The 5 Best Free Plug-ins for Mixing
Looking for more plug-ins without spending extra cash? While you might dream of racks of new and expensive gear to add to your recording studio, sometimes “free” is the best way to get started. Checkout our top picks for the best free plug-ins on the market right now!
The Softube Saturation Knob is an excellent free plug-in not only because of how easy it is to use, but because it is actually quite excellent at what it does.
The Saturation Knob adds tube-ish sounding saturation to any track and you can adjust via the use of one big knob. As far as saturation plug-ins go, the Saturation Knob sounds amazing and gives a much needed harmonic boost to vocals and instruments alike.
Izotope has always been known to release incredibly powerful plug-ins for professionals at a fairly high price. The Izotope Vocal Doubler, however, maintains that same quality without the price tag.
This free plugin is designed to enhance your vocals with a natural doubling effect. Using both delay and chorus effects, the Vocal Doubler replays the exact recording multiple times with the ability to turn mono vocal tracks into stereo vocals.
The Izotope Vocal Doubler plug-in is perfect for any vocal track that might be too thin or weak on its own.
The famous metering plug-in, Voxengo Span, earns its reputation because of how accurate and detailed its metering capabilities are. It’s a useful plug-in for mastering, general mixing, plus a reliable meter- all for free!
Pitch correction plug-ins such as “Autotune” can be quite pricey and most cheaper recreations don’t quite work as well as the professional versions. We know it can be hard to trust a free autotune-style pitch-correction plug-in.
However, the Melda MAudtoPitch plug-in has really shown itself to be a fantastic and powerful pitch correction tool for free. It works within the same style as autotune itself and is quite intuitive. It can even achieve the very robotic autotune sound we hear so often in music today.
The Valhalla Freq Echo is a very powerful clean delay plug-in with the capability to achieve a wide variety of delay sounds, all for free. On the surface, it’s just a basic delay with a low cut and high cut that causes the delays to degrade in quality over time, similar to a classic tape delay.
However, the Freq Echo has one particularly unique feature. The shift knob in the center allows you to change the resonant frequency of the delays themselves. If you use automation to control the shift knob and program it to change throughout time, you can achieve some very wacky and creative sounds.
These plug-ins may differ in usability but one thing they all share is their impressive capabilities. We recommend that you try some, if not all of these plug-ins for yourself.
Checkout other free plug-ins on the web and let us know in the comments any of your favorites!
