Free Fridays – Fave Freeware Plug-Ins
Ah, Friday – the best day of the week for many. How could we possibly make it any better? Let us show you: FREE FRIDAYS. From this day forth, we will be posting great collections of free plugins we find around the world wide web. New or Old? Who cares, they’re free! How often? Keep checking back on Friday and see for yourself!
Without further adieu, feast:
Fresh from Distorque is a pedal distortion emulation plug-in – Plustortion:
Main Menu
These two are the original Distortion+ controls.
Output – Controls the output level.
Distortion – Controls the distortion and some of the filtering.
Tweak Menu
These are controls I’ve added to emulate other factors in the sound of a physical pedal. The default settings emulate a normal Distortion+.
Input level – This is a volume control on the input of the effect. You can adjust this to compensate for different pickups, different input levels, etc.
Oversampling – This turns 2x oversampling on and off
Input Type – ‘Pickup’ adds a resonant low-pass filter on the input to emulate the interaction between the 1nF cap on the input and a guitar pickup. ‘Buffered’ removes this filter.
Op Amp Clipping – This controls the amount of distortion caused by the emulated op amp. See the how it works page (coming soon) for more details on how clipping works in the Distortion+.
Diode Clipping – This controls the hardness of the distortion caused by the emulated diodes. Because of the way the hardness is controlled, the output gets louder as this control is turned up. See the how it works page (coming soon) for more details on how clipping works in the Distortion+ and on the diode source code.
High Cut – This reduces high frequencies on the output. Many distortions use controls like this to reduce harshness.
Low Cut – This reduces low frequencies on the input. Many distortion use controls like this to reduce muddiness and increase clarity.
Note: The default setting for the High Cut and Low Cut controls is at minimum.
TAL – Togu Audio Line: TAL-Filter 2
TAL-Filter-2 is a host synced filter module with different filter types, panorama and volume modulation possibilities. The device includes all 4x oversampled TAL-NoiseMaker filters: LP 24 dB, LP 18dB, LP 12dB, LP 6dB, HP 12 dB, BP 12dB, N 12 dB. Its possible to saturate / distort the input signal by raising the input volume with the input control (only if you use a filter as modulation type).
Its also possible to modulate the panorama or volume of an incoming signal. This can be used for tremolo or trance gate effects. Panorama modulation maybe is useful to pan your percussion, hats or sound effects in the stereo room for more interesting rythms and sounds.
• Create host / beat synced modulations.
• Easy to use graphical editor (double click deletes points, a click adds one).
• 4x oversampled TAL-NoiseMaker filters.
• Different filter types: LP 24 dB, LP 18dB, LP 12dB, LP 6dB, HP 12 dB, BP 12dB, N 12 dB.
• Its possible to saturate / distort the input signal by raising the input volume (only for filters).
• Panorama modulation.
• Volume modulation.
• Different modulation tempo (x1, x2, .. x32).
• Depth control as a simple way to control the modulation intensity.
• Free as always.
TAL home: http://kunz.corrupt.ch/home
Here is an odd freeware program from Soundhack. CornBucket:
“CornBucket is a Csound score generator that creates “clouds” of sonic grains — short snippets of sound that often blur together and are perceived as a single sound. CornBucket allows you to draw functions of time for several different parameters that guide the evolution of a granular cloud. The functions you draw can be one or more cycles of a simple waveform (sine, triangle, etc.), multiplicative combinations of several simple waveforms, or can be hand drawn. Once you are satisfied with your functions, just hit “Go” and CornBucket calculates all of the parameters for each grain and writes a text score to disk.”
Les Productions Zvon and Jason Morin – FREE Baby Piano VSTi
This free VSTi from Les Productions Zvon is Windows ONLY in 32 and 64 bit versions
“Jason Morin contacted me and sent me a beta version of this VSTi he made with the Maize Sampler and he offered me to distribute it. After some tweaks, we are happy to release the version 1. And it’s free!
He used the natural samples of my Baby Piano free sample set. This means that the Baby Piano VST corresponds to the “Real white keys” program of the free set, the real acoustic Baby Piano mapped from G3 to F5 only on white keys. The pitch heard does not match the key pressed except for G3 and it has velocity layers.?”
The magic of mid-side monitoring in bx_solo.
Bringin’ back 2008! From Brainworx:
“Free! — bx_solo is a nice little tool that we have designed to get you started with and used to the way we approach the M/S technique – be it for recording-, mixing- or mastering purposes. The “heart” of our M/S tools are our unique SOLO BUTTONS that allow you to actually LISTEN to all components of a stereo mix / stereo signal individually.”