THE BEST Free VST Plugins of 2023 (Top 10)

welcome back to the channel today I'm sharing some amazing free plugins as usual I've got chapter markers so if you're just looking for reverbs compressors eqs you can skip ahead to the part of the video that you're looking for I've sorted through what feels like hundreds of plugins to make this video but the ones I'm sharing here are my favorites they're also all reliable have regular updates work on a variety of operating systems and have a performance that's similar to or exceeding many premium and paid plugins on the market so let's get right into it let's start with some synthesizers and in this case there's two I would recommend Surge and vital let's take a look at surge first the interface is a little bit daunting at first but it has all the basic and advanced features you'd expect from a hybrid synthesizer and it's a real treasure for sound designers and beginners alike one standout feature is the effects chain there's simply so many different effects to choose from to completely change morph warp and distort your sounds there's a whole bunch of cool features like different skins but one of the standout features of this synth is just how little computer power it uses I'll do a bit of a comparison in a moment but it's a very lightweight synth for those of you that are looking for something solid reliable that you can use many instances of while surge is fun it's not the most easy to use and this is why I also recommend vital which is my personal favorite you've probably seen this synthesizer before it's incredibly easy for beginners to visualize everything that's going on all of your modulations and parameter adjustments but it it's also packed full of advanced features for complex sound design I'll just give you a weird sort of flavor of what it can do some of these are my own presets that are included with the synthesizer for free so you can hear using the various wave tables and effects you can create really Lush sort of strings and pads but if I just change the preset you can also create rhythmic and sequenced parts such as this sort of plucked and rhythmic bass and then you can also create all of your classic basses you know sustained growls mugs and everything so you can really create just about any sound that you'd need with this synthesizer and the only real drawback of using vital is that on some systems it's a little bit power hungry not out of the ordinary for a powerful synthesizer but surge just seems to use less computer processing power if I do a similar patch you can see surge is sitting on about six percent and vital was about 15 for something similar and finally vital does require that you make an account to download whereas surge is just simply download the file and run it as simple as that moving on to instruments there's only one I would recommend although technically there are dozens of instruments within this and it is Labs by Spitfire many of you probably already know about this but it's worth mentioning that they're constantly updating it with new lines and sounds so you download this plugin it does require creating a user account to install it and once you have this one plugin you can choose to download different lines different sounds and I'd put together a bit of an audio demo but I realized on their website you can just scroll through all of these and you know whether you're looking for drums or maybe some plucked instrument a mandolin something like that a different texture or even some sort of atmospheric pad or the classic soft piano whatever you're sort of looking for you can just demo it on the website and then download so that you don't fill your computer with like 30 gigabytes of files that you're not going to use let's take a look at some eqs now there's only two here I would recommend Coral Baxter free and TDR Nova which is technically a dynamic EQ starting with coral this is a brilliant EQ for painting tones and enhancing tracks I particularly like using it on Masters and buses or groups it's simple it's just a high and low shelf and a high and low pass but I think it's a little bit more interesting than using a sort of stock digital EQ unfortunately you do have to create an account to download this plugin but I use a bunch of acoustic plugins anyway so it's not a problem for me but I know many people don't want to go through all that hassle the next EQ I'd recommend is TDR Nova it's technically a dynamic EQ which which means you can set it as a static EQ or you can have the bands dynamically react to the input signal Dynamic EQ is an incredible incredibly powerful process it saved me on more than one occasion I've got a video linked just here which sort of details what dynamic EQ is and where you might want to use it but this is a fantastic tool I have no idea why it's free to be honest I love using Pro Q3 but I go to Nova for the dynamic bands because I just find that they're easier for me to tune and adjust to really get the results that I want there's a couple of free compressors I would recommend the first one is TDR katelnikov go to the website download and install again no email list sign up or anything like that this is what I recommend for people who are not satisfied with the controls of your stock compressor in your Daw many users of FL Studio will know this great door but there's just