Free Plug ins

[ken]

This looks cool. Get it while you can:

Crow Hill Company’s Circuit Drums E-drum Plugin is Free for 36 Hours Only https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2024/0 ... uit-drums/

[ken]

https://www.dixonbeats.com/products/db1-vst-plugin

This is a free Casio Sk1 emulation. Haven't checked it out yet, but hey FREE SK1!!!

[Kamakura]

https://www.dixonbeats.com/products/db1-vst-plugin

This is a free Casio Sk1 emulation. Haven't checked it out yet, but hey FREE SK1!!!

Cheers!
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I downloaded it, installed it under Studio One on a PC, and... fandabadoozy!
https://www.Dixonbeats.com also have other free plugins and samples

[jast]

A few amazing free reverbs from Airwindows:

CreamCoat - general-purpose reverb that sounds very smooth even at extremely short tail lengths. It has a bunch of different reverb models (the "Select" slider, towards the right they tend to get bigger). "Regen" controls the tail length. Want a dirty digital retro sounding version of this (when using "Derez")? Check out CrunchCoat.
Galactic3 - a potentially huge reverb, that you can freeze and unfreeze by automating the "Replace" parameter. "Bigness" controls the tail length. I love how this sounds, even down to like 0.25 Bigness, where it turns into a more hall-y reverb. This includes a stereo vibrato feature (also available as a separate plugin "GalacticVibe"; all Airwindows plugins are free!), a common trick in huge reverbs to give them more movement.
kCathedral3 - a cathedral-style reverb that sounds extremely smooth. Here, the reverb size/density is controlled mostly using "Regen".
kPlate140 and kPlate240 - a flashier (140) and a more subtle (240) plate-style reverb.

All of these have a "Derez" slider. If you pull it down, the reverb gets darker. It's like a lowpass but works quite differently. In the demo videos he often showcases this at 100% wet which kind of cheapens the overall impression, but I like how it sounds in context. Remember to never do mixing on individual sounds, always do it on the full mix!

Chris has a lot more reverb plugins (and other plugins), but these are, I think, his best reverbs.

Bonus: kCosmos, an infinite reverb (at maximum Regen; it can also be tweaked into a "normally big" reverb). The cool thing about kCosmos is that quiet sounds will build up and louder sounds won't, so the reverb always tends towards roughly the same sort of loudness. This makes for a very spacey never-ending reverb that will not blow up in your face. A fun side feature is that if you automate Derez, you can repitch what's already in the reverb without affecting new things coming in (except it still always does the darkening as in the other plugins).
The difference between Derez and Filter for darkening is that Derez affects the whole reverb, whereas Filter gradually decays the highs, so initially things will be brighter in the reverb and that will gradually disappear.

[jast]

Another Airwindows recommendation: ADClip8, a clipping-based loudness maximizer.

Clipping is the "other" type of loudness maximization, with the more popular type being brickwall limiting. The advantage of a clipper is that it doesn't mess with the dynamics, aside from shaving off peaks of course. So, a clipper will never generate pumping, but instead there's a point of no return if you push it too hard where it will just starting sounding like garbage. Unlike a standard hard clipper, ADClip8 contains some magic to prevent digital clipping artefacts and will instead generate a different kind of distortion that can be pushed harder, especially in very dense mixes.

The "Mode" control deserves a more detailed explanation. You have the following options aside from "Normal":

• Atten - gain matches the output to the input. You can use this to focus on checking for audible degradation without being distracted by the extra loudness. For maximum loudness, you'd drive the Boost up in this mode until you start hearing degradation, then back it off a little.
• Clips - plays only the parts of the signal that clip. This is convenient to check that you're not clipping ALL THE TIME anywhere, which makes it very likely that that part of the signal is getting completely destroyed. If it's mostly transients that are clipping, you're probably fine.

The remaining modes add successively more stages of the special processing which results in the mix sounding "thicker", but will turn evil if you overdo it.

I tried this out on a relatively well-mixed and unmastered EDM song and could easily get it to -4 LUFS short-term in the loudest section with no noticeable (to me) degradation.