There are plenty of free effects out there,
these are the best ones I could find for mixing and mastering.
Before we get into it, here's an example of how one of them sounds...
[Best FREE VST Effect Plugins For Mixing]
Hey everyone, Jake from Transverse Audio here.
You can find the download links in the description below.
So, I've set up a few things that I'll test each effect with
so you get to see how they all sound with a drum loop, instrument loop, and some one-shots.
This way you can see how each plugin will affect the same sound, keeping things consistent.
Let's jump into the first one.
This plugin by FLUX is going to let you shape the transients of your sounds
as this is essentially a simplified compressor.
In case you didn't know, what I mean by transient is the part of a sound that gives it a click,
snap or other short spike in sound.
You can change other parameters like the stereo width, there is also a makeup gain section
that will try to account for what is happening to the sound but I don't find it that useful.
You'll probably have to do it manually in your DAWs mixer.
There is also an option for how fast the compressor comes into effect, essentially the attack
but only in 3 settings.
Now here's where the plugin comes in handy.
You can either tighten things up and make it punchier by using the bitter side...
[BitterSweet example of 100% Bitter]
or make things more subtle by using the sweet side...
[BitterSweet example of 100% Sweet]
Now don't limit yourself to only using the extremes,
try to find some balance to where it complements your sound and your desired output.
[BitterSweet example]
izotope's vocal doubler is really unique as I think it combines a very subtle delay
(almost like a chorus effect) with a stereo enhancer, letting you really widen a sound
and take advantage of the full stereo width.
[iZotope Vocal Doubler Example]
Now, there's nothing stopping you from using this on sounds other than vocals.
Remember, it's just the plugins name.
A quick heads up, iZotope does recommend using this effect plugin on dry vocals
since it can interact with other effects you may be using and make artifacts like popping or clicking.
You're also given the opportunity to turn off the dry signal and only use the wet signal.
(which is the result of the effect on the sound.)
You can also set how much of this wet signal is included in the output,
with or without the dry signal.
And, you can bypass the plugin which is the same as turning it off in your effect chain.
Frohmage is an interesting combination of a few different effects into one.
This multi-band resonant filter lets you change the resonance,
the number of bands and how spread out they are,
the cutoff frequency,
and includes distortion and delay stages on each band
to give it a unique effect similar to phasing.
Then there's the evolution parameter, which doesn't make any sense but it's fun to use.
Another great feature to this is it's presets
and how you can actually change the speed it transitions from one to the next.
Setting this to a higher level is great for long ambiances that you want to give some
very subtle progression to.
This is a sweet reverb to throw on to your tracks.
It gives you control over the dry and wet levels, room size, pre-delay, and some stereo control.
The section I'm most interested in is the frequency control.
This lets you apply the reverb to specific sections of the frequency spectrum
and the options to the left let you set where each band is located.
For the low setting, it means it's applying a low shelf curve to one of the 3 bands
in the reverb's EQ.
For the mid, it's applying a peaking (or a bell) curve,
and for the high setting, it's applying a high shelf.
On the right side, you can choose the decibel position of the band of anything 0 dB or lower.
[TAL-REVERB-II Example]
Another plugin from iZotope, Vinyl is a great way to give you sounds an old-school vibe.
You get a bunch of control over how the imperfections will play a roll in the sound.
You can throw in some electrical noise, mechanical noise,
there's a wear option to, well set how worn out it is, I don't know what else to say...
You can also set how much dust and scratches there are, as well as how warped the sound will be.
Now, you'll need to set some value to the two options here for the dust and scratch
to actually work.
Now I'm pretty sure this is some kind of an EQ
but you can pick the year of the recording you want to emulate,
and then there's rpm, which I'm not totally sure what it does,
but I think it has something to do with this next effect.
That's probably one of the coolest parts to this plugin.
Now, this is why I left Vinyl for last, you can actually pull off some crazy sound design
with effect plugins only and primarily just Frohmage and Vinyl.
Check this out...
[Sound design with effect plugins only]
That's it for the best free effect plugins for mixing, I hope you enjoyed the video
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