Welcome to Sage Audio. Today we’re covering the Top 12
Underrated Free Plugins. But first, If you have a mix that you need mastered,
send it to us to receive a free mastered sample of it with the link in the description.
MVibrato - Melda Audio
Vibrato often gets overlooked as an effect, but it has a lot of potential to create a
unique sound - personally, I enjoy adding these effects to drum loops. This plugin lets you
control tremolo and vibrato or volume and pitch modulation in a truly detailed and nuanced way.
Randomization is also a helpful feature
if you want to cycle through various sounds and get ideas.
Let’s take a listen to the plugin on drums.
ISOL8 - TBProAudio
Monitoring plugins aren’t too exciting, especially when compared to distortion,
reverb, and other creative effects - but they do serve a really useful
purpose. ISOL8 makes it easy to monitor various aspects of your mix or master,
based on controllable frequency bands and left/right or mid/side stereo placement
Let’s listen to a mix and use these controls to monitor it.
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ChowPhaser - ChowDSP
ChowDSP has made some great and recognizable plugins like CHOWTape,
but their ChowPhaser is a unique and well-designed plugin that deserves some
attention. It separates the signal into left and right and offers 3 channel strips with multiple
effects for each - like modulation amount, distortion options, and center frequency.
A helpful graphic representation is also included in the top right
of the plugin. Let’s listen to the effect.
Krush - TriTik
Krush combines digital distortion like bit depth and sample rate reduction
with modulation to create a truly unique and creative plugin. It also blends the
digital sound of its distortion with analog emulated resonance filters
to add some warmth - and includes parameter freezing and midi linking for live performance.
Let’s listen to the plugin and combine the different features it offers.
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BPB Dirty Filter - Bedroom Producers Blog
Dirty Filter combines very simple but incredibly useful functions - a high pass filter, low pass
filter, and tube distortion on the remaining signal. I often need to perform this type of
processing but with multiple effects, so having it combined in one plugin makes a lot of sense.
Variable slope settings and a wet/dry make the plugin even more useful,
so let’s take a listen to what it does.
Bertom Curve Analyzer - Bertom Audio
This is honestly one of my favorite plugins,
free or paid since it lets me observe any and all changes a plugin will make to the frequency
response. This is great for understanding analog EQ emulations without a display,
and even finding hidden frequency shaping applied by various plugins.
Room 041 - Analog Obsession
Analog Obsession gets a good amount of attention for their recreations of well-known
and beloved analog equipment, but one plugin that flew under the radar is arguably
one of their best. Room 041 is a room reverb plugin,
that unlike a lot of their plugins, isn’t modeled on any particular equipment.
Simply put, it’s well-designed, sounds great, and offers all of the needed
parameters like stereo separation, pre-delay, decay time, and more.
Let’s listen to it and notice how it creates a surprisingly complex and realistic sound.
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Boogex - Voxengo
It’s a bit of a shame that this plugin doesn’t get more attention since it’s incredibly well-designed
and a lot of work clearly went into it. It’s a speaker emulator that starts with EQ sections,
before running the signal through amp emulation, and then IR cabinet modeling.
There are over 13 amps to choose from with various
microphone and placement settings diversifying the options even more.
Let’s listen and notice how this plugin can be used for guitar, but also for re-amping purposes.
MLoudnessAnalyzer - Melda Audio
YouLean Loudness Meter is a popular free analyzer, but the MLoudnessAnalyzer
offers more functionality, including some helpful presets.
With it we can measure up to 9 metrics or simplify the display to see only the
metrics we want - additionally, a graph to the right shows these metrics in real time.
Although we can’t listen to this plugin, let’s increase the gain of a track while
measuring its LUFS to better understand how this plugin responds to changes in amplitude.
MangleVerb - Audio Damage
MangleVerb is a strange plugin for sure - it isn’t often that
reverb and amplitude modulation are mixed,
but when they are the effect is really useful for creative applications. To the left, we’ll
notice some reverb settings and a filter section that can be modulated with our LFO and envelope.
Next, we can affect our LFO’s timing, wave type, phase, and the timing of our
envelope. Let’s listen to the plugin and imagine how it could be used creatively.
Vocal Doubler - Izotope
Izotope’s free imager typically overshadows their other free plugins,
but the Vocal Doubler is arguably more useful and maybe even better designed. It combines
duplication with timing and amplitude modulation to create a dense and rich-sounding vocal,
while keeping the controls intuitive, incredibly simple, with a very low CPU.
To affect the signal use the dials,
or just drag the bar in the middle to change both parameters at once.
Let’s listen to it on some vocals.
LimiterOne - CIS DSP Factory
Let’s end on a high note and talk about what I think is the best sounding free limiter.
LimiterOne is surprisingly transparent due to how well it retains transients, and somehow doesn’t
introduce significant overs even when attenuating and amplifying the signal by 15dB or more.
The controls are simple, there’s a threshold with auto-make-up gain,
a release ranging from 200 to 500ms, and a ceiling function.
Let’s listen to it and notice that even when I drastically attenuate,
the only easily noticeable issue is pumping.
If you have a mix that you need mastered, send it to us to receive a free mastered sample of it
with the link in the description. Thank you so much for watching.