Favorite Freeware FX Thread

[bitflipper]

It's a  logical detour in any discussion of freeware. You can't talk about freeware without acknowledging the reason commercial developers offer it in the first place: to encourage interest in their paid products.

Granted, there are some great freebies out there that were created by dedicated hobbyists and altruistically shared (e.g.Thomas Mundt's Loudmax limiter). But you have to sift through a lot of klunkers to find them, which is why this kind of knowledge crowd-sourcing remains such a longstanding staple of recording forums. And you cannot confidently pronounce a freebie as useful without comparing it to its commercial alternatives. 

The basic premise of the whole thread, as stated by Starship Krupa, is the belief that "a person can put together an excellent system entirely with freeware". He can make such a proclamation only because he has extensive experience with both free and non-free software. So yeh, talking about commercial software in a freeware context is legit.

[treesha]

I just challenged myself to dig into some of the free stuff i have gotten thanks to this forum and used some I hadn’t explored in my song Pieces posted over in the song forum. The things can be free but do take an investment of time and effort so i wanted to see if its worth it to explore free stuff and i think it is. So thanks to the forum posters and info they share! 

[bitflipper]

treesha's lovely jam is indeed a testament to the precept that free instruments can be creative catalysts.

Reminded me that I recently dug out an old freebie that I'd never used, the Janggu. It's a traditional Korean bongo-like instrument, part of a collection offered by the Seoul National University. I threw it in as an experiment, just because I wanted some non-standard percussion on a song. It surprisingly changed the direction of the composition. I had originally discovered that instrument thanks to a thread similar to this one on the old forum.

[Smokey Toobs Sr]

Here’s a nice freebie VST I ran across the other day.. “Fresh Air”... It does require an I-Lok cloud authorization to use it, but, so do quite a few of my paid plugin’s, so no problem..

https://slatedigital.com/fresh-air/

 

[musign]

This plugin, La Voz Cantante, is a free 64bit VST3 vocoder. I have used on one or two tracks, and it sounds okay. It supports routing a stereo carrier signal into it but also includes a stock midi driven synth. The latest version is 6.4 (released May 2021 if the file's date modified is accurate).

https://vicanek.de/audioprocessing/lavozcantante.htm

[dubdisciple]

On 6/29/2021 at 7:08 AM, bitflipper said:

It's a  logical detour in any discussion of freeware. You can't talk about freeware without acknowledging the reason commercial developers offer it in the first place: to encourage interest in their paid products.

Granted, there are some great freebies out there that were created by dedicated hobbyists and altruistically shared (e.g.Thomas Mundt's Loudmax limiter). But you have to sift through a lot of klunkers to find them, which is why this kind of knowledge crowd-sourcing remains such a longstanding staple of recording forums. And you cannot confidently pronounce a freebie as useful without comparing it to its commercial alternatives. 

The basic premise of the whole thread, as stated by Starship Krupa, is the belief that "a person can put together an excellent system entirely with freeware". He can make such a proclamation only because he has extensive experience with both free and non-free software. So yeh, talking about commercial software in a freeware context is legit.

All of this.  One of the primary reasons people seek freeware is to save money on a desired commercially available sound. It is a tricky maze to navigate, full of potential and tradeoffs.  I occasionally find gems that rival commercial software (Surge, which was once commercial is a good example) that are not gateways to paid products but it is truly like hitting the lottery.

[bitflipper]

Good to see you back, dubdisciple.

[abacab]

13 hours ago, dubdisciple said:

All of this.  One of the primary reasons people seek freeware is to save money on a desired commercially available sound. It is a tricky maze to navigate, full of potential and tradeoffs.  I occasionally find gems that rival commercial software (Surge, which was once commercial is a good example) that are not gateways to paid products but it is truly like hitting the lottery.