not a good stock compressor so TDR catalnikov has all the basic features expect but then a bunch of advanced features too one of the things I find particularly useful is the tool tips that are built in so if you are new to this you can just hover over any control and not only does it tell you what the control does but it gives you a little indication of why or when you might want to use that so you can sort of learn a bit of audio engineering as you learn how to use this plugin which I find really helpful I know that really helped me when I was first starting out at least and it's worth noting that katelnikov is not trying to model some analog compressor it's completely digital it's often trying to be very transparent and it's the compressor I go for when I just want a bit of level control and not trying to add any extra tone or Texture now if you don't have any analog style compressors I'd recommend checking out these two from clanghelm I find these are quite interesting to play with and they add a little bit more tone and texture as you're compressing again completely free no email list or anything like that that you have to sign up to if you already have a bunch of analog compressor models paid or free these might not add that much more to your toolkit but if you haven't tried out analog style compression these are a good place to start because they're relatively simple and it's difficult to completely mess things up when you're using these plugins I'll quickly move on to limiters now unfortunately there are no free limiters I recommend but people always ask so I thought I'd at least mention why I used to recommend limiter number six but it's no longer supported so it's quite possible that it doesn't even work on your operating system and I find of the free limiters that I've tried I find them to be very sensitive and you can often do a lot more harm than good so I'd only recommend them if you're very Advanced or skilled with limiting there's so many free Reverb And Delay plugins that I even made a dedicated video linked here with my favorites but if you had to get one it would be Valhalla supermassive it's a plug-in that just shouldn't be free they released it in 2020 and just didn't want to charge for it so it's on their website you can just download and run I can no sign up no email or anything like that it's probably one of the best Reverb plugins out there regardless of price if I play some of those synth sounds from earlier [Music] you can hear that you can either go for incredibly sort of like spatial so oh hello yeah you're getting jealous up can I will you let me finish the video is that okay I love you come on let's go let's go buddy so if I play a few more of these sounds you can go for really spacious stuff or if I change the preset [Music] you can go for all sorts of cascading delays and they just sort of go on forever so loads of control here in the plug-in is everything you'd expect from a premium plug-in um and it's the one that I'm reaching for most often when it comes to analyzers there's two I'd recommend grabbing you lean loudness meter and voxango span you lean loudness meter I use it whenever I'm mastering just to make sure that my levels are right specifically the true Peak loudness and finally I'd recommend voxango span I'm not using it as much these days I'm definitely mixing more with my ears than my eyes but span is a fantastic tool for sound design and also for trying to pinpoint problems in a mix you can really dive in on particular frequencies or change the display to give you the sort of information you need many people ask about saturators exciters enhancers there used to be a few I recommended including the saturation tool by Soft tube but again you have to create an account and download an installer just to get that plugin so I don't even think it's worth doing anymore it used to be just a simple download and run but not anymore there are some cool plugins out there there's cool ones from analog Obsession there's from critic and there's a bunch of really interesting exciters and Distortion plugins but they're all so different it's impossible to try and say which are the best so I've left some suggestions and ideas uh in the comments section down below and this is where I'm going to invite everyone else who's watching if you have any favorites not just in that category but any favorite plugins at all just let us know in the comment section down below the more sort of Niche or detailed you can be the better even if it's not a plug-in that might suit everyone if you've found a really cool plugin for a particular purpose let us know because that's often what's most helpful so thank you very much for watching I really enjoyed making this and going through all of these plugins it's good to do this every couple of years and find out what's cool and new on the market let me know what you think in the comment section down below and I'll see in the next one bye for now [Music] foreign

Channel: In The Mix

Views: 274,378

Keywords: free plugins, free, audio, plugins, mixing, music production, free reverb, free compressor, free eq, in the mix, best, best free plugins, free synths, best plugins for music producers, comparison, review, vital synth, surge synth, demo

Id: 8J1n4tyPm3s

Length: 10min 22sec (622 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2023