In the jungle of free VST plugins, there are many gold nuggets to be found, if you know where to look. Some of the free plugins out there hold such a class that they could easily go for several hundred bucks. And there are a lot.
Firstly, we would like to give a big thanks to all the VST plugin creators out there, who are willing to give out their amazing work for free. If you see a donation button anywhere on their websites, buy’em a cup of coffee, will you? Given how advanced and thought-out some of these plugins are, they probably live on the stuff.
So, let’s dive in. Here are our Top 10 Free VST Plugins of 2019. These definitely sets the standard of how good and thought-out a free VST can be. Our collection features some newer and some older. But with all great classics, they hold the test of time.
Let’s dive in!
Versilian Upright No. Recorded at the Berklee College of Music, and packaged into a lightweight.
Modeled after Yamaha DX7, one of the best selling synths in history, this top 1 free FM-style VST synth is ready to get you cooking. Included are over a thousand classic DX7 presets, with sounds ranging from classic electronic pianos to powerful stabs and strings. You’ll probably recognize many of the sounds from your favorite 80’s tracks as this, again, was modeled after the go-to synth of that era.
Really, it started as a tool to be used with the original synth. However, this is such a good replica that stands on its’ own. With so many different knobs and options for customizability, this is a synth that you can tweak forever.
Easy, powerful and stable are three things that summarise this freeware goodie. Go get it.
Here we have another great emulation of a classic analog synth. This time, of the Minimoog. The Minimoog’s success was huge when it came out in the '70s. For starters, it was the first synthesizer created for the average consumer and the sound was just incredibly rich and powerful.
Used in tracks such as Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”, Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”, and Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, it’s easy to see why this synth sound is loved by so many.
So, MinimogueVA. It’s an emulation but includes additional features not found in the original. To name a few, you now have a fully programmable digital delay, you can control the tuning of oscillator 1 (and fine tune oscillators 2 and 3) and have 3 overdrive sliders for each oscillator to make your sound even thicker.
This free synth sounds and behaves pretty much exactly like the original and is a must-have for every electronic producer. Deep, rich and yummy, and in our opinion best used for lead sounds and basses. Just beware that it might need some taming because of its’ power – the sounds take up a lot of space in the mix.
This powerful virtual analog synth has pretty much everything you’ll need as an electronic music producer. How about two oscillators (saw, pulse, triangle, and sine) with hardsync and PW/FM. One sub oscillator (saw and rectangle), one noise oscillator, wide-range LFO’s (0.1Hz up to 400 Hz) and a super user-friendly interface?
Users report a very analog sound from this synth, more than many of its’ competing virtual synths that comes with a price tag. So this free option will definitely satisfy you who wants to create rougher, analog, old school sounds.
The only thing really missing, in my opinion, is extra effects and an arpeggiator. But you can always use separate plugins for that, DAW-included or purchased.
All in all, a great, easy and powerful synth for electronic music production. Working artist software.
You know that crackly sound from old vinyl? Or the electrical hum in speakers, when an audio cable is not fully plugged in? Well, it’s funny. Turns out those audio distortions are in again.
Commonly heard in triphop and retro synthwave-style music, some cracks, and noises can really bring a track to life. We don’t know what it is, but there’s just something about the warm crackle of vinyl. Is it nostalgia? A sense of analog? Making digital sounds more “human”?
I don’t know. But for those of you who want to achieve this to your mix, look no further than iZotope Vinyl. Rather than layering different vinyl scratch samples, this plugin is fully customizable and does the job extremely well.
Apply it to certain instruments or your whole mix, and choose the amount of the following parameters:
The last option, warp depth sets the amount of spin down applied from the 'Spin-Down' button below. That effect mimics what would happen to the sound of vinyl if you slowed it down manually until it stops. You know what I mean. But damn that’s cool.
You also have options for what decades you want to emulate, ranging from the 1930s up to 2000. There’s also an option for the number of RPM’s (of the “vinyl”).
Overall, a really cool plugin that can make the most digital sounds a bit more analog.
Looking for a great free alternative to the expensive tape saturators out there? Well, look no further. FerricTDS is it. Inspired to simulate the dynamics and warmth of high-end reel-to-reel tape recorders, this wonderful plugin does this in three steps.
Firstly, it controls the dynamics by gently shaping the overall dynamic response of the sound. Then it adds extra harmonics with its’ great sounding saturation and finally, the signal peak is controlled by its built-in limiter.
These three knobs are of course yours to play with as you wish, for a subtle or strong tape effect.
So, this plugin does a lot of wonderful things to your sound. Simply put, you can say that it warms up, controls and shapes. Like a compressor, saturation, limiting and a tape recorder emulator all in one neat package.
The plugin also won the KVR Developer Challenge of 2009. It’s ten years ago but its’ quality still holds with time.
Introducing the TAL-REVERB III, the top of the free plate reverbs. This little gem will wow you with its’ beautiful non-BS interface and brilliant sound.
To break it down, the plugin has 7 dials. The low- and high cut dials make for easy reverb mixing. The room size dial controls the duration of the reverb. A stereo width dial for easy stereo control (mono to full stereo) and a pre-delay dial which goes up to one second. The last two are simply dry and wet dials. Easy peasy.
