aidan o driscoll

From another thread started recently by @craigb in the coffee house I thought it an idea to add a list post here of DECENT FREE usable Vst instruments and efx. Myself and the keyboard player compiled this for other band members so we could all have the same plugins where possible when swapping projects. THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST BY ANY MEANS, others here may have more links to share but this is the one used by our band members and they generally seem happy So here goes our list - ALL FREE last time I checked: INSTRUMENTS: ARTURIA stuff is really good. They specialise in all the retro synths like the DX7 etc. They have an all encompassing plugin called ANALOG LAB with sample presets of all the near 40 retro synths they sell. This is the recently released FREE version of Analog Lab. The other thing they also do is sell retro preset packs with the original sounds from lots of 70s/80s bands like Depeche, Marouder, Floyd, Vangelis, Jarre. These preset packs are on sale for $5 each and should work in the free analog lab https://www.arturia.com/products/software-instruments/analoglab/free https://www.arturia.com/sounds Native instruments ( mix of Instruments and effects ) They have FREE KOMPLETE START which has all sorts of free instruments + then there is FREE KONTAKT 7 ( included in free Komplete Start ) which is a sampler with instruments also. ( The latter, I have the paid Komplete and Kontakt full ). Also has the FREE Guitar Rig Player https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bundles/komplete-start/ Cherry Audio: https://store.cherryaudio.com/bundles/synthesizer-expander-module-synthesizer https://store.cherryaudio.com/bundles/surrealistic-mg-1-plus-synthesizer This is a decent FREE drums plugin ( Real Kit ). So its if you want a real drum sound rather than electric drum machine type sound. We have used this. https://stevenslatedrums.com/ssd5/#SSD5FREE DX7 Free - https://www.kvraudio.com/product/dexed-by-digital-suburban Retro Synths: PG-8x 2.0 - https://sites.google.com/site/mlvst0/ OB-XD 3.4 - https://www.discodsp.com/obxd/ TAL-U-No-62 ( Juno 60 clone ) - https://tal-software.com/products/tal-u-no-62 TYRELL N6 - https://u-he.com/products/tyrelln6/ Mono Analog Synth - https://blamsoft.com/vst/vk-1-viking-synthesizer/ EFFECTS: Convology XT - Its an IR Reverb Free plug - https://impulserecord.com/cvxt-download/ to register - Latest ver once registered - https://impulserecord.com/cvxt-library-downloads/ Slate Fresh Air - dynamic high frequency processor - https://slatedigital.com/fresh-air/ ECHO - https://valhalladsp.com/shop/delay/valhalla-freq-echo/ Delay - https://valhalladsp.com/shop/reverb/valhalla-supermassive/ Vicious Compressor - https://xferrecords.com/freeware Equalizer - https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-vos-slickeq/ EQ / Soothish - Parametric EQ - https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-nova/ Vintage Tube Pre-amp https://fuseaudiolabs.com/#/pages/product?id=301060823 SO - if you are adding to this list, I would much appreciate you NOT just adding freebie links for the sake of it, but to add free plugins that you would stand over out of past OR present usage

