Rough Rider - free compressor plugin

Audio Damage (makers of very nice-looking and nice-sounding plugins) have made their Rough Rider compressor plugin freely available.

Its not an amazingly complicated piece of kit, but it's functional and should sound pretty good.

"Rough Rider is a modern compressor with a bit of "vintage" style bite and a uniquely warm sound. Perfect for adding compression effects to your drum buss, it also sounds great with synth bass, clean guitar, and backing vocals. Definitely not an all-purpose compressor, Rough Rider is at its best when used to add pump to rhythmic tracks. Of course, you can use it however you'd like. The Compressor Police aren't gonna come to your house and give you a citation. Slap it on a track and crank some knobs.

The front panel layout is done the same as many hardware compressors, so it will be immediately obvious how to use it. A brief overview of the controls:

Ratio: The ratio knob is logarithmic in operation. Completely anti-clockwise is 1:1, and completely clockwise is 1:1000. The 12 o'clock position is 1:10, so everything to the left of center is single digits, and everything to the right is "atom bomb squish," essentially.

Attack and Release: We left off the actual time values, so you're gonna have to use your ears, like the he-men did it in times of myth.

Meter: That honking big dial in the middle of the UI is the gain reduction meter. It basically shows how much compression is occurring.

Sensitivity: usually called "threshold" now, but we think "sensitivity" always made more sense. Turn to the right, you get more compression, essentially. Turn it all the way to the right, and you've got a distortion box, the sound of which is tuned by Ratio, Attack, and Release.

Makeup: 30 dB of gain to compensate for the attenuation caused by the compressor.

Active: From the front panel, this is simply an off/on switch, but if you automate it, strange things happen...

MIDI Learn: Like all of our products, the VST version has MIDI Learn. Download any manual from the current product line for an explanation of how this works, as it is common among all our VST products.

Rough Rider is available as a VST effect for Windows, and an AU or VST for OSX. The OSX versions are Universal Binaries, and require OSX
10.4.0 or later.
"

Free ProTools plugins

protools blog has a page of free third party plugins for protools.
You need to register (again, free) in order to access certain pages of this blog - in fact most of the good stuff!

There is a large variety of things avaiable - ranging from metering solutions to delays, filters, synths, etc...

If you're a protools user this is probably quite a valuable resources.

free xfading / gating fx

faderratic is a free fx plugin that produces crossfades with "a mind of their own". It provides parameters for changing the fade shape, length, frequency and probability of the fades.
Its a windows only plugin unfortunately. Something to bear in mind is that it's a multi-channel input effect so if your DAW doesn't support this feature it can only be used as an autogate effect (ie xfading to silence).

Could be worth a little look if you're into your autogate effect.

free plugins

The guy who created SoundHack has just announced that he's made 3 delay based effects freely available.

Soundhack is a brilliant little free app that peforms some truly amazing pitch shifting and time stretching effects on audio files.
I've not had chance to try out his new delay effects but if they're anything like soundhack they should be worth a look.
Be sure to check out his other software at his site.

free reverb plugins

audiotuts has compiled a list of 15 reverb plugins, all of which are totally free!

There is a good mixture of both windows and mac so there should be something for everyone.

Reverb is an effect that you’ll find in any mix, and you can never have enough options when it comes to crafting the right reverberation for the sound. That’s why I’ve scoured the web to come up with this list of completely free plug-ins you can try.

Some will say you can never get the same quality reverb with a free plug-in and others will say it doesn’t really matter, but at the end of the day it comes down to your taste and what sounds good in your mix. So, download a bunch and try them out!

free dub delay effect

vst tal dub II is a free dub-style delay st effect for both windows and mac.

A 4x oversampled distortion stage allows to add vintage distortion to the delayd signal, but its also possible to make clean delays.
A sinus LFO has the possibility to modulate delay time and low pass filter cutoff. Adjustable LFO stereo width is also included.
An analog sounding 6dB low pass filter with resonance and a 3dB high cut filter are also parts of TAL-DUB-II. Different routing options open a wide range of possibilities.

* Synced delay times (1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1/1, 2/1 and trippled and dotted notes).
* 4x oversampled distortion stage.
* VU-Meter shows gain reduction.
* LFO (low pass cutoff and delay modulation, stereo width).
* 6dB resonance low pass filter.
* 3dB high pass filter.
* Midi learn for all pots.
* 20 factory presets.

guitar sound without an amp

audiotuts has a brief tutorial on how to create thick and crunchy sounding guitars without an amplifier.
In essence you simply use some form of amp-modelling software, some double tracking and a bit of reverb.
Fairly basic stuff really, but maybe worth a quick read for ideas.

free audio transients processor

Flux has released a new freeware audio transients processor.
It claims to be most effective on dynamic percussive tracks.
The controls are fairly basic; a big dial in the centre allows you to control the bitter/sweet ratio (how much the transients are reduced or increased in amplitude). You can also choose which part of the steroe field the processor goes to work on.

free vst effects

antress has a bunch of free vst plugin effects.
all the effects are designed to be used as insert effects so no reverbs here.
the effects range from simple vu meters, to compressors, expanders, EQ's, etc...

free synth

kx77free has released a fairly comprehensive VST synth that uses a combination of subtractive and additive synthesis. The features list contains some useful features, like plenty of envelopes and LFO's, 2x filters and the like.

Features:

Full parameters controls to make Additive Waveforms with no aliasing.
Full 32 bit High Quality Waveforms.
Same quality for all clock frequencies: 44.1 khz to 192 khz.
independent WaveTracer engine: KxWaveTracer.exe.
Stereo routing.
All modulations are pre-connected, no cables on the GUI.
3 Polyphonic EGs with for each segment: curves, velocity and Kbd controls.
1 Monophonic EG with for each segment: curves, velocity and Kbd controls.
Multiple trigger sources and sync for the EGs and the LFOs.
2 Oscillators with 2 waveforms and 2 outputs with Phase modulation and Sync.
2 independent Sub Oscillators.
2 Monophonic LFOs with 2 Rates and ASR EG.
2 Mulitmode VCFs.
Mixer with 6 sources: Noise, Vco1 1-2, Vco 2 1-2, Ring, Vco1 Width, Vco2 Width and 3 outputs: VCF1, VCF2, VCA.
Each mixer voice can be modulated by different sources.
Noise Generator with an EQ.
Sample&Hold.
Ring Modulator.
6 host sync clocks.
2 Midi inputs.
1 Distortion.
2 Delays with sync, multimode filter and modulation oscillator with sync.
Full NRPN implementation: More 500 parameters.
128 presets

free synth

DSK music has released a little freeware synth that amongst the usual facilities has a pretty neat modulation matrix.

features:

- 2 OSC with 6 waveforms
- Amp. Envelope
- Octave & finetunning
- Advanced pulse modulation
- 2 LFO with 6 waveforms
- 2 Filter (4 modes)
- Osc 1/2 Balance
- Osc sync
- Velocity response knob
- OSC & Filter route
- 7×14 Matrix panel
- 3 Effects: Chorus, Reverb & Drive

a mod matrix is a really useful addition to any synth and can really help you to create interesting sounds.