9 Free Plugins Better Than Your DAW 

Check the video description for the plugin links. Happy mixing!

If anyone's in a hurry, here's a summary: EQ: 1:10 : Slate - Revival (EQ) - Good For Adding Shimmer and Thickness 2:41 : Izotope - Vinyl - For Telephonic Sound. 4:34 : TDR Nova Dynamic Equalizer : EQ + Compressor. Saturation Plugins: 6:57 : KLANGHELM - IVGI2 Stereo Imaging: 7:53 : Izotope - Ozone Imager 2 9:48 : Izotope - Vocal Doubler Meters: 10:30 : Voxengo - Span 12:45 : MNotepad (Just a notepad, for writing down notes) [ Logic and FL Studio already have something like this in built) 14:43 : Hornet VU Meter (Not Free, ~ $4)

So, you've got the "Before" and "After reversed on the Vinyl demo...

Wow, that last hornet plugin sounds awesome! Definitely one to think about getting

Free Plugins Slate Digital - Revival 1:04 Izotope - Vinyl 2:40 TDR Nova Dynamic Equalizer 4:30 Klanghelm - IVGI 6:17 Izotope - Ozone Imager 2 7:50 Izotope - Vocal Doubler 9:49 Voxengo - Span 10:30 Meldaproduction - Mnotepad 12:44 Hornet - VU MeterMK4 14:48

You should never underestimate the power of a free plugin. Thanks for this guys.

I never thought the span was that useful . Thanks for showing me this

Thank you. I appreciate your content so much. I can imagine these videos take so much time to prep and edit. 🤍

Lots of great plug ins I wasn't previously aware of. Brilliant video.. hope to use some of these on future releases.

What a well thought out collection!

Dude, you saved me $400. I've been looking for an alternative to the Strymon Mobius for years because I'm only in the Destroyer mode which replicates the sound of an old cracked vinyl. Thanks to you, I've got what I want ! You're the man ! Thanks a million !

Some notes: - Ozone Imager's "secret sauce" is actually pretty simple, but also extremely clever: it creates a delayed copy of the signal, but inverts the polarity on one side. You can see this for yourself if you compare the left and right channels in an oscilloscope. This adds a whole bunch of stereo width, while also being completely mono compatible because, when summed to mono, the delayed copies will interfere destructively and cancel each other out. - Distortion does *not* take away frequency content; in fact, distortion is generally used to add a lot of new frequencies while saturation is generally just used to add loudness, with the extra frequencies as a byproduct. And while they are usually applied differently, saturation is still technically a type of distortion. It gets its name from a phenomenon that occurs in amplifier circuits when the output signal attempts to exceed the supply voltage. In electronics terms, saturation is synonymous with analog clipping. Soft clipping is at the core of every saturation plugin. - I am not sure who told you that distortion is generally digital, but that's not really accurate either. Plenty of distortion engines are based on analog equipment. Distortion has its roots in overdriven amplifiers and diode clipper circuits, which a lot of modern distortion plugins (even the more digital ones) tend to emulate to some extent. - The labels for "before" and "after" during the Vinyl demonstration are reversed. - Slate Revival is not free, it requires a paid subscription.

Glad you included an VU metre. So important and I can’t believe they don’t come standard with DAW’s.

Great Vídeo. Thank you! I have hundreds of plugins. But a couple of plugins I'm looking forward to test I didn't know!

Awesome video this was very helpful and an eye opener, thank you 🙏🏻

OMG that MNotepad is genius, so many times I've wanted to make a note about something and course, no way that I could find to do that, fantastic!

Helpful video thank you. Definitely going to have to check out Nova.

Really helpful presentation my friend, some great free plug ins I never knew about, so thank you very much indeed. Span is essential, I have been using it for years. It is great for balancing incoming stereo signals from outboard gear, in case one channel is louder than the other.

Great review thank you, these will be very useful

So helpful! Thank you so much!