@craigb Me being a fellow guitarist with a similar setup to what you want to achieve, for the I/F I would look no further than the AUDIENT EVO 4 for us guitarists. Nice small ROBUST compact I/F. On the front left it has a full jack GUITAR DI, on the right it has headphones. On top it has a large knob and a few multi function buttons + 48v phantom power. On the back it has TWO XLRs / Full Jack inputs + 2 full jack outputs. Then the USB I/F cable connector. All powered off the USB. At this stage the ASIO driver is pretty rock solid and is regularly updated. https://evo.audio/products/audio-interfaces/evo-4/overview/ I would say you are looking at round the $100/€ mark .. I have had mine now for 3 years or more and yes it has been dropped numerous times, still works great. I use it with my 10 yr old Dell core i5 Inspiron laptop and swap that back and forth with my Lenovo core i5 desktop box. With the laptop it fits fine in my latptop bag, so well portable .. On top it has a nice unique feature - the smart gain botton. This auto sets your input gains by auditioning whats being input first giving you enough headroom in the recorded track. Software wise I obviously use CW ( the free ver ). I also have been beta testing CW NEXT and really love its simplicity. It is that ver of CW I would buy if ever sold seperately. I also have Ableton latest which I kept updating for less than the ton every few years. I use REAPER purely as a cross platform DAW because some people in the band have MACs & Reaper is cheap at $60 for the other members. Other than that I bought FL studio years and years ago and as its lifetime upgrades it keeps on giving for free. About REASON, yip, depending on the version ( I think 11 or 12, maybe 10 ), it did come with a plugin where you could open it inside another DAW, works great. I have that also, its the intro version which came with Reason Rack plugin to use inside other DAWs. Plugins - there are a huge amount of decent free plugins inc Guitar related plugins. Look at NATIVE INSTRUMENTS - they have a FREE set of plugins inc Guitar Rig Player. https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bundles/komplete-start/ For Retro / Modular synths look at Arturia, they have FREE version of there Analog retro synths. https://www.arturia.com/products/software-instruments/analoglab/free The list is endless re decent FREE Instruments and EFX. I will look through what I have and post decent freebies here. A while back the keyboard player and myself compiled a list of FREE vst instruments and efx for other band members so we would all sing from same hymn sheet with the cross platform thing. Can post that here when I find it

If you just want the Cryptic Soundscapes by Arturia soundpack then still order this. You get 2 seperate Serial nums and unlock codes for the 2 items. However it seems the login for arturia is not workingv at the moment. Click the link, nothing happens

Use an AI vocalist via a plugin

Still a good deal at $49.99 though .. In my case I have Studio One v3 pro which to upgrade is €149. So I would get Artist 6 for $49.99 or about €46. I looked through the comparison and for what I use Artist seems to have all thats needed for most. That with the addition of enough external vsts OR is this only an upgrade from ARTIST, any version? Then forget what I said Still holding out for Cakewalk NEXT though and that be at a cheap perpetual price. Really like it having spent a good bit of time with it during beta ( still have it at latest, hasnt bombed out yet )

So i began to wonder .. if its this easy to churn out new "original" tracks on likes of Suno .. It would probably take about 30, 40 mins to churn out a set of about 12 "original" tracks. Next step - I wonder has anyone done this already, did up backing trax for them and go out and gig them as an original set? Suno also has the option to create instrumental trax .. could be used as backing trax

Here is another SUNO AI track. this time i just clicked CREATE.. random, it also generated the lyrics .. so 3 mins later, here you go, no input from me what so ever: Rainy Day Love.mp3 Instant hit, who needs years of experience and cakewalk and guitar etc

