With all the sales and temptation to spend spend spend at the moment, I thought I would share my 5 favourite free plugins.
These guys make it on to pretty much every production I'm involved in at the moment.
1.
Voxengo SPAN. The best spectrum analyser I've owned, free or not. Great when mixing for pinpointing problem frequencies, great in mastering to compare your overall curve to reference mixes and checking your volumes.
2.
Softube Saturation Knob. It's just a big knob that adds some distortion. But that distortion is so sweet! Seriously...stick it on anything and slowly turn that biiiiig knob...
3.
TDR Proximity. One of the most novel plugins Ive ever seen...the idea is to change the position of the mic *after* recording
. It is quite subtle, but really does work wonders on boxy vocals, muddy acoustics...Plus by messing around with the modulation and width settings you can get some cool ADT effects. This thing is just incredible.
4.
DigitalFishPhones SpitFish. A nice de-esser. Comes in a pack with a limiter and compress, both of which are also pretty darn good. Way better than the standard cubase compressor and gives Waves' de-esser a run for its money
5.
Tunefish4. A very cool synth....can make some great atmospheric pad sounds with it. TBH, there are a great many very good free synths out there...I almost put 'Dexed'. This wins by being just a bit easier to get your head round.
Special mentions:
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TDR Nova. A Dynamic EQ. Ive not had it for very long yet, but it is already looking like it will become a staple. It has 4 bands and then it has this parallel band which contains all the frequencies *not* in the 4 regular bands. Nuts.
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Izotope Neutrino. A little sprinkle of magic on every track....
What gems have you guys unearthed?