What are your favourite free VSTs??

Yo what's your favourite free VSTs? I see there are tonnes on KVR and I just downloading a few so far. Looking for ease of use primarily and lushness of course. Tonnes of VA VSTs which is good but its hard to know what's good etc. Be nice to find one which is good at Arps and Pads. Let us know your thoughts. Cheers.

The free stuff u-he and tal offer is good. Dexed (fm synth) is great, obxd (ob-xa etc emulation is quite nice plus you can find tonnes of presets for both if that's your thing. Luftikus is a really nice mastering type eq, based on the maag eq4. Magnus @ smartelectronix's stuff is really worth checking out, one gem especially.      

there was a big thread about this in the past no?

edit: found it

Not sure which of these still run on a modern PC but they were dependable back in the day and made for fond memories.

Synth1 - Needs no intro. Used ever since I first switched to DAWs in 2005 until today. It supposedly began as a Nord Lead emulation but is so much more. Arps and pads are so full sounding once you muck up the digital highs in post. Ridiculous detuning and modulation options - Filter a rhythmic FMy part and add delay for some next level percussion background. 

HG Fortune's stuff was obscure but absolutely deadly. Alionoctis was a kind of tone generator had a wholly unique sound, a bit raw 90's vibe with a bunch of built in textures that went through shifting independent XY sections and filters, it lead to things I haven't heard anywhere else. It excels at subtle, pulsating and shifting drones and practically writes tracks by itself. In the right signal chain it should still sound cutting edge. 

Easy Crumar - I'm sure there are better Crumar emulations but this ugly as shit VST had the right kind of lo fi vibe, plenty of emotion and a bite that layered easily in tracks. my favorite use was to add high pitched stings that could sit in the back yet still be clearly heard no matter how busy the mix was. 

DSK made a bunch of inventive powerful stuff, my favorites were ethereal padz, darkness theory and choirz. 

TAL U-no-62 - THE juno 106 emulation for a long time. 

KarmaFX Filter - Super useful filter, the gentlest low pass for analoguey high end roll offs

Airwindows stuff, although it's technically ptreon supported (and he deserves it). Mostly replaced my commercial plugins.

Glitchmachine's Fracture. It's buggy as hell and does some weird stuff every now and again, but still really useful for mangling audio.

  On 9/9/2019 at 8:33 PM, user said:

The free stuff u-he and tal offer is good. Dexed (fm synth) is great, obxd (ob-xa etc emulation is quite nice plus you can find tonnes of presets for both if that's your thing. Luftikus is a really nice mastering type eq, based on the maag eq4. Magnus @ smartelectronix's stuff is really worth checking out, one gem especially.      

OB-XA doesn't appear to be online and what's replaced it isn't free.

Sorry about that. I didn't check. Used to be free.

There are some proper cheesy tunes here but this sounds incredible!!! Shame its like £80.

  On 9/13/2019 at 1:18 AM, TheBro said:

There are some proper cheesy tunes here but this sounds incredible!!! Shame its like £80.

 

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Bro, stick to the subject, maaaaaaaaaaaan.

  On 9/13/2019 at 1:18 AM, TheBro said:

There are some proper cheesy tunes here but this sounds incredible!!! Shame its like £80.

 

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Watched through a video that painstakingly compared the frequency responses and behavior of most Oberheim VAs out there and this still came out on top:

mda JX10 for me, so buggy and unstable. Even more so for me as i had to wrap it into an audio unit to be able to use it in Logic. 

But the sound just has this amazing dusty quality to it, i swear some of these early VST's are gonna become just as loved as some analogue equipment. 

To me it has its own sound, somewhere in between analogue and digital. 

Early VSTs were pretty terrible. Like from the early 2000s lol. They've improved massively from back in the day!!

Yeah I know vsts now are very good but they do also sound kinda sterile. I guess the low quality of the old ones is what appeals to me, its like the playstaion 1 sound card is crap but it sounds amazing to me, really earthy. 

I second the PG8X, if you scour the internet you can find some amazing presets for it too. Does amazing pads and the bass on that thing is lush 

  On 9/13/2019 at 1:04 AM, TheBro said:

OB-XA doesn't appear to be online and what's replaced it isn't free.

It is free though, that buy button is kinda donation thing or smth https://www.discodsp.com/obxd/

My favorite probably is sq8l http://www.buchty.net/ensoniq/

This is a great windows only prophet 5 emulator. It sounds amazing, wish it was for Mac. 

http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=778