Top Ranking Free Plugins 2022: Unmissable Software Enhancements for Your Website
In the realm of music production, the pursuit of enhancing sound design, effects, time-stretching, and organisation has never been more accessible, thanks to an array of free plugins and software available today. Here's a roundup of some of the best options that are suitable for various platforms:
### Sound Design & Effects
1. MeldaProduction MAutoPitch: A versatile free pitch correction plugin, MAutoPitch offers additional features like stereo enhancement and low latency, making it a strong alternative to Auto-Tune for vocals and other monophonic material.
2. Auburn Sounds Graillon (Free version): This plugin provides pitch correction and pitch shifting with low latency, making it useful for vocal tuning and creative pitch effects in real-time.
3. Chowdhury DSP BYOD: An open-source harmonics toolbox, BYOD offers detailed harmonic enhancement with an intuitive workflow, perfect for sound design enthusiasts.
4. Kombinat Tri by blepfx: A distortion plugin with powerful harmonic control, Kombinat Tri is great for sound design involving distortion effects.
5. Crunchrr and Destruqtor (blepfx): These plugins are bitcrusher and distortion tools with user-friendly workflows and rich tonal effects, ideal for experimental sound design.
### Time-Stretching and Audio Editing
1. Audacity: A well-known free audio editor, Audacity supports time-stretching, spectral views, batch processing, and multiple audio effects like reverb and distortion. It's capable of handling big audio projects and is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
2. Waveform Free by Tracktion: This free DAW offers unlimited audio and MIDI tracks, support for various plugin formats (VST, Audio Units), a scalable interface optimised for workflow fluidity, and integrated tools for sound design and effects processing.
3. Akai Pro MPC Beats: A free beat-making DAW, MPC Beats comes with 2GB of samples, loops, built-in virtual instruments, and over 80 audio effects plugins, plus support for third-party plugins. It offers genre templates and is designed for ease of use in beat production.
### Organization and Workflow Tools
1. Multimeter by Klangfreund: A free metering toolbox, Multimeter helps in mixing and organising sound elements within projects.
These DAWs (Waveform Free, MPC Beats) and editors (Audacity) inherently support project organisation by handling multiple tracks and plugin formats for easy arrangement and manipulation of sound.
In addition to these tools, music producers can also benefit from the following resources:
- Spitfire Audio's LABS series releases a new instrument every month, which can be downloaded from their website. - ValhallaDSP's Supermassive is a free plugin that combines delays and reverb, offering luscious clouds of reverb, otherworldly delays, and swelling waves of feedback. - Camelcrusher, from Camelaudio, is a tool for beefing up bass, drums, and various sounds, featuring two distortions that can be combined, a randomize feature, and presets. - Mixed In Key's Satellite Plugins 2.0 enables cross-platform collaboration within Ableton Live, Logic, FL Studio, Pro Tools, and other DAWs, allowing for the exchange of ideas without bouncing stems or dealing with file-sharing websites. - Spitfire Audio's LABS series features a variety of raw, natural-sounding instruments, including keys, synth pads, strings, choir, and more, which are great for adding emotion to tracks. - FLUX Stereo Tool V3 offers precise control over input gain, individual pan for left and right channels, and accurate visual feedback, all without any dongle or license activation. - Audio Damage's RoughRider 3 is a popular dynamics processor with an external sidechain input, the ability to turn off the built-in "warming" filter, and much more accurate metering. - Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch is a plugin for extreme audio manipulation, ideal for creating otherworldly textures and applying special effects through "spectral smoothing." - Audio Damage's RoughRider compressor has had over half a million downloads. - Softube's Saturation Knob is a plugin that adds color and analog warmth to sounds with three distinct distortion modes. - The Granulator III is a free plugin available for Ableton users only, which uses granular synthesis to create unexplainable sounding glitches, atmospheric textures, and pads. - Satellite Plugins 2.0 from Mixed In Key works across various DAWs, including Ableton Live, Logic, FL Studio, Pro Tools, and others. - ValhallaDSP is renowned for producing some of the best (and best free) plugins on the market. - Voxengo's SPAN is a free real-time spectrum analyzer that makes mixing and mastering easier with visual feedback, capable of displaying multiple channels or channel groups at once.
These plugins and tools collectively provide a powerful free toolkit for music producers, focusing on sound design, effects, time-stretching, and workflow organization, making music production more accessible across multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux.
The collection of free plugins and software, such as MeldaProduction MAutoPitch, Auburn Sounds Graillon, Chowdhury DSP BYOD, and Kombinat Tri, are valuable gadgets for enhancing sound design and effects in music production. Additionally, tools like Audacity, Waveform Free, and MPC Beats provide technology for time-stretching, audio editing, and project organization, making music production more accessible across various platforms.