With 10 factory presets to choose from it’s also good to go from the start.
The sound of the TAL is fantastic, and their goal of creating a colorless, maximal diffused plate reverb without digital artifacts is really heard. It’s smooth, shimmering and nice.
For a free reverb plugin, this is good stuff. Check it out.
Synth1 is another great synth that was made as a replica of the popular Nord Lead 2. The two actually sound quite similar, but being that the Nord Lead 2 is about $15,000, it’s not a great surprise that it beats a free plugin in sound quality. Pdf software for mac. Apple apps for windows.
But the Synth1 is totally free. It’s pretty cool that you can get at least half the quality of an expensive, top hardware synth just an easy, free download away.
So, what do we have in the Synth1?
For starters, we have 2 oscillators (sine, triangle, saw, and square) with FM and ring modulation, sync and a modulation envelope. 4 types of filters, 2 LFO’s and an arpeggiator. Included are also various effects, a tempo delay, and stereo chorus/flanger. You’ve got legato and portamento mode plus 16 notes polyphony. Not too shabby.
It’s optimized for extremely light CPU usage and is a fantastic starting point for any new producer who wants the learn the basics in sound synthesis. And the sound in this synth is great.
All in all, a great freeware synth that I think everyone should try at least once. It does have a few sound glitch bugs when changing the knobs sometimes. But generally, it's pretty stable and does the job. Very well.
BootEQ is another freebie who’s definitely up there competing with the big boys (top of the line, expensive plugins). It’s an SSL-style equalizer and pre-amp simulator, which “provides some nice and musical signal coloration effects” according to the product description.
The plugin is simple and easy to use with its’ four parametric and independent EQ bands and several classic sounding curves. You also have a drive-knob for saturation and two switches for vintage color and tube on or off. With a simple design, clear text and meter display, you can’t go wrong.
It colors the sound beautifully warm, but subtle and not over the top. To add some more life to dull life, or to fatten up sounds, this could easily be your go-to.
The ValhallaFreqEcho is many things, along with being a staple plugin you must have in your library. It's both frequency shifter and analog-style echo, which in combination makes for a very psychedelic, trippy delay effect that feels like it's going in and out of your head.
Frequency shifting the delay output makes for some very interesting results. Used subtly, it passes as your everyday light chorus/flanger or doubler but used in excess, you've created something entirely new and out of this world.
If you’re looking for an experimental effect to spice up your psychedelic production, or simply want something to get your creative juices flowing, get this. Right now.
The 4 voice polyphonic VB-1 is a plugin you either love or hate. It’s not the best sounding bass emulations out there, but it's not trying to be either. Its' strength comes from its' incredible ease of use. You basically have 4 knobs (release, shape, damper, and volume), a picture of a bass guitar and a pick you can drag left and right for different sounds.
On its' own, the VB-1 doesn't sound fantastic. But I've found great use for it in creating basses for trance music. It produces a nice, basic bass signal that is brought to life with the help of some extra plugins. Throw in some EQ, saturation and bass boost and it's suddenly kicking.
Definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re into creating rolling trance basses.
Studio voice recording software free download. Thanks for reading!
| About the author Pelle Sundin is a Swedish music producer and freelance copywriter, currently active with his chillout project PLMTRZ. He also produces psychedelic trance. When he's not producing music, he surfs, skates and chugs coffee. |
Winonx 1 6 – run windows applications on os x. Check out our in-depth music production courses, for example:
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Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface that integrates software synthesizers and effects units into digital audio workstations. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware in software. Thousands of plugins exist, both commercial and freeware, and many audio applications support VST under license from its creator, Steinberg.
VST plugins generally run within a digital audio workstation (DAW), to provide additional functionality, though a few standalone plugin hosts exist which support VST. Most VST plugins are either instruments (VSTi) or effects (VSTfx), although other categories exist—for example spectrum analyzers and various meters. VST plugins usually provide a custom graphical user interface that displays controls similar to physical switches and knobs on audio hardware. Some (often older) plugins rely on the host application for their user interface.
VST instruments include software simulation emulations of well-known hardware synthesizers and samplers. These typically emulate the look of the original equipment as well as its sonic characteristics. This lets musicians and recording engineers use virtual versions of devices that otherwise might be difficult and expensive to obtain.
VST instruments receive notes as digital information via MIDI, and output digital audio. Effect plugins receive digital audio and process it through to their outputs. (Some effect plugins also accept MIDI input—for example, MIDI sync to modulate the effect in sync with the tempo). MIDI messages can control both instrument and effect plugin parameters. Most host applications can route the audio output from one VST to the audio input of another VST (chaining). For example, the output of a VST synthesizer can be sent through a VST reverb effect.
Steinberg released the VST interface specification and SDK in 1996. They released it at the same time as Steinberg Cubase 3.02, which included the first VST format plugins: Espacial (a reverb), Choirus (a chorus effect), Stereo Echo, and Auto-Panner.[2] Translator 1 2 1 full.
