FREE Alternatives to 10 LEGENDARY Plugins!

[@TheRealFieryBiscuits]

There is a free Oxford Inflator clone called JS Inflator, so good it nulls.

[@brucewayne251]

Yeah and Airwindows has Inflamer/Sweeten.

[@urniurl]

A great freebie I came across yesterday is Neural Note, it allows you to convert audio to midi. I use the standalone version but it works as vst also. Works great.

[@stephenbrodeur]

I've been waiting for a really good audio to MIDI converter. I'll check it out. Thanks!

[@dinsfire8489]

niiiiiice

[@mvyper]

I've been using TDR Nova for years, and I recently upgraded to the Gentleman edition. It's worth every penny and more. Such an amazing EQ.

[@SamLoose]

Love everything about the plugin!

[@genuinefreewilly5706]

Totally agree the free Ozone 11 EQ is a wonderous tool. Just started using it. Its more than a mastering EQ As a Reaper user there is a potpourii of free js plugins. I enjoy several of the Tukan plugins. Just me but I really like his true Peak limiter The Melda suite and Kilohearts free tools are also great. If you are in a hurry to compose, the kilohearts snapin vsts are great. ie the tape stop is brilliant, They work well in Reaper, no issues using long chains of them Free Instruments there are some brilliant ones of late, but that is a different topic,

[@JoelBrandonMedia]

Thanks so much! Amazing that Ozone EQ is free...all of this is invaluable!

[@Studio22mix]

Great to see so many great free plugins these days, I easily could get a great mix with free plugins only. My mastering chain is free plugins only and I’m happy 😃

[@danyavilaoficial]

Melda Mdynamic Eq has been my go to plug-in dynamic Eq for almost 12 years. I remember I used to work with UAD Cambridge and automate it while vocals where singing. It was a demanding job until I discovered this plug-in One word…..AMAZING !!!

[@sparella]

NovaGE's dynamics has look ahead, which is really handy for side chain ducking. Other than that one use case, MDynamicEQ is my go-to as well. It was nice of them to give it away this year.

[@DeltaWhiskeyBravo13579]

I like MDynamicEQ. I think I got mine free on the anniversary a few months ago. It works well, however before I got that I was using TDR Nova.

[@pluginplugio]

thats a really cool comparison of free and paid plugins

[@Sool101]

Refreshing to see the no nonsense, get in your basket (daw) approach. Yes, after many plugins downloaded even I found out, it's probably already in your DAW the whole time. However, my DAW didn't have a clipper and after many attempts, Kazrog has both a free and payed version and I love that. Bought the payed version since there's visual confirmation and when it comes to fiddling around with sound, clipping is the only thing I want some visuals on. As a tool, not because I'm insecure about overdoing it without hearing that I am, I'm totally not. No really.. Not at all..

[@_thaaatguy]

Nice video, man. One thing you mentioned about the Ozone 11 eq is that it can do dynamics but it can't. I still enjoy it but that was the thing that made me want to download it in the first place. Cheers for the good content.

[@SamLoose]

My bad, you can’t win them all!

[@loranifamily]

8:35 Thanks for the great overview, loved it. Regarding izotope RX alternatives: when it comes to analyzing the signal, I agree. There is no real alternative free. But when it comes to the processing side, I found that izotope‘s own RX Elements (the very affordable low end version) comes with a lot single plugins that de-hum, de-click, de-noise, de-ess etc. If you are a musician and record in a controlled environment and only need little quality tweaks, this works very well. Maybe not so much if you are an open-air podcaster.

[@Metalbass10000]

The MixCraft Professional Studio I use comes with Melodyne auto tune/pitch correction, and it's exceptional.

[@sparella]

Your Melodyne Essential license from MC will also work in other DAWs too, btw.

[@oldman8277]

Silk Vocal is working out really well, but it's no longer free, fairly cheap right now though. Of course this is if one is willing to endure the Waves process.

