Free Virtual Instruments & Effects Plug-ins
It’s no mystery that the global economy isn’t in the best shape these days. It seems like every television, radio and print news organization jumps at the chance to throw around the “R” word. While these are economically sluggish times for all right now, this is nothing new for many performance and recording artists whom unfortunately have been in recession for centuries. Fortunately for us computer-based home recording artists, there are developers out there who offer high-quality instrument and effects plug-ins for FREE.
Below is a list of developers and websites that offer or list free VST, RTAS, AU and DXi instrument and effects plug-ins. Since the internet is cluttered with music related freeware, my aim was to focus on the more popular developers and listing sites with full-functioning freeware and not demo versions. Inevitably I may have missed a few favorites, so please leave a comment below or in our FORUM if I’ve left out key products that you feel should be listed.
Let’s get to it then shall we.
FREE Virtual Instruments and Effects Plug-ins
| Source | Plug-in Format | OS | Native 64-bit | Notes: |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Cat Audio | AU, VST, RTAS, DXi | Win, OS X | Y | High-quality audio effects freeware including: EQ, spectrum analyzer, chorus, gain and more. |
| Voxengo | AU, VST | Win, OS X | Y (Win only) | High-quality audio effects freeware including: EQ, tube amp, spectrum analyzer, reverb, delay, and more. |
| Togu Audio Line | AU, VST | Win, OS X | Y | High-quality instruments and audio effects freeware including: virtual analog synths, EQ, vocoder, lo-fi, and more. |
| iZotope Vinyl | AU, VST, RTAS, DXi | Win, OS X | Y (Win Only) | Lo-Fi filtering and vinyl modeling simulation. |
| Yellow Tools Independence | AU, VST, RTAS, Stand Alone | Win, OS X | Y (Win Only) | Free player version of Independence sampler including over 2GB of high-quality sampled instruments and ability to import 25 of your own audio files. |
| Native Instruments Komplete Players | AU, VST, RTAS, Stand Alone | Win, OS X | Y | Free player versions of the powerful NI Komplete package including: Kontakt Player, Guitar Rig Player, Mikro Prism and Reaktor Player. Over 300 free sounds and effects. |
| Amplitube Free, and SampleTank Free by IK Multimedia | AU, VST, RTAS, Stand Alone | Win, OS X | Y | Amplitube Free is the free version of Amplitube and includes 24 amps and effects. SampleTank Free is a full-featured version of SampleTank and includes over 200 sounds. |
| Alchemy Player, and Camel Crusher by Camel Audio | AU, VST, RTAS | Win, OS X | Y | Alchemy Player includes 300 sounds from Alchemy CA's additive, spectral, granular, sampling and VA synthesizer. CamelCrusher is a coloring mulit-effect compressor, distortion, filter effect plug-in. |
| Glitch | VST | Win | N | A pattern-based effects sequencer that takes the incoming audio, breaks it down into user-defined slices, and then applies different effects to each slice. |
| Crystal Synthesizer | AU, VST, iPad | Win, OS X | Y | A semi-modular software synthesizer featuring both subtractive synthesis and frequency modulation (FM) synthesis. Crystal XT is an iPad app with same features and allows patch sharing between plug-in and app. |
| Free Plugin List | VST, RTAS, DXi | Win, OS X | N | Comprehensive listing of free instrument and effects plug-ins from various developers. Mostly VST plug-ins, with a couple of RTAS and DXi plug-ins. |
| KVR Audio | AU, VST, RTAS, DXi | Win, OS X | Y | Comprehensive listing of almost 2,000 free instrument and effects plug-ins from various developers. |
| VST 4 FREE | VST | Win | N/A | Comprehensive listing of free instrument and effects plug-ins from various developers. Categorized by drums, instruments, samplers, synths, vintage and FX. |
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