VST plugin. Crunck is a virtual guitar amp that has similar controls you would find on any other type of amp and the fact that it is based off of a JCM 800 amp makes it worth a try. Windows users get all the good stuff! According to Igor:

“Crunck is a virtual guitar amplifier, is inspired of my Marshall JCM800 mod  2210.

This software is freely available.

For the moment is available only for Windows VST format.

– GAIN – Determines the amount of gain applied by the Pre Amp.

– BASS, MID, TREBLE – Tone Stack controls.

– PRESENCE – Small amount of boost at frequencies above the treble control.

– VOLUME – Output level.

• Multi-stage distortion
• Two stages of output EQ tone stack
• 8 x oversampling
• Should run in most 32-bit DAW hosts as well (support for v2.4 VSTs required)”

ToneBytes – “Pedals” Effects Plugin

The company that brought us the Turnado effects plugin now supplies our gear lust with an emulation of guitar fx foot pedals for free as celebration of their two year anniversary. Users can create a combination of effects for instrument and vocals alike. Pedals is available for Windows and Windows only. ToneBytes sez:

Stop settling. Put your foot down and use Pedals on your next instrument.

“Pedals — is a VST effect plug-in for Windows, designed for processing electric guitar and bass. It is also possible to process other audio sources for a variety of artistic techniques.

For more convenience, Pedals’ GUI simulates real devices for sound processing: guitar pedals, amplifiers, speakers, etc. There are a total of 19 models of pedals, 2 amps, 7 speakers models and 3 rack units. These devices are not a copy of the real-life models, each with their own sound, but their working principles are identical.”

Tek’it Audio – RECsoprano Plugin Instrument

Remember back in grade school when you first tested your skills as a musician on a ‘recorder’? Well now you can relive your glory days with a virtual version of it from Tek’it Audio

RECsoprano is a free soprano recorder plugin instrument, adding envelope control, a selection of tunning, polyphonic voices and a polyphonic portamento to recorder samples from Mihai Sorohan.

• Samples played and recorded by Mihai Sorohan
• Recorded at 32 bit, 44.1KHz samplerate
• Realtime fingerings visualisation
• 3 tunning: Modern, Renaissance and Baroque
• Polyphonic portamento
• Monophonic and 8 voices polyphonic mode
• Full MIDI automation support
• Easy MIDI learn on all parameters
• Preset manager, rename, copy, save, load…
• Undo your changes to initial preset value
• One click preset randomize

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