[@Killadey]

Great video mate, subbed!

[@davidbasscooper9540]

I've subbed to Sam for 2 years now, he's great

[@nlhmusicofficial]

Thanks for this video. The Free effect bundle from Melda is also totally awesome and free. I’m using MSaturator on basses and leads and it sounds totally amazing

[@SamLoose]

I’m going to have to check it out 👌

[@TazzSmk]

I'd say TDR Nova is actually relevant alternative to Pro-Q3 as it can operate as parallel dynamic EQ or not :) of recent plugins, Klanghelm TENS jr. is fantastic free srping reverb, and TDR Prism is beautiful free analyzer (will replace free Voxengo Span for sure), honorable mentions: ERA Bundle 6 (free, abandonware) set of cleanup plugins, Polyverse Wider free pseudo stereo widener without phase issues, Valhalla free plugins SuperMassive + FreqEcho + SpaceModulator, Toneboosters Goniometer free stereo image analysis/visualizer ;)

[@SamLoose]

Those are some awesome suggestions!

[@DeltaWhiskeyBravo13579]

This is a good list. Mine line many others will be different. I've got several Melda multiband units, just got the Soundtoys 5.4 - haven't even got to use all those yet, Pulsar Audio Mu, Massive, Smasher, 1178, Relab LX480 Essentials led into LX480 V4 dual engine, recently added Fuse Audio Labs vpre-72 free, Techivation T-De-Esser, TDR Nova, Kotelnikov, Molot, Antares Choir plus Auto tune 2 month free, Cherry Audio Stardust 201, LVC Limited-MAX and Clipped-MAX, Klanghelm Vu meters, MJUC, SDRR, YouLean meter. Lots of free MIDI instruments as well.

[@jespere.thomsen2396]

Soundtoys Little Plate is also free now (until dec 1). So simple to use, and just sounds great…to the extent I paid for it when it wasn’t free.

[@SamLoose]

Thanks!

[@brucewayne251]

I highly recommend Rare by Analog Obsession for a Pultec EQ. 8x oversamping. I also use Waves Studiorack to do L/R dual mono Pultec EQ for crazy depth. Also use a dual mono compressor to balance the left and right volume.

[@sparella]

I stopped using AO when I discovered that plugin updates are not backwards compatible. Be careful.

[@kburson2008]

Thank you for putting this together. It is very helpful.

[@DarkSideofSynth]

TAL offer plenty of nice plugins, their reverb 4 is great, it can become really massive, there are also older versions, delays, synths, choruses... Limiter 6 is great, and so are TDR's EQs and compressors Melda also great stuff Cakewalk, which is itself free, gives you all of the above and more: a light version of Melodyne, a Bricasti reverb emulation, all the famous compressors and channel strips, saturation, transient designers, guitar amps...

[@g7thcapo]

Fantastic video Sam! Keep up the great content :)

[@MrKingclaude1]

great well learned tutos , thank you man!

[@SamLoose]

Glad you like them!

[@Skynet_11]

Awesome video. Do you know of a good alternative for the C- suite? the room denoiser plugin.

[@L0ps1d3]

thank you so much for this video.

[@Al69BfR]

Waves recently released Silk Vocal which seems to be a „soothe 2“ primarily for vocals. But as far as I know Waves Audio, they will probably soon release a more sophisticated Silk for general purpose which is a payed plugin.

[@Dave-Rough-Diamond-Dunn]

I think it's already listed as $79. Edit, just looked, $79, but on special for $24.99 atm.

[@typ0_music]

Yeah like the other comment says, silk vocals was only free during Black Friday weekend.

[@chrisrose1508]

I bought silk but have yet to find an application that it actually improves. I’m doing country style music and maybe it’s just not the right plugin for country vocals.