BTW Guys, I am a fully signed on traditional write your own music/songs, record all instruments, learn how to play instruments, learn to use DAWS, plugins, Play live with band, invest time in all that. Been at it ( cakewalk ) since early 90s . And from that would hope to be able to "properly" write songs, perform them etc. However I imagine this would be seen to be old school now and just too much like hard work. We live in a time where instant gratification is required and short attention span reins. This from the whole get rich quick idea .. instant youtube star, influencer etc. No one wants to learn something anymore ( eg an instrument, music theory, a DAW etc ) .. its now all about the quickest route with minimum of effort and time. Here, we most likely would all come from years of learning instruments, DAWs, Plugins, honing our craft etc - it seems this is not the thing for newer generations of people and so AI insta generated "original tracks" is the ideal solution - no need to learn anything, let AI do it for you, feel proud of "Your" new track. NEXT auto make the video for TikTok in Suno and upload. Instant fame, loads of hits on TikTok, go viral. All this literally done in half an hour. Why slave for months over a DAW, why slave for years learning an instrument We may look at all that and go I would prefer the "old way" .. but to a newer generation - not interested, dont care. So then onto the record companies - I see them fully embracing likes of SUNO AI to churn out tracks and fill the charts with same for a new generation of listeners who really dont care where the track came from or how it was written. Its the new version of Stock Aiken and waterman - formula music. For record company bean counters its a dream & cheaper. For record companies themselves its total control, no need to hire muso's like us. BTW - I read somewhere that a thing now is the 2 min songs starting with the hook line / chorus. This blends with the short attention span I mentioned above Take those 3 Suno AI tracks I posted on previous page. For a record company all they need is to churn out a load of this INHOUSE and then assign these tracks to be sung by a stable of there famous artists as new "original tracks" dumped into the charts. So AI generates the tracks inc the lyrics with an AI vocal. This then is given to one of there famous artists to cover so to speak and record/replace the AI vocals with artist vocal, thats the version that goes into the charts. It would not surprise me if one of the big record companies at some point buys out SUNO or equivalent. In fact they are probably developing there own inhouse versions at the moment. Anyway - yes I AM CYNICAL about all this. I see people here saying they want to see how they might incorporate AI into there music making. It might start as an ideas thing as input to a cakewalk project but as time goes on and as likes of Suno improves even more and the charts are all AI produced material I think it will not be a case of how to incorporate AI into your music making .. it will be AI assimulating your process At the moment SUNO does not offer a way to break up an AI produced track into stems. This of course would be a way to get it into Cakewalk in separate tracks to then maybe further improve a track, use different vocals etc I will continue using my instruments, sounds, Cakewalk ( loving the new simplicity that is NEXT ) and write my own stuff, add to likes of bandcamp etc. Where I may dip into AI like Suno is as an ideas machine. Possibly regenerate these ideas and refine in Cakewalk after. I use SCALER plugin already for this kind of thing. As a person who doesnt have a great voice and needs a vocalist - thats where AI might help. As it does also with generated lyrics MORE AI - i mentioned Suno does not make stems of your tracks there. Elsewhere there is an AI tool for that however. https://fadr.com

Who needs credible live performances? Most just want the hook in a 2 min piece on TikTok. For live performance I could see AI generated 3D stage shows of AI Singer Stars .. look at that ABBA show in London, its exactly that. Check out NVIDIAs take on this and the massive investment they are making in AI Desktop systems coming to a store near you

SO here are 3 versions of a Song "I didnt make" with any effort or using years of my muso experience required using SUNO and CHATGPT. ChatGPT was used to auto generate the lyric around a topic open road, then fed into SUNO telling it the style of music I wanted this new track in open road v2.mp3 Gonna hit the road v3.mp3 Gonna hit the road v4.mp3 All this took me about 10 minutes with relatively fck all input musically or otherwise. Dont judge these on your own likes or dislikes .. just take the point that these were generated without any effort or talent required .. no DAW required or expertise in same. Of course I could have spent a longer time polishing these tracks up, to a point where they would fit in playlists and the short attention span generation couldnt care less as long as it is singable along too, fits in a 2 min TiK Tok vid. Mmm I might try that with these SO you can imagine record company bean counters LOVING THIS. Total control at a fraction of the cost of hiring real musicians and writers. Was listening here in Ireland to a podcast about work already being lost in music biz due to AI - In this case it was a pro singer who up to a year ago or so was making ( for years ) decent cash from voice overs, advert music etc .. she said all that biz NOW gone in a very short while Also heard on same show the AI evangelist saying likes of SUNO and AI music by numbers is great for democratization of music. Means ANYONE that was here to fore locked out of the music making process up to now, can now produce there own songs without the need to learn to play an instrument or get involved with DAWs and the like or get involved in music theory etc. Doing all the latter is a waste of time and just too much effort I see musicians groups are demanding that likes of SPOTIFY mark tracks that are AI generated

@telecode 101 All Waves plugins are installed to a folder named "Plug-Ins V14" (or whichever version is installed on your device), which is inside the Waves folder, located on your system hard drive. These files should not be moved. Instead, a WaveShell is placed in your host application's plugins folder. The WaveShell connects your host application to the plugins as a software gateway. https://www.waves.com/support/how-to-use-waves-plugins-when-using-custom-vst-folder And one finds a good few of these files strewn about the place in all VST folders

@Xel Ohh Are you still using this???

