I tested Influx and it stays in the library for now, but I’m easy to please and just like those nice curves…
Free plugins!
White_Noise
#199
I’m most interested in STFU. Pretty basic kind of plugin that I just haven’t gotten around to trying, but for free I’ll mess around with it.
A.M
#201
The 37 entries this time round offers a nice spread of options to choose from, covering basically everything from music production tools, FXs, Sound design, Music Theory, plus Synths and Samples. There’s literally something there for everyone!
Tbh, I’ve only tried out those that appealed to ME and others will no doubt have their own favorites out of all that’s on offer, so I’m not going to go into who or what I voted for at this stage, instead I’ll touch on a few that did stand out for one reason of another.
The Signal Enhancer “C-C- -01” from Christopher Carmichael is interesting, though a bit involved…his post has to be one of the longest I remember seeing in any KVR Challenge. He’s clearly put a lot of work into this project and it shows. It’s not something I would personally use that much, though I’m guessing others will find it very useful.
“Nettle”, the scanned synthesis synth by Fellusive is a personal fav of mine, as it’s really good for ambient stuff. It has a randomization feature that, when selected, will mix up the current preset you have and give you something new, which is fun to play with…but the presets on offer are a bit limited. Hopefully there will be a future update that will include more.
The real-time granulator “Emergence” by Daniel Gergely is cool, as is “Grain Strain” by Full Bucket Music and the delay plug “EchoMatrix” by ImprovOid. In the same vein, you also have “FourHead” by Fugue State Audio, a sort of combination of both delay and granulator…reminds me a bit of the Frippertronics method popularized by Robert Fripp back in the day, as well as the old 32 bit “Elottronix XL” plugin from Elogoxa.
“GFilter” from Flandersh Tech is a handy tool to have in your music box of tricks…as is “STFU” by ZEEK, which is a deceptively simply little sidechainer, that gives a lot of the fee-based offerings out there a run for their money.
“FKFX Influx” by FKFX is a nice sequencer / resonator filter tool that does a lot…Resonator…Chaos…Center Note…Scale Snap…stereo pitch shift between left and right Flux Resonator…the list of features goes on! FKFX are the same guys behind the really cool “Obvious Filter” that I already posted about here not so long ago.
Then there’s “MixMaxTrix” by ArtV…a quality Mixer plugin that will find a home in anyone’s DAW. Very useful and packed with features…the only thing is the knobs can be a bit fiddly, due to the size of some of them on screen, so you need to run it BIG.
The “Hum808 X” hybrid synth looks and sounds good and is well worth grabbing, not just because it’s free, but because it’s a quality synth that gives you a lot of control over the sounds it spits out.
The Music Theory side of things is covered by “Laras Composition”, which offers a lot for those who are interested in MT or want to learn it. That said, even though the UI looks good, you need to have Java Runtime Environment (JRE) on your system in order to get it to work…plus there’s no installer at this time. The installation steps outlined are as follows…
Download LARAS..
Download and install JRE, if it's not already on your system.
Extract LARAS to a folder..
Run LARAS from that folder..
I’m not really sure if this is a totally finished program, though, as the guy who posted it say, “The third tab of Music Theory in the main area of the program is intended to be placeholder for information on basic music theory. This Music Theory section has nothing to do with the functionality of the program, as it will contain only information on music theory.”
Still, it looks impressive and is a really handy tool to have when it comes to composing.
Those are the ones that stood out the most to me…what about you? Which ones do you think you’ll be using this time next year?
7asid
#202
wow thanks for the inolved answer! i’ve only tried nettle and the eplex7 analog filter. Jury’s still out for me. I find nettle very interesting but also very artifact-y but i’ll keep fiddling.
ACRE
#204
I don’t know if someone has pointed this one out …
Bespoke
Free modular environment with over 190 modules.
metaside
#205
I’m mostly focusing my modular activity on Bitwig and Unreal, but that feature matrix is awesome!
st3aLth
#207
Blacksun is FREE until the 1st of December 2021
https://audioassault.mx/collections/plugins/products/blacksun
Agentslimepunk
#208
Great recommendation! The 3 stomps, FX rack and IR loader look like a versatile bunch for $0.
A.M
#209
I see AudioPlugin Deals is currently offering Aquamarine Lite by MUZE for FREE. You’ve only got 5 days left to grab this if you’re interested…it usually sells for around 40usd.
This is a really good pad machine and even though it’s labelled as ‘lite’, it comes with over 3000 samples and will take up 7 GB of you drive…but, trust me, it’s well worth it.
I have the full version myself and it’s everything this is but way more. This is a good chance to get a solid version of this program for free and if you like it, you can always get the full version later… though I think you’ll find what you get with this enough to keep you going on the pad front for a while.
The only thing is it requires the full version of Kontakt 5.8 or later to run.
MFXxx
#213
If anyone’s interested this years Waves surprise to discover your reward for their eternal marketing and never ending sale…
https://www.waves.com/lpn/black-friday-2021/free-plugin-signup
Enjoy
morphic
#214
https://slatedigital.com/free-sample-packs-bf21
GET ALL 16 SAMPLE PACKS FOR FREE
100% Royalty-Free. Only until Jan 1!
metaside
#216
All plugins by BlueLab seem to be free now - I never heard of the developer before but found the info on KVR earlier. I tried out some plugins and the stuff seems to be mostly simple but cool, they have lots of visualization stuff and even a denoiser:
White_Noise
#217
Definitely some stuff there I will be checking out. I’m interested in Infra, Ghost, and Wav3s.
Some of that stuff (especially Rebalance) looks like features out of Ozone Advanced, which I just paid good money for. And Wav3s looks like the one thing I really want out of Insight, which I haven’t brought myself to pay for just yet.