The maxim ‘you get what you pay for’ holds true for most pro audio products, but I’ve recently been pleasantly surprised at the quality of some free VST plugins. Most useful are the free utility plugins used as loss-leaders, but there are also some really talented bedroom programmers out there.
I’ve tried out quite a few over the last few months, and these are my favourites.
Analysis tools
Some people find needle meters somehow easier to understand than the bar meters most DAWs use these days (myself included). If that’s you, PSP Vintagemeter could be the answer for you. Useable in either PPM or VU mode, it’s a nifty way of getting needles into a digital environment.
BlueCat FreqAnalyst is a fully customisable spectrum analyser that even lets you zoom in on a particular frequency range for more detailed inspection.
Voxengo’s SPAN is a great all-in-one analysis tool that gives you metering of almost any kind you could want – from standard VU and PPM to different K weighted scales, average values (RMS and crest factors) as well as a very useable spectrum analyser. The only problem is it does seem to colour the sound a little bit when switched on…
Utility plugins
BlueCat’s Gain Suite contains a number of very simple plugins that literally do what you’d expect – adjust gain. This is actually more useful than you might first think, particularly for optimising gain structures when running outboard gear as external plugins from your DAW.
Anyone interested in mid/side processing would do well to download Voxengo’s MSED. Although it’s not too difficult to manually set up a mid/side chain if you know how, this is a great time saver.
The Audiocation Phase AP1 is great for sorting out phase relationships in your mix.
Character
Voxengo’s Tube Amp is great for adding crunch to a signal, particularly when run hot and in parallel. It’s actually surprisingly tube like as well.
The excellent Bootsy over at Variety of Sound has put together three brilliant saturation plugins: the Ferric TDS tape simulator and the Tessla SE and Tessla PRO transformer saturators. The Tessla PRO is particularly interesting as its transient aware.
What free VST plugins can you recommend? Leave your answers in the comments.