Uninstalled WAVES from my system ... as said above by @John Maar "the multiple v9, v10, v11 and v12 shells littering my VSTPlugins folder" + the "Waves shells" .. its all over the place. Though i have lots of waves stuff Im not reinstalling it again .. even for free stuff

Thought I would dredge this one up again. I had come across some old project files for this today. I installed it, didnt last long on my system, uninstalled again. They STILL dont have support for VST3 which is what most of my plugins are now, so no thanks Bet ye forgot this DAW. I played around with it a while back as I have an AKAI MPK Mini 2 Keyboard which ties in well with it. It really does need a bit of work especially on layout and vst3 and the like. But HEY, its still FREE https://www.akaipro.com/mpc-beats Still not sure WHY its there though, whats the point

I suppose its still better value to get the Usynth: New Synths Bundle - $49: https://www.ujam.com/special-offers/ Get TURBO-XT and FLUID now, automatically receive STRANGER upon release (June 26th)

I have FX Collection 2 .. Is it worth upgrading to FX Collection 5? I ask this from this perspective - are the efx you get extra in 5 vs 2 worth the upgrade? Are the EFX you get in 5 that are already in 2 upgraded versions?

What I dont get is it seems they wantv you to subscribe for a whole package including alot of promo tools and all that and then also you get NEXT and SONAR as part of the deal. Why would you need both NEXT and SONAR? and supposing you just want NEXT and not SONAR or visa versa? If Subscribe is the route then there should be different subscriptions and prices for different tiers surely. Again I cannot see a reason why you would need SONAR and NEXT

Yip, I run my own small web/IT biz ... reason biz might favour subs is that they are good for cashflow ..

Another New Article released 2 days ago ( thurs 15th ) on Bandlab technologies about Sonar/Next status. https://bandlabtechnologies.com/news/cakewalk-software-exclusively-available-bandlab-membership/ Cakewalk, a historic and pioneering name in digital audio workstations (DAWs), is excited to announce that Cakewalk Next and Cakewalk Sonar have exited public beta and are available worldwide exclusively through BandLab Membership. BandLab Membership provides a base offering of artist services like music distribution, fan engagement tools and promotional opportunities. Additionally, Members also enjoy early access to exclusive new tools and features from creation to social. Cakewalk Next and Cakewalk Sonar are proud to be the first off-platform additions to this exclusive set of creation capabilities available to the BandLab audience. Through this integration, creators now have access to even more powerful tools tailored to their specific workflow needs, such as third-party VST support, unlimited tracks, and a 64-bit mix engine. This complements the existing capabilities of BandLab Studio, which remains free for all users. This pretty much seals it .. as of now no perpetual?

One would imagine they would also give a better price break than the $99 for us who own FX Collection + V Collection, pigments and other standalone items. I have all these inc many preset packs ( FX Collection 2, V Collection 8 )

@cclarry I am in Ireland .. I have found that PAYPAL / pay monthly in installments feature is not available here? Seems to be US. In Europe seems available only in UK ( maybe because they outside EU )

My upgrade price is $99 coming from V2. Note also you can pay for the upgrade in 2, 3, 4 installments You pay $5 more to do this ( $104 vs $99 ). Not bad .. I have done this with previous Arturia upgrades, works out fine for the cash flow

So I have V1 and the universal update to V2 is €67 INC VAT for mr, bought through my biz so be able to claim back the VAT bringing upgrade price to €55 I think I will, have not seen a price this low for the V1 to V2 upgrade EDIT: Done, Purchased I use it for biz - websites and photography editing

Scaper captures the essence of any audio file, crafting it into a cinematic atmosphere that evolves over time. Equipped with three advanced stretching engines and an automated particle generator, Scaper is capable of creating hours of evolving atmospheres. Simply drop your audio file into the interface and watch it happen. Getting good comments over on facebook vs likes of Paulstretch .. anyone have it? Normally $49 .. SALE $29

So it def looks like no perpetual and its quietly subscription from here via bandlab membership. Same for SONAR .. so $149 per year for both. Im surprised that they at least are not selling off NEXT as a perpetual cheaply - something like $60