 I've been on a mission on this channel to keep you updated with the best free plug-ins for music production, but what about the best of the best? Let's take a look at the best free plug-ins ever. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. Yes, we're going to be looking at the best free plug-ins ever, in my opinion, but we're not going to do it in the usual sense of a top 5 or a top 10. They really can't be compared in that way because they're all so different. However, what I'm going to do is try and demonstrate all of these plug-ins in one piece of music, which I'm going to create through the course of this video. Not so easy, but I got there. Now, there's different types of plug-ins here in terms of there's instrument plug-ins and there's effects plug-ins. So at the beginning of the video, it's mostly going to be about instrument plug-ins because that's when I'm creating the piece of music. Then we'll do effects towards the end when we're finishing off with a little bit of a mix. Let's get started with my favorite free drums. We're actually kind of sport for choice for free drum plug-ins, but I think that this one is the very best in terms of versatility. This is Steven Slate Drums 5. You get this player and then you get a free rock kit deluxe too. And although it's categorized as a rock kit, I can say I think it's really, really versatile. You can play it rather lightly. The velocity is quite good on it. So for example, with the snare here, just playing that from the keyboard there, you can feel that I've got reasonable amount of control there over the velocity. And also there's some nice variations of the sounds of the drums. If we go to the edit page here, for example, and I'll just click on a Tom here, you can see there's some articulations with each drum. So this one's got the main Tom sound and then you've got the rim click. Yes, you've got those two variations. Not a big deal handy. But what if we go to something like this snare or click on the snare? You can see there's a lot of variations on the snare. Yeah, I find that really, really handy. And the fact that you can adjust the volume of each of those articulations. By the way, they're all, of course, available on different keys on your keyboard. Moving along then to something like the hi hat. This is really cool. You go to the hi hat, you've got the closed sound and then you've got different amounts of open sounding hats as well. So listen to this. You can gradually make that open up. I find that very, very useful, especially when you're transitioning, say, from a verse through to a chorus and you gradually have that hi hat opening up can sound really, really natural. Now you also have other controls over things like the velocity curve, which you've got over here, a tactic, a sustain release so that you can really you've got an envelope there to change this. The sound that can be very, very useful indeed. You've also got the ability to mix over here. Now it's got an inbuilt mixer, which you can see here, but you can also output each of these drums to different channels in the console in your main door. I find that really handy when I'm deep in the mixing process. I don't really want to go into plugins so you can just adjust the volume of each of the drums from there. That's very, very handy indeed. We do have the ability to remap the drums. So if you're used to the drums being on different keys from a different plugin, you can remap them there. And we've also got some grooves as well. I've got the pop straight one loaded up here. We'll just listen to that briefly. So in my demo piece of music that I'm making, it sounds like there's a pretty simple drum part. So that's our drum part. What would you want to add to drums? Well, bass, of course. Let's have a look at our bass guitar. Whereas we're kind of sport for choice for drum plugins, I don't think that's the case with electric bass guitar. In my opinion, this one just totally outshines any of the competition. This is the Ample Bass P2 light from Ample Sound. It's based on a precision bass guitar. And I just love the basic sound. If you'll excuse the pun sounds like this. I just love those sort of buzzy sounds of things. Of course, there's a bunch of articulations you can do muting and you can do slides and hammers and all that kind of stuff. I'm not going to be going through it today because I've covered it in enough videos already. I'm just going to be using this basic guitar sound with the drums with a very simple piece sounding like this. You get the idea. Let's move on to acoustic guitar. I'm afraid it's a no brainer again in terms of the acoustic guitar. This is Ample Sound again with Ample Guitar M2 light, the light version of their Martin guitar. Let's just have a listen. Just a really nice sounding acoustic guitar and particularly good with arpeggios like I was doing there. Of course, again, like the bass guitar, there's lots of variations in sound that you get with these key switches down here and effects and all that kind of good stuff. I'm not going to be going through that, but I will say that for this particular piece, I'm using this feature. This is the doubler. OK, if I just switch that on and you have a listen again to that first chord. It's mimicking a technique which we'd often use in recording where we do sort of double up guitars and it gives them a nice wide stereo feel. So how does it sound in the piece so far? You get the idea. Let's move on to our next instrument, which is piano. Well, by the way, if you are finding this video useful, could you go ahead and hit the like button for me? Do it right away so that you don't forget. If you're not enjoying this video, hit the dislike button twice. Yeah, I know it never gets old. And if you do like this kind of content, make sure you subscribe and ring the bell so that you're notified about my other videos. Now back to this video. There's actually a lot of really