[@Dave-Rough-Diamond-Dunn]

@@chrisrose1508 I don't do country music, but I've been experimenting with Silk and I found that it can be helpful at certain stages when mixing a vocal. It's good after the first round of light compression and limiting on a raw vocal, but before you get to actually processing the vocal properly, and I found that it can have it's place towards the end of the processing too, if you target a specific area, but you need to have the speed and precision around or above 40 on each. I think it does have it's place, but it's a long way from being a silver bullet.

[@smokescreentom]

Great job bruv 'ting x

[@esahm373]

I don't think the free Ozone EQ does dynamic eqing. You might be mistaken there.

[@val_de_mez]

As a Cubase user I say YES YES YES

[@Beatsbasteln]

I wouldn't compare realtime vocal tuning plugins with offline processing ones. Ofc Melodyne or Vari Audio are cleaner than Autotune, but that's just because you physically can't calculate a latency-free pitch detection and correction in realtime. So these plugins try to find a compromise between aspects like latency, performance, sound quality, pitch detection and certain other features, to make sure that you can hear yourself with an autotuned voice while recording vocals already, a unique experience that the offline processing tools can not give you. That being said, you could compare Autotune to not only MAutopitch, but also Kerovee, GSnap or Graillon, if you are searching for free alternatives.

[@wagnerbertolino2]

Outstanding video. Thank you.

[@SamLoose]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@SomjyotiDey]

Kiive Audio has a free Pultec emulation called "Warmy" and is closely accurate.

[@esahm373]

And comes with tons of lowend DC rumble...

[@SomjyotiDey]

@@esahm373 yeah I agree.. You cannot expect the UAD emulation type sound in a free Pultec emulation come on 😂

[@esahm373]

@@SomjyotiDey Why not? There are plenty of well-coded free plugins that outperform UAD ones.

[@SomjyotiDey]

@@esahm373 no dude, I couldn't get a free pultec emulation which is close to the UAD one. The new cubase one does the job well but not as great as the UAD one. Maybe everyone has their own taste.

[@MrKingclaude1]

man you made my day, thank you so much!

[@SamLoose]

My pleasure!

[@davidbasscooper9540]

very good video Sam, will save me a few bucks

[@hisroyalsucculence]

Ozone sadly doesn't have cross track resonance detection. But it's crazy the number of features their EQ has and how fast they are to integrate features of other expensive EQ plugins (e.g., SplitEQ).

[@robertl.6919]

To my knowledge the free Ozone 11 Eq isn’t dynamic. As a Studio One owner, the included multiband/dynamic Eq is just right. So are the multiple instances of emulated compressors and Eq. But free instead of paying isn’t an argument when paying $30 for Ozone 11 element, or their Neoverb, or for the Elysia Brainworx version gets you the real deal. A single hardware unit of any good gear is at least $2K. With that budget in mind you would probably get all of them plugins on the market. That’s one $5 cheapest Starbucks coffee a day you need to keep on going tweaking your free plugin version to do what the real deal can do, plus missing the fun of having the real deal. And 12 months later, it’s free. And you get the mojo. Come on…

[@EnochManisis]

Very informative

[@mcpribs]

Dragonfly has several reverbs that are great.

[@Andonchoto]

Maximus all the way

[@MIHAO]

cheers bro

[@Raul-ey2ck]

My mac os x cant read this plugin please 🙏 help

[@_BangDroid_]

A distinction should be made for free plugins that let you freely download, and "free" plugins that force you to install intrusive DRM. Totally unnecessary if it's really free. But it's actually "free".

[@FirstPrincipleMusic]

What causes Pre-Echo when you convert to mp3? its been doing my head in fr ages!! cheers !

[@DSWL_]

appreciated

[@RaqueebHassan]

Is Ozone 11 EQ Free version has dynamic EQ?

[@inwex8350]

Subbed

[@stupidusername38]

Tbproaudio DSEQ a great alternative to Soothe

[@SamLoose]

I’m going to take a look straight away!