Thanks a bundle for the info. Cheers 😎

Great collection of plugins sir! Interesting you mentioned the auto-gain plugin cause auto-gain is going to be a part of our hardware preamp in our upcoming ConVertor E1 synth :)

Great information! Most appreciated!

Yes, you looooooooooove all these plugins

I use span a lot ... It's on my monitor bus all the time. The mid side displays are great for tracking down stereo issues.

It's fun to use stereoize on a stereo sound to make it really wide and phasey.

That izotope looks interesting, Thanks for the chance

About TDR Nova, it's really an amazing plugin. Dynamic EQ is vital, and the payed versions, as you said, are usually expensive. Its graphics are great and make the task much easier.

2021: everything form Analog Obsession covers so much ground.

Woah. I had Vinyl years ago too, but somewhere down the line it stopped working and I never bothered to replaced it. Looks like I need to go grab it again.

I love this channel. Great stuff.

Súper chévere .... Mil gracias

Hey just wanted to drop a quick note and for one thing say thank you. Secondly, I wanted to point out that in logic, you have a notepad that can be either for the whole project or even track specific! Cheers

Thank you for this! Super cool video! A+++

Love your review , a lot of interesting things

Thanks for taking the pain to test out all these plugins and eventually sharing with us.

Thank you very much. Impressive stuff

Wonderful tutorial thanks a bunch.

thank you man,you are a legend

Thank you. This is very good info.

stereo imaging though literally changes the game when mixing any sort of reverb, delay or background vocals

solid gold!

Great tutorial

super helpful thanks!

THANK YOU! I've spent hours trying to improve an instrumental that had a particular part that made it nasty! This solved the problem in 2 minutes!

Thanks bro, keep it going homie

TNice tutorials is absolutly the best video of the world you expaining skills are good and it was a honor to see tNice tutorials vid well done

You might want to check out Voxengo's Overtone Eq. it's one of the best free EQ's around.....It saturates the bands as you push them resulting in less EQ needed to get the result your after. Its really good in combination with other saturation plug ins. It adds polish and shimmer without sounding EQ'd. Combined with something like the NOVA is really powerful.

6:22 Hi, full-time audio plugin developer here. I'm not sure where you got this information from. Saturation is simply a type of distortion (can honestly just be used to refer to most non-overwhelmingly-digital-and-aggressive distortions, or not). I also really don't know why you think distortion takes away frequencies, do you have a source? "Distortion" tends to be used to refer to any nonlinearities applied to the audio, and this will *always* introduce harmonics to the audio. Assuming this is what you mean by "adds frequencies", distortion definitely does this. Actually, it isn't even really possible to create a plugin that can just remove harmonics, without getting things like polyphonic keytracking involved in the simplest of cases and artificial intelligence involved in what is probably most cases.

Thanks so much❤️❤️🧡🧡

Man, thx you bro, you save my life.

Excellent video. Thank You! New subscriber.

Vinyl, heck yes. Gotta try Klanghelm IVGI out too. And seriously, Tdr nova is so damn good - only downside is that it takes quite some cpu and ram if you start slapping it everywhere

aye thanks !

I stopped using stereoizers. I realized they aren't needed. I prefer panning my guitar far L/R and then offsetting one track anywhere from 3-20 milliseconds (usually I find the spot that lets vocals cut through the most)

Thanks Dylon..

see I love that you put klanghelm cuz everyone hypes softube but klanghelm is sooooooo much more organic to my ears

Legend!!

@Musician on a Mission Was looking for the Slate Revival plugin and couldn't find a download

the slate revival needs ilok something, is it worth dowloading their download manager etc? great video by the way! :)

Killer stuff thanks

Wow, that Revival plugin sounds great. Hornet VU is excellent, such a time saver when preparing a multi-track recording for mixing. It's been v4 for ages now by the way, not sure why you're reviewing v3 in a two week old video. Edit - If anyone has worked out how to download Revival, then please share : )

Thank u my brother from another MOTHER 💙

Hey there. Great video! Love the plugins, downloading some already. Thanks so much. The Slate is not free, though, as far as I can see :-)

just got the new ninja guitar vst and valhalla supermassive and im hella stoked

Thanks a lot bro🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

I appreciate you!

great video but distortion definitely does not take away frequencies

DUDE WTH!!! I've had TDR Nova for years and it is my GO TO EQ AND I DID NOT KNOW IT WAS DYNAMIC OMG!!!!

yeah! great!