good free piano plug-ins out there. And some of you may disagree with me that this is the best one. And I think that's just a matter of taste, to be honest with you. This is my favorite one. It's the Monastery Grand Library from Melda Production. And you can use this free library from within the free version of M Sound Factory from Melda Production. Now, it's got a rather thick sound to it. Let's just have a quick listen, which may not be to everyone's taste, but that's what I want for this piece of music, particularly. Now, if I play it with all of the other instruments so far, you're not easily going to be able to hear it because I've got it kind of low in the mix, but it's there to sort of help the acoustic guitar along with a slight variation on the arpeggio. Let's just have a quick listen to it by itself so that you can clearly hear it and then we'll play it with everything else. So very simple as you can hear and with everything else. Now, we're just going to step away from virtual instruments for a moment because there is an effects plug in, which I quickly want to show you. Now, I'm not only using virtual instruments in this piece of music, I'm also using some electric guitar and for the amp sim, I've chosen Amplitube CS. Now, I actually have the full version of Amplitube, but for this demo, I've committed to using only the features which are in CS, that's the free version. OK, now that comes with 41 models of gear, including 10 stompboxes, effects and five amps with matching cabs. Now, with this sort of cleanish sounding rhythm guitar that I've got loaded up here, I'm using this Amplitube American Tube Clean Sound. I'm using this with this four by 10 open vintage cabinet, which you do get with the CS version. Also, this pedal, just one of the pedals, this overdrive pedal and I've used a couple of effects there as well. I've also got an overdriven guitar for the lead part in there as well, which has got a slight variation on that sound. But first of all, let's just have a listen to the two lead sorry, rhythm guitars by themselves. I've recorded them for left and right speakers, done a bit of doubling. Let's just have a quick listen to that. So you get the idea there. And as I say, I've also got some lead guitar in there as well. So let's have a listen to what we've got so far with the rhythm and the lead guitar as well. You can hear the rest of that later, but you're getting the idea now. Now, that really helps. I mean, apart from having a lead part there, the rhythm guitars just help to sort of thicken things up in the rhythm section. That's why I've got them there. It's crazy. I have to run through this really quickly. We don't have enough time, but this is absolutely massive. This is the BBC Symphony Orchestra Discovery Edition from Spitfire Audio. It's a complete orchestra, including all of the different string sections here, all of the woodwind section here, the brass and all of the other different types of instruments as well. And they've all got different articulations with them. Now, the little catch to this is you need to sign up first and then they'll send you the link to get it for free 14 days after sign up. If you can't wait that long, then you can actually buy it. I think it's around about 50 bucks or so. But it does sound absolutely wonderful, especially when you consider that you can get it for free. Now, I'm using it in a really simple way in our piece. I'm just using violins, cello and the bass strings for a sort of a stompy section underneath everything else. Sounds like this. Very simple as you can hear. And with everything else, you can sort of barely hear it, but it adds a little bit of thickness in there. I'm really not doing it justice. You could write whole sort of orchestral pieces on this and they can sound great if you're prepared to spend the time with it. So definitely get this one if you know what's good for you and you need some strings in your pieces of music or any other orchestral instruments. If you need just one free synthesizer, then I would say this is definitely this is vital, a very well known in the synth community and very well regarded. There's so much you can do with it. If you're into programming since there's lots you can do here, as you can probably guess from the interface. But if you're not into that, you just want some great sort of presets for a synth, things like pads and all kinds of different things in there. Anyway, then this is fantastic. Now, I'm just going to play you a very small selection of what's available here. OK, because there's loads of presets you get with the free version. Let's just go through five or six of them. Cinema Bells is the first one. You get an idea of the complexity of sound you can get there. Moving on from there, dispersed grit. Nice, a lovely bass sound there. Easy mallet could be useful. Moving on from there, Solomon. Or Salomon. Oh, yeah. Moving on from there, snow crash. It's amazing you get this for free, isn't it? I mean, I'm not using any of these in the actual piece. I'm not going to spoil it for you. OK, I'll leave it till the end of the video when you hear the final demo. I've just used it in the intro. We'll leave it till then. So that's all of the instrumentation. What about the effects? Well, I don't use an awful lot of different effects on my productions. But in terms of free ones, I use a lot of effects from this one company, Tokyo Dawn Records. I've got one on the screen here. It's one of their compressors called Monotoc. Now, I've used this on some of the instruments individually, especially on some individual drums, just to control them a little. But I'm also using it on the master bus as well. It's just a straightforward compressor, really. It's got all the controls you would need. It's got threshold here. It's got attack, release, make up, gain, ratio. You've also got a high pass filter up here as well and a soft knee control as well. You've