[@Lewis_Emblack]

@@SamLoose I demoed Soothe along with DSEQ, Smooth Operator and Toneboosters Sibilance with them all doing a similar function, and DSEQ easily won due to it's sheer amount of control and transparency. Highly recommended.

[@JohnLynagh]

Stupid question, but when would you need to use a pre-amp and what is its main purpose (besides the obvious amplification of the signal)? Thanks Sam.

[@SamLoose]

No stupid questions 😀 Generally the preamp plugin emulations will impart a colour on the signal as if you’d recorded through that preamp in the first place. So if you track a vocal through a really clean preamp, then run it through a plugin like the TUBA, it’s as if you’ve recorded through a tube preamp due to what it’s imparting on the signal. That’s the theory anyway!

[@ThyLordMysterion]

Recording through an external preamp will boost the signal and allow you to keep your input gain on your interface a lot lower, resulting in less noise/hiss being recorded. This is especially true for cheaper interfaces, which usually introduce a lot of noise when you crank up the gain. I love using the Focusrite ISA One preamp when recording vocals. It adds some nice coloration and makes my vocals sound much more professional, as opposed to just plugging my mic straight into my interface.

[@anthonythompson1659]

the version of ozone eq i have doesn't have dynamic processing. how did you get the free version to do it

[@ettiennelane9173]

Yeah. Same here. I installed it yesterday and it appeared so 1995. Then I just carried on with my Toneboosters EQ.

[@wizzy2600]

exactly, i found only TDR Nova can dynamicly process and its free

[@anthonythompson1659]

@@wizzy2600 right,..thanx 4 all of your vids. u guys REALLY help us and its appreciated very much. have a great day

[@anthonythompson1659]

@@ettiennelane9173 mdynamics eq for me. 15 bucks and ujam upright 4 free at plugin boutique

[@bigfreak58]

Great video and valuabe info sometime you are paying more for brand name, thanks us independent artist love you😂

[@JACKSONHUNTLEYYT]

Wish there were an alternative to gulfoss

[@robertcarrillo928]

Ozone 11 EQ is not free...it's $99. If you read the wording closely it says it's a free download.

[@SamLoose]

It’s definitely free. It isn’t a free download and then you pay $99 to use it, it’s free to download and free to use.

[@leearmitage]

Analog Obsession do some great stuff

[@SamLoose]

Big fan!

[@leearmitage]

@@SamLoose me too going to try the Rare plugin out cheers mate

[@sparella]

Did they fix their (lack of) backwards compatibility issue?

[@ezrashanti]

​@@sparella+1?

[@PhormaticBeats]

does all these plugins work in Ableton live?

[@SamLoose]

All should work. As long as you’re on Windows, Logic Channel should work too 👌

[@breku80]

Soothe2 is not free, trial 20 days, price 199

[@SamLoose]

I’m aware of that, TDR Nova is the free alternative I was suggesting 👍

[@marekvoosen]

I don't like this kind of videos anymore. Stop it and earn money with real knowledge

[@podespault]

Don't watch

[@danyavilaoficial]

Please explain…. What is so bad about it ? Thanks

[@afiefzaki6265]

You don’t like it but you read the title and you voluntarily clicked on it anyway? Who’s fault is that?

[@smokescreentom]

What do you want a video about? :) why not Suggest one for him? I’m sure Sam will be able to plug some gaps in your knowledge for you if you have a good suggestion 😊

[@wernerclarssen2939]

This seems to me like a troll-auto-comment. Mention reasons!

[@htmm5167]

Inflator is just a waveshaper

[@sparella]

Well, it's 2 really good waveshapes with a blend between them, and that times 3 in multiband mode.

[@Its_just_me_again]

soothe2 is $500? the 30 day trial is only is free :( looks great

[@SamLoose]

I’m not sure it’s quite €500. TDR Nova is the cheaper alternative I’m giving here 🙂