Have you checked out Odin 2 yet? It's a freeware (open source, all platform) gem! https://www.thewavewarden.com/odin2

I would say that it rivals commercial synths. Great sound, and lots of fun too! Semi-modular, with 3 Oscillator slots, 3 filter slots, and 3 LFOs. And more...

Quote

The sound of this 24-voice polyphonic beast will take you from your studio right to Valhalla. Earth shattering basses, exquisite leads or mad FX, Odin's got them all! Use the classic sound of analog waveforms - or draw your own. High quality emulations of legendary analog filters like the Moog-ladder or the Korg-35 further shape your signal. Round your sound off with four onboard FX, or get crazy with modulation. There's much to discover in Odin 2.

 

[abacab]

Oops! Just realized that my last post was here in the Freeware FX Thread... was replying about a freeware synth to a post here from 'dubdisciple' about another freeware synth, and forget where I was. LOL! ?

Apologies for the off-topic post! If a mod wants to move it, that's cool!

[bitflipper]

It's a free synth; ergo, 99% on-topic. No need to move it unless you have a better place in mind. If you do, drop me a PM.

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

It's a free synth; ergo, 99% on-topic. No need to move it unless you have a better place in mind. If you do, drop me a PM.

The Freeware Instrument Thread was probably where @abacab had in mind, but whatever. It'll get seen by people who are interested in such things, which is what's most important.

[Starship Krupa]

KVR are having their Developer Challenge, which they do every few years. It's a competition among audio software developers where anyone who wants to can submit audio software (most are plug-ins, but there's also soundware and apps) to be judged by KVR members. The rules are that it has to be newly-developed and that it must be released as freeware.

So far, there's one big standout for me, FKFX Influx. It's a rhythmic processor that includes distortion, filtering, stereo image manipulation and other effects. I ran through some presets when I first got it and was very impressed. Tonight I clicked on the images where the parameter curves are drawn and found it to be similar to Stutter Edit's spline curves. You drag nodes around. I voted it 5, my top choice.

People into drum loop mangling, such as @abacab and me, of course, will like this. The design and programming skills on display are definitely at pro level. The process of getting the extra presets is a little beggy, you have to go to their Facebook page and they hawk their Patreon account in a couple of places, but once you're set, the plug-in itself is excellent (at what it does).

[abacab]

13 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

So far, there's one big standout for me, FKFX Influx. It's a rhythmic processor that includes distortion, filtering, stereo image manipulation and other effects. I ran through some presets when I first got it and was very impressed. Tonight I clicked on the images where the parameter curves are drawn and found it to be similar to Stutter Edit's spline curves. You drag nodes around. I voted it 5, my top choice.

This looks cool! But so far v1.0.0 seems broken here, as I cannot get it to do anything other than inserts, and spin knobs, etc. But as far as FX... NADA. It seems forever stuck in some sort of bypass mode, but it does indicate some input activity on the top bar. Not just with CbB either, as I tried a few alternatives.

KVR mentions a Minor update to v1.0.1, but there is no link for it.

[Starship Krupa]

Working fine over here, but I downloaded v.1.0.1 anyway.

[Starship Krupa]

Here's an excellent one thanks to @Xel Ohh.

Cymatics Origin, which is a multifunction lo-fi effect. You may be thinking, as I did, "I have a boatload of lo-fi FX already," but this one nailed effects I wanted to get instantly.

I was working on an ambient EDM track with a dialog sample pulled from Amazon Prime Video (Star Trek Deep Space 9), using MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab to record the Windows sound output. Great way to sample dialog, but it comes out in pristine clarity, doesn't sound right when dropped into an ambient track. The contrast between ambient ear candy and lo-fi dialog samples is part of what makes the sound. I had already tried the "telephone" preset in the ProChannel EQ, and that helped, but it didn't get the sound I was looking for (the sound of holding a cheap cassette recorder mic up to a transistor radio speaker like I used to do when I was a little kid 50 years ago).

I dropped Origin onto the vocal sample track, just using the default preset, turned the main knob down a couple of notches and bullseye, I had the lo-fi dialog sound down.