Very nice

Very handy plugins, thank you for the advice! Are they all available for Mac/PC? I have a Mac and needed fo know because a lot of these sound very useful

Can you post links to where to find these?

I thought the title was kinda odd but then there were a couple plugins like the doubler and mnotepad that made me go ohhh alright I get it

I like the old Elektro Studio Synths and the old creative developers for effect plugins like instant jungle and darkware plugins. if you can find the download.

Valhalla SuperMassive and FreqEcho are also free

Analog Obession with the basic, analog rack, headphones and interface and mic will give your a better start than the plugins "above" they are OK, but you want radio ready capibility in your Home Studio if you every Hope to release your OWN ALBLUM with out having an additional $3000 to go to someone elses studio

letal! 🔥🔥🔥

that slate plugin sounded great, what a bummer that you need a loki stick to use it, would have been good to mention that in the video..

Nice one Bro

Melda Notepad... you might as well use the whole free bundle. It's pretty good.

i'cant download slate revival... i don´t found the link to download in his page... can you help me? please!

Hey, with using the Hornet to gain stage, do you still normalize everything at first to -6? I saw another video where you mentioned doing that. Thanks for these videos, I'm finding a lot of great help.

Ah man that hornet has saved me soooooo much time on prep so I can get on with actual mixing!

I think I need to read up on gain staging (or if someone can help me understand). So you use the Hornet to set it at just under clipping, but then you end up compressing and limiting the signal after that and using the fader to mix it where it needs to be in the mix? Wouldn't the Hornet kill some natural-sounding dynamics, sort of like "nomalizing" everything? At any rate, they're having a sale and it's $2.45 lol. Gonna try it out.

Superb, btw, i am trying to join webinar you were talking about , that page is not available .

Great video! In your experience is there a free plugin that emulates a P90 pickup ---I have a Strat with the sensor pickups and Logic Pro X, but cannot replicate the tone of something that I want to record---I could probably get another guitar with a P90 PU but not ready to go that route yet----Many thanks Barry

Your title got me

nova is one of the greatest free plugins ever!

One of the favourite plugins in my door is a handle

You have the before and after flipped on Izotope Vinyl

Around the time you did this Izoptope Ozone 9 Elements was free. No longer have to worry about how low Logic bounces a track 😛

I recommend the ones I know: Izotope Vinyl, Izotope Ozone Imager, TDR Nova, Klanghelm IVGI, Voxengo SPAN but Melda MNotepad : 12:35 : it forces you to buy their products. 1: To get it you must download a bundle plataform, but after using it for a while you can't resize the window again giving you a message and redirecting you to the website. 2: If you want to buy a license only for the plugin you can't, you can only buy the whole bundle, for as much as I tried to find that option. 3: the default window size is not that comfort to the eyes I've been looking for a notepad to use in Ableton, I have been using the IL Notebook (Image Line FL Studio) inside Ableton. Maybe the best solution is to learn Max for Live and make my own FREE notepad.

Dude, I can NOT find the the Download link on the Slate site for Revival!! Strange! I activated it on iLok but that doesn't matter if I don't have the plugin on my computer. Any advice?

Have tried to get the Slate Revival through the link given - didn't manage as therein no Download Button/ Link for on the corresponding Slate's Page. !!! PLEASE ADVISE !!!

Thanks for the fRReeeees!

WOW so beauty

You for got to mention that your volume reference for the VU meter is set at - 18.

What version of Logic are you running? Izotope Vinyl will not install...looks like they've not upgraded the plugin in a LONG time.

Mnotepad is great! MeldaProductions has a ton of great free plugins. MEqualizer is also great. Very good mid/side options. Highly coloured.