Recomendations for cheap or free VSTs? (Less than $20.)

[kludge]

For more effect-y things, Soundtoys has a sale once or twice a year on many of their plugins. I’ve gotten really good use out of their Phasemistress and Crystallizer.

What really matters to me, though, are bread and butter things… compression, eq, and reverb. For reverb, Valhalla’s stuff at $50 each is a STEAL. ValhallaRoom can cover all your needs forever.

For compression and eq, I’ve found it worthwhile to actually pay for a Plugin Alliance subscription, because they deliver so much, and their stuff is so good. I totally rely on their:

Cleansweep Pro (the free version is great, too, and this is on EVERY track)
Townhouse compressor (SSL style bus compressor)
Masterdesk (easy DIY mastering)
Lindell 80 series (Neve console strip)
MC77 (1176 style compressor)
various saturation tools

But honestly? If you can find a decent free SSL style compressor, an impulse-based reverb, and an eq you like, the rest is just technique. It’s like playing guitar. A great guitar helps, but once you get good at it you can play any old guitar and sound great.

Here’s some stuff I do that works well… in a complex mix, I group tracks into three buses - “near”, “far”, and “drums” (and bass guitar lives outside these buses). Each bus gets an SSL bus compressor. The near bus gets a slow attack and fast release. This lets the attack of up-front things through and makes them more present. The far bus gets a fast attack and a slow release. This mushes things together and pushes them to the back. I also put a broad-strokes kind of eq on each bus. Balance the tracks within the bus, then balance the buses to each other.

Each bus gets its own reverb too - not a separate reverb for each instrument, but rather for each bus. So there’s a near reverb that is relatively small and bright, and a far reverb that is bigger and darker. The shared reverbs blend buses together even more. I sometimes like to have a single ambience type reverb (very shallow) that every track feeds into.

And all of this is going into an SSL bus compressor. That’s the first thing I add to a new project, and I always mix into a bus compressor. Automatic release here. None of these bus compressors should be doing much more than 2db of compression. The goal isn’t to squish, but to separate into groups, and then blend the groups back together.

With this technique, I can mix with literally any plugins, as long as I have an eq and a bus-style compressor and a reverb.

[robj144]

Originally Posted by kludge

For more effect-y things, Soundtoys has a sale once or twice a year on many of their plugins. I’ve gotten really good use out of their Phasemistress and Crystallizer.

What really matters to me, though, are bread and butter things… compression, eq, and reverb. For reverb, Valhalla’s stuff at $50 each is a STEAL. ValhallaRoom can cover all your needs forever.

For compression and eq, I’ve found it worthwhile to actually pay for a Plugin Alliance subscription, because they deliver so much, and their stuff is so good. I totally rely on their:

Cleansweep Pro (the free version is great, too, and this is on EVERY track)
Townhouse compressor (SSL style bus compressor)
Masterdesk (easy DIY mastering)
Lindell 80 series (Neve console strip)
MC77 (1176 style compressor)
various saturation tools

But honestly? If you can find a decent free SSL style compressor, an impulse-based reverb, and an eq you like, the rest is just technique. It’s like playing guitar. A great guitar helps, but once you get good at it you can play any old guitar and sound great.

Here’s some stuff I do that works well… in a complex mix, I group tracks into three buses - “near”, “far”, and “drums” (and bass guitar lives outside these buses). Each bus gets an SSL bus compressor. The near bus gets a slow attack and fast release. This lets the attack of up-front things through and makes them more present. The far bus gets a fast attack and a slow release. This mushes things together and pushes them to the back. I also put a broad-strokes kind of eq on each bus. Balance the tracks within the bus, then balance the buses to each other.

Each bus gets its own reverb too - not a separate reverb for each instrument, but rather for each bus. So there’s a near reverb that is relatively small and bright, and a far reverb that is bigger and darker. The shared reverbs blend buses together even more. I sometimes like to have a single ambience type reverb (very shallow) that every track feeds into.

And all of this is going into an SSL bus compressor. That’s the first thing I add to a new project, and I always mix into a bus compressor. Automatic release here. None of these bus compressors should be doing much more than 2db of compression. The goal isn’t to squish, but to separate into groups, and then blend the groups back together.

With this technique, I can mix with literally any plugins, as long as I have an eq and a bus-style compressor and a reverb.

You say the bus is the first thing you add to any project. If this is your standard practice, do you have a project template saved? If you don't, this would save you a ton of time.

Anyhow, thanks for response, but the reason I'm asking is I'm looking for new VSTs in an attempt to get me thinking of different ideas. Sometimes a new instrument or effect will get me thinking differently.

I have a good selection of standard VST effects already though.