Steinberg updated the VST interface specification to version 2.0 in 1999. One addition was the ability for plugins to receive MIDI data. This supported the introduction of Virtual Studio Technology Instrument (VSTi) format plugins. VST Instruments can act as standalone software synthesizers, samplers, or drum machines.[3]
Neon[4] was the first available VST Instrument (included with Cubase VST 3.7). It was a 16-voice, 2-oscillator virtual analog synthesizer.[3]
In 2006, the VST interface specification was updated to version 2.4. Changes included the ability to process audio with 64-bit precision.[5] A free-software replacement was developed for LMMS that would be used later by other free-software projects.[6][7]
VST 3.0 came out in 2008. Changes included:[8]
VST 3.5 came out in February 2011. Changes included note expression, which provides extensive articulation information in individual note events in a polyphonic arrangement. According to Steinberg, this supports performance flexibility and a more natural playing feel.[9]
In October 2011, Celemony Software and PreSonus released Audio Random Access (ARA), an extension for audio plug-in interfaces, such as VST, allowing greater integration between audio plug-ins and DAW software.[10]
In September, 2013, Steinberg discontinued maintenance of the VST 2 SDK. In December, Steinberg stopped distributing the SDK.[11] The higher versions are continued.
VST 3.6.7 came out in March, 2017. It includes a preview version of VST3 for Linux platform, the VST3 part of the SDK gets a dual license: 'Proprietary Steinberg VST3' or the 'Open-source GPLv3'.
As VSTi virtual instrument technology was under development at Steinberg, a platform for virtual instruments using DirectX engine technology was being developed by Cakewalk, famous for its Sonar DAW. However, the format did not gain much acceptance beyond instruments bundled with SONAR. Currently, almost all virtual instruments on the market use Steinberg's VSTi format.[citation needed]
There are three types of VST plugins:
A VST host is a software application or hardware device that VST plugins run under. The host application presents the plugin UIs and routes digital audio and MIDI to and from the plugins.
Many VST hosts are available. Not all of these support VST 3 plugins.
Stand-alone dedicated hosts provide a host environment for VST plugins rather than use the plugins to extend their own capabilities. These are usually optimized for live performance use, with features like fast song configuration switching.
VST plugins can be hosted in incompatible environments using a translation layer, or shim. For example, FL Studio only supports its own internal plugin architecture, but an available native 'wrapper' loads VST plugins, among others. FXpansion offers a VST-to-RTAS (Real Time AudioSuite) wrapper that lets VST plugins run in Pro Tools, and a VST-to-Audio Units wrapper lets VST plugins run in Logic Pro.
Hardware VST hosts can load special versions of VST plugins. These units are portable and usable without a computer, though some of them require a computer for editing. Other hardware options include PCI/PCIe cards designed for audio processing, which take over audio processing from the computer's CPU and free up RAM.
Some hardware hosts accept VSTs and VSTis, and either run Windows-compatible music applications like Cubase, Live, Pro Tools, Logic etc., or run their own DAW. Other are VST Hosts only and require a separate DAW application. Origin from Arturia is a hardware DSP system that houses several VST software synthesizers in one machine, like Jupiter 50/80 from Roland. Using appropriate software, audio data can also be sent over a network, so the main host runs on one computer, and VST plugins on peripheral machines.
The VST plugin standard is the audio plugin standard created by Steinberg to allow any third-party developers to create VST plugins for use within VST host applications. VST requires separate installations for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The majority of VST plugins are available for Windows only due to Apple's competing proprietary Audio Unit technology being used on OS X (Audio Units is a core part of the OS X operating system). The short history of commercial environments for Linux means few developers have targeted this platform.
VST plugins often have many controls, and therefore need a method of managing presets (sets of control settings).
Steinberg Cubase VST introduced two file formats for storing presets: an FXP file stores a single preset, while an FXB file stores a whole bank of presets. These formats have since been adopted by many other VST hosts, although Cubase itself switched to a new system of preset management with Cubase 4.0.
Many VST plugins have their own method of loading and saving presets, which do not necessarily use the standard FXP/FXB formats.
Steinberg's VST SDK is a set of C++ classes based around an underlying C API. The SDK can be downloaded from their website.
There are several ports available, such as a Delphi version by Frederic Vanmol,[13] a Java version from the jVSTwRapper project at Sourceforge,[14] and two .NET versions – Noise[15] and VST.NET;[16] this open source project also includes a framework that makes creating VST plugins easier and result in more structured code. VST.NET also provides support for writing managed host applications with a managed class that allows loading an unmanaged Plugin. A notable language supporting VST is FAUST, considering that it is especially made for making signal processing plugins, often producing code faster than hand-written C++.
In addition, Steinberg has developed the VST GUI, which is another set of C++ classes, which can be used to build a graphical interface. There are classes for buttons, sliders and displays, etc. Note that these are low-level C++ classes and the look and feel still have to be created by the plugin manufacturer. VST GUI is part of the VST SDK and is also available as a SourceForge project.[17]
Many commercial and open-source VSTs are written using the Juce C++ framework instead of direct calls to the VST SDK because this allows multi-format (VST, Audio Units and Real Time AudioSuite) binaries to be built from a single codebase.
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