Top 7 Free Pro Audio Plugins
If you’re an audio engineer or just starting out, you’re likely looking for a great tool to add to your arsenal. Through research on your own or with friends and colleagues, you’ve likely encountered many sites offering free demos and products.
While some may seem too-good-to-be-true, there are some free pro audio plugins on the market right now that can upgrade your workflow, inspire your creativity, or help fill a specific need.
Check out our list of the top 7 free audio plugins on the market right now and start experimenting.
1. CHOW Tape Model by ChowDSP
Born out of the genius of Stanford University students, Chow Tape Model has since grown into a fantastic option for saturation. Modeled after the Sony TC-260, the Chow Tape Model offers many more features than its analog counterpart.
With the plugin, you have the option to select input and output gain, modify between tape and tone, and control your level of drive. There are settings for loss, degradation, and an eponymous CHEW setting, which simulates tape that has been chewed up by a broken tape machine.
There’s even a section for adding in Wow and Flutter as well. These timing irregularities, due to imperfections in the mechanics of the machine, were captured from an original Sony TC-260 tape machine.
There are presets, and many more features worth exploring, as well as their entire suite of tools at ChowDSP.
2. Delay by Stagecraft
Stagecraft’s Delay plugin is much more than a regular delay effect. The high-resolution FFT spectrum display enables you to visualize how your delay settings are affecting the music, in real-time.
While using the plugin, combine a classic delay with a filter to control the band of each echo, and create a deep soundscape. Additionally, all parameters can be automated, allowing you to create complex, expressive sounds that manual tweaking cannot.
There is also a preset-sharing feature, which allows you to create and share presets with other Delay users online.
Check it out on their website here.
3. MAnalyzer by Melda Production
The MAnalyzer is a spectral analyzer and sonogram tool that measures average, infinite average, temporary maximum and infinite maximum. Smoothing features spread the energy between the ranges of frequencies, allowing you to identify anomalies visually.
There are even extended features like deharmonization, which reduce the harmonics and leave fundamentals, to identify the most relevant frequencies to your project.
By downloading the MAnalyzer, you get full access to the entire suite of Melda Production tools, including 36 other pro audio plugins. Check out all the advanced features and download on their site here.
4. Space Modulator by Valhalla
While Space Modular looks simple, the plugin covers a lot of territory. Now free to all instead of a free add-on, download Space Modulator to access rich modulations, and Valhalla’s incredible modulation engine.
On their site, they describe the plugin as “Eleven algorithms allow you to get through-zero flanging, barberpole flanging, detuning, doubling, strange echoes, reverbs, and all sorts of effects that defy description.”
The eleven algorithms can be controlled to shape the depth and type of modulation applied, as well as feedback, and the dry/wet mix. All of the algorithms are available in the Mode selection menu, and each mode includes a brief explanation of the type of modulation.
5. Couture by Auburn Sounds
If you’re looking for alternatives to compression, or trying to expand your horizons, it’s worth looking into transient shaping. Couture offers control over all dynamics, but particularly attacks. It solves a surprisingly huge range of mixing problems, with very low effort.
Couture’s Sharpen tool emphasizes transients and increases dynamic range. By turning it down, you’ll smoothen the signal and reclaim headroom. Tweaking the transient shaping speed determines how the transients are emphasized or de-emphasized. Couture has three detection types: Flat, Human, and Sybil.
Couture’s transient shaping and distortion are fully level-independent, meaning that you can change the gain of a signal before it hits Couture, and it won’t make a difference to the transient-shaping or the distortion processing.
6. Snap Heap by Kilo Hearts
Snap Heap is a modular Snapin Host which allows you to build up to seven serial or parallel effects chains and modulate every parameter using Kilohearts' powerful modular modulation system.
When you’re in the creative flow, you don’t want to get encumbered with the technicalities of complicated tasks. Snap Heap allows you to manage long FX chains in tidy ways. It can also add some additional depth to sound design tasks when the onboard FX of a VST falls short. This goes a long way in crafting an original signature sound, fast.
7. EcoSlap by HEAR360 & The Department of Sound
EcoSlap is a delay plugin derived from the Ecoplate I plate reverb, utilizing Ecoplate’s shortest decay setting with additional high and low-pass filtering, pre-delay, and creative mix controls. It’s a different kind of slap-delay, with its signature sound originating from a true analog plate reverb.
EcoSlap includes must-have quick slap features allowing you to build unique sonic landscapes in your mixes with a simple user interface. Use it on any instrument or vocal performance to add beautiful sounding depth and width to your mix.