Matter of fact, I liked it so much I tried it on my drum machine track and it sounded great there, too.

It has several different modes, including multiple tape emulations like microcassette and vinyl, complete with background hiss and crackle if you want to include that. All these parameters are adjustable. I can already tell I'm going to have fun automating the main knob.

If you want to nail the "underwater" sound, it's in there, automate the main knob and it will get that sound where your whole mix sounds like it's submerged and then comes up to the surface. Pretty much all of the lo-fi effects on Daft Punk's Discovery can be had with this thing.

As always, 64 bit and tested to work with Cakewalk (by XEL and me, at least). While you're at Cymatics' site, they have a couple other useful freebies.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Starship Krupa

[KSband]

On 7/6/2021 at 8:31 PM, Smokey Toobs Sr said:

Here’s a nice freebie VST I ran across the other day.. “Fresh Air”... It does require an I-Lok cloud authorization to use it, but, so do quite a few of my paid plugin’s, so no problem..

https://slatedigital.com/fresh-air/

 

Thanks for that, I like this one, it can be subtle but adds a little sparkle to things.

[Brian Walton]

On 7/6/2021 at 11:31 PM, Smokey Toobs Sr said:

Here’s a nice freebie VST I ran across the other day.. “Fresh Air”... It does require an I-Lok cloud authorization to use it, but, so do quite a few of my paid plugin’s, so no problem..

https://slatedigital.com/fresh-air/

 

This one is great, but the problem is that they only allow 1 single "non-cloud" ilock authorization.  Extremely frustrating for those of us with 2 or more computers to have do deal with such limitations...free or paid.

Kinda treats the customers a bit like trash by doing this...

[Magic Russ]

I was playing around with "The poor man's Absynth" the other day.  It still has some interesting tricks up its sleeve

http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/indexDesktop3.html

 

[Starship Krupa]

On 9/9/2021 at 2:43 PM, Brian Walton said:

frustrating for those of us with 2 or more computers to have do deal with such limitations...free or paid

I first picked this up back in November, and the only issue I had with the Cloud Activation is that every time I switched back and forth between my tower and my laptop, I had to do a dance of closing the session on the other computer if I wanted to use the plug-in.

I now have a physical iLok2 and managed to get a second license, so I put that on the dongle and let the other one float. I keep  the dongle on the tower computer and it no longer complains on the notebook.

If Slate only allow one per customer, maybe a housemate or partner or whoever can get a license and give you theirs.

The big pain is that it can't install to the computer's PACE system, which makes things weird on the laptop, to which I am loathe to attach dongles. Maybe the freebie is also a test of how customers respond to the cloud licensing?

Anyway, I'm willing to jump through a few extra hoops, because the thing does what it does better than anything else I've tried. That it has a midrange control along with the "air" is really handy.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Starship Krupa

[Brian Walton]

12 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I first picked this up back in November, and the only issue I had with the Cloud Activation is that every time I switched back and forth between my tower and my laptop, I had to do a dance of closing the session on the other computer if I wanted to use the plug-in.

I now have a physical iLok2 and managed to get a second license, so I put that on the dongle and let the other one float. I keep  the dongle on the tower computer and it no longer complains on the notebook.

If Slate only allow one per customer, maybe a housemate or partner or whoever can get a license and give you theirs.

The big pain is that it can't install to the computer's PACE system, which makes things weird on the laptop, to which I am loathe to attach dongles. Maybe the freebie is also a test of how customers respond to the cloud licensing?

Anyway, I'm willing to jump through a few extra hoops, because the thing does what it does better than anything else I've tried. That it has a midrange control along with the "air" is really handy.

I have a single physical dongle also with something like ~40 things activated on it on the main tower.

But the laptop then gets the local authorizations.  The problem is I'm not aware that you can have two ilok accounts on the same machine.  Thus the laptop gets ~39 authroizations (all the other non-slate) plugins.