Professional Analog Mastering.
Professional Analog Mastering.
220K+ subscribers
Quick side note: none of these are sponsored or placements or anything like that.
If you like free plugins, you’ve heard of Analog Obsession. Their new plugin, ATONE, is a vintage channel strip with a lot of character.
It doesn’t take much input before you notice enjoyable breakup and distortion indicative of older consoles.
We also have a smooth 3-band EQ and a surprisingly versatile compressor for how simple it is.
Let’s listen to it on some vocals. We’ll use an unprocessed vocal track for the demos, but for transparency, some parallel compression was used during tracking.
Watch the video to learn more >
If your DAW doesn’t have binaural panning, this is a fantastic pay-what-you-like option. The plugin uses EQ, reflections, delay, and other cues to create the sense of the vocal being in the front, to the listener's left, right, and back.
Using it is super simple: drag the point to the position you’d like, and compensate for gain changes.
This is probably not the best plugin for a lead vocal, but it will definitely come in handy for doubles, triples, and other BGVs.
Watch the video to learn more >
These two plugins are perfect for a lofi lead vocal or if you want your BGVs to fit right into the mids of a mix.
Memory emulates tape Hysteresis or memory but includes some of the other artifacts associated with tape, like frequency and amplitude modulation.
Personally, I enjoy it set to subtle settings with doubling enabled to create a mild chorus effect.
Origin is one of the better vintage lofi emulations I’ve seen - mainly because it doesn’t limit you to analog or digital lofi. It allows for variable sampling rates, which sounds classic with filtering enabled, but turn those off, and you get noticeable aliasing.
The saturation sounds great, and it can be switched between tube and traditional drive. Noise can be introduced, which seems standard, but there are a lot of options, from cassette to vinyl to reel to reel. I prefer the doubling effect of Memory to this plugin’s chorus, but let’s listen to them back to back to get an idea of what they do.
Watch the video to learn more >
ColourEQ is a simple 6-band parametric EQ but with the addition of these type B filters that work in tandem with an extra shaping function to create curves that aren’t possible with other minimum phase EQs.
Tube Preamp is a unique take on tube distortion since it lets you alter the various emulated components, altering the frequency response, timbre, ADSR, and more, all while learning how resistors and capacitors affect voltage across a circuit - but more importantly, it sounds great and offers a lot of flexibility.
Last, by DDMF, we have Endless, a truly unique reverb that creates a feedback loop for the reflections, resulting in completely unrealistic reverb times. Some cool features include variable width, an octave pitch shift effect with the sparkle dial, and general detuning. Also, the bypass is a kill switch for the reflections which helps a lot when adjusting the settings if you don’t want previous reflections making that difficult.
Let’s listen to these 3 plugins, enabled one after the other.
Watch the video to learn more >
This one is included with a huge bundle of free plugins from the company - you can either use this plugin or the Mcompressor set to custom shape to introduce some waveshapping.
Now, I’ve been using this in tandem with compression on vocals to bring up quieter details without the need for more peak-down attenuation. You could use this plugin to create completely destructive distortion, but with subtle settings, it creates a very pleasant boost to a vocal’s lower amplitude range.
Let’s listen and notice how the vocal’s details are easier to hear.
Watch the video to learn more >
This is by far the best-sounding free vocal tuner plugin I’ve heard. The operation is simple: enable the notes you want to tune to and adjust the amount and speed.
Varying the speed and amount doesn’t degrade the audio quality, making this the first free vocal tuner where blending in the effect doesn’t result in noticeable phase cancellation.
At the highest settings, you can achieve the classic auto-tune sound, but this plugin has a surprisingly natural sound at lower settings.
Honestly, I’d recommend this plugin over Autotune’s Access tuner.
Let’s take a listen to it.
Watch the video to learn more >
This is a very simple plugin, but it’s a cool idea nonetheless. In short, the developers combined high-frequency attenuation with overall attenuation to mimic how distance affects the perception of a sound source.
Basically, this plugin is a shortcut for the multiple points of automation you’d have to create with a regular EQ to recreate the non-linear relationship between distance, amplitude, and high frequencies.
Using this for sound design makes the most sense, but I’ve found automating the distance dial to be a fantastic sounding fade out to any sound source.
Let’s take a listen.
Watch the video to learn more >
Although it’s still a long way off, this is the closest a free plugin has come to FF Saturn 2, mainly due to the variable distortion types and harmonic panning.
The sound is great, but the ability to pan distortion to the mids, the sides, or a combination of the 2 makes this so much more useful.
Want to add some grit to the vocals reverb reflections? Add this after the reverb and introduce mild saturation to the side image.
Or, maybe you want the vocal to have a powerful center and stick out in a mix - place this on a vocal bus and pan the saturation to the mid-image with a tube saturation setting.
It’s simple, but being able to pan harmonics, especially between the mid and the side, opens up a lot of possibilities. Let’s listen to it on the vocal after introducing some reverb.
Watch the video to learn more >
This one is definitely amazing - it’s a combination of the Pro Q 3 and Kirchoff EQ, but, of course, for free.
It offers up to 16 bands, all of which can be made dynamic and triggered by the frequency range, a different internal frequency range, or from the external side chain.
The attenuation can be peak, RMS, or a combination, and lookahead is even included.
Collision or masking detection between the internal signal and a side-chain signal, like the Pro Q 3, is available and is impressively accurate. We have 9 different filter types with variable slopes and stereo placements, including stereo, left, right, mid, or side.
There’s automatic gain compensation, band soloing, and a lot more - so if you’ve been holding off on buying the Pro Q 3 or Kirchoff, waiting for a free alternative, this is definitely it.
Let’s listen with the dynamic bands enabled.