Here's our list of the Top 10 Free Effect Plugins that you can use to enhance your productions. These are some of the best free audio processing plugins that you can instantly download and use right away.
1. Saturation Knob
The Saturation Knob by Softube is a modelled output distortion that can be used anywhere you need some grit. Use it to fatten up bass lines, add some harmonics and shimmer to vocals, add crunch to electric guitars or simply destroy your drum loop.
The three modes—Keep High, Neutral and Keep Low—give you three kinds of characters of distortion.
For example: If you want to squash a drum loop but keep the bass drum fairly intact, use the Keep Low mode, while Keep High distorts the low end more, keeping the high frequencies relatively clean.
You can download the Saturation Knob for free and get a taste of warm analog saturation in your mixes.
If love VU meters, Bakelite knobs, and analog quirks, but want modern precision and workflow Softube Extended Features. Easy-access panels with the innovations you need close at hand.
2. Magic Switch
Magic Switch is a lush one-button chorus effect by Baby Audio. It is loosely inspired by the Juno-60 analog chorus effect, but offers its own dark and detuned character.
If you're looking to thicken up elements in your mix or make them sound bigger and wider without drowning them in tons of reverb, Magic Switch may be a great tool to achieve that. It sounds great and it is definitely worth using in your productions.
3. Fresh Air
Fresh Air by Slate Digital, empowers you to add the smoothest high end you’ve ever heard without even a hint of harshness. Fresh Air is a dynamic high frequency processor that breathes new life into your mix with just two knobs.
Based on vintage exciter circuits and advanced dynamics processing, Fresh Air lets you add just the right amount of brilliance & shine to your mix in simple interface you can start using right away.
Put it on individual tracks or your entire mix bus— whatever you choose, the results will blow you away.
4. PanCake
PanCake is a free plugin for the most flexible panning modulations.
You can construct your own modulation curves. They can be easily drawn using soft or hard control points, thus producing gentle transitions or sharp bends in the waveform.
PanCake's LFO can be beat-synced to your DAW, from a fast 1/128 note modulation up to 32 bars. It can also be set free-running from 0.02 Hz to 5.24 kHz, and can be triggered vie MIDI.
A precise display of channel left/right volume provides helpful visual control.
5. TDR Nova
Nova is a parallel dynamic equalizer. Appearing in the familiar layout of a parametric equalizer, each band also includes a full featured dynamics section allowing the processor to cover an impressively wide range of applications.
Be it a master lacking density, the drum bus asking for more crispiness, or a sibilance problem in your perfect take: Nova has an elegant answer. A user friendly drag and drop display paired with a classic “knob” interface gives quick and smooth access to the various parameters driving Nova’s powerful processing capabilities.
With its four dynamic EQ bands and additional high-pass and low-pass filter sections, NOVA can meet the most exotic demand. Intuitive equal loudness functions help finding the optimal setting without getting distracted by loudness differences.
In practice, the processor covers a whole bucket of tasks:
- Parametric equalization
- Dynamic equalization
- Frequency selective compression
- Multi-band compression
- Wideband compression
6. Tal Reverb 4
Tal Reverb provides users a modulated vintage reverb sound. It's easy to use and sounds good on almost every audio material. This reverb supports only stereo channels but that isn't a major setback. It has some really cool presets that can get you off to a good start within a few minutes and the algorithm of this digital reverb sounds pretty neat too. So it's definitely worth checking it out.
7. Voxengo Span
Span (Voxengo Span) is basically a free real-time audio spectrum analyzer.
Span provides you with a very flexible “mode” system which you can use to setup your spectrum analyzer preferences. You may specify Fourier block size in samples, FFT window overlap percentage and the spectrum's visual slope.
Besides that you can choose to display secondary spectrum of a desired type (e.g. real-time maximum, all-time maximum). The spectrum can be smoothed out visually for an easier examination.
Span supports multi-channel analysis, and can be set to display spectrums from two different channels or channel groups at the same time. For example, you could see frequency spectrums of kick and bass at the same time enabling you to take better mix decisions.
Span also features output level metering with adjustable ballistics and integration time, EBU R128, K-system metering (including calibration K-system metering).
Span displays level metering statistics, headroom estimation, and true peak clipping detection. Correlation metering (Used for checking the stereo balance of your mix) is available as well.
8. Bitter Sweet v3
Bitter Sweet is an amazing transient processor used by hundreds of thousands of users for audio transient management with the simple turn of a knob – Turning it to the Sweet side reduces the transients, and turning it to the Bitter side magnifies the transients.
You could use this plugin on almost anything but it especially works extremely well on percussive sounds. This helps to make your music sound more punchy and dynamic. Try it for yourself to see its potential.
9. Valhalla Supermassive
Valhalla Supermassive has been designed for MASSIVE delays and reverbs. Blow your mind and your music to new levels of consciousness and experience. Get ready for luscious clouds of reverb, otherworldly delays, swelling waves of feedback unlike any you’ve ever heard.
All Valhalla plugins are self explanatory in terms of their features and control knobs, so just hover over the controls for the tool tip.
10. MAutoPitch
MAutoPitch by Melda Productions is a simple but great sounding automatic pitch correction plugin designed for vocals and other monophonic instruments.
Besides making the audio more in-tune, MAutoPitch also provides creative features such as formant shift and stereo-expansion. It's definitely worth trying if you're looking a free autotune plugin.
Hope you found the post useful. Check out mysticalankar.com for more info and music production resources like sample packs, presets and templates to take your productions to the next level!