got this odd sort of alpha, beta, sigma control in here, which creates some sort of variations in the way the attack and release sort of behave. That's a sort of very quick overview of it, but it's very useful indeed. Now, the next one I want to draw your attention to is called Nova. This is really, really handy. This is the EQ. Now, it hasn't got that many bands. It's got four there. I generally find that's enough for most things, unless I'm being particularly surgical. It's also got a high and a low pass filter as well. But what I really love about this is when you quickly want to do some dynamic EQ, that's available here as well. So I could select a node like this and just click and start adjusting the threshold. What's going to happen there is you're going to actually start to compress those frequencies as they kind of get a little bit out of control if you like, or you can actually expand them as well. But if I just place the music. Just look at that band there, you can see it's moving up and down. So it's not sort of maintaining that EQ setting at a constant level. It's adjusting it depending on the signal that it's getting in that frequency range. That's a very quick explanation of dynamic EQ. But I can promise you as you get further into mixing, it can be a very, very useful feature indeed. It's just incredible that it's available in this free plugin. This is Nova from Tokyo Dawn Records. Moving on to another one by Tokyo Dawn Records. We have this one, Katelnikov. Now this is another compressor, but this is sort of specially made for mastering or for sort of buses. So I'm actually using this one, I believe. Let me have a quick look. I'm using this one on my master bus. I'm using it a little bit on my drums as well, my drum bus that is. So it's sort of tailored towards that kind of thing. But I think you can actually use it for other compression tasks as well. What I really like about it, I mean, it's got loads and loads of features. But what I really like about it is it's got a couple of different ways of treating release. You can base it upon peak values or on RMS values, sort of the average signal. I find that is really nice for mastering compression. And you can sort of use a combination of the two. You can find that on many of my other videos. Look them up. Now, that's the third one I've got here from Tokyo Dawn Records. I think they've actually got some other free plugins as well. I'm probably not using here. I would suggest head on over to their website. Check the link for these ones in the description and just download all of them. I mean, they're beautifully implemented. I think they've got great UIs, but they sound fantastic as well. So those are the first three plugins that I'm using. What are the next ones? Now, I've been using a lot of transparent plugins so far. There's not a lot of color and saturation, which has been added. You often can add saturation as a byproduct of plugins, especially, of course, things like tape saturation from tape plugins and also compression is very commonly going to add some some saturation and also sometimes EQs and things like that as well. I haven't added anything so far from the plugins I've been using. So I'm using this plugin G-Sat Plus. Now, this is fairly new to my collection and I haven't had it in many videos, maybe just one, because it's a fairly new plugin. But I've been very impressed with it so far, really easy to use as well. You just pop it in the track where you want to use it. Now, that could be individual tracks or as I'm using it on the Master Bus. You could, of course, use it on other buses as well. And then you just switch on saturation here. You've got some different modes, but most of us are going to use stereo here. Then you can add odd and even harmonics. Now, I'm keeping it fairly smooth sounding here. So I'm just using all odd harmonics and then you can add some different stages there as well, even got oversampling in there just to refine the sound somewhat there. Now, just a little byproduct for this, the metering is great. I really like the metering here and there's lots of options for that metering. I could potentially just use this plugin for metering without actually metering without actually adding any saturation. But to be quite honest with you, if I don't want to use this style of metering, the one that I would go to is definitely span from Voxengo. This is really a bit of a classic, to be honest with you. Many, many people use this, including me. I use a lot for gain staging when I really want some big meters to look at and I want some different ways of monitoring. So I may want to be monitoring peak or maybe wanted to monitor the sort of average level with sort of different RMS type ways of metering, LUFS, et cetera, that kind of thing. So I use it for that. But you may want to keep an eye on certain frequencies as well. Just play the track and you can see it in action as well as the sort of main the sort of default view there that you can see. There's a bunch of other different ways of visualizing here, you know, depending on what your needs are at the time. It's just an overall kind of Swiss army knife for metering. I love it very much. So that is spanned from Voxengo. Now, one of the things that I want to do and we're kind of going to be most almost talking about only the mastering from now on is a couple of plugins which I use at this stage. The first one is for some imaging. Now, this is from Isotope and this is Imager 2. They have a previous version of this, but I think around about a year or so ago now they've updated it to version 2. It's very straightforward to use. It's not overly sophisticated or overly precise. You have to be a little bit careful with imaging plugins sometimes. But most of the time I find it can just add a nice bit of width to our piece of music. So I have popped it in the master bus there. I've got it up rather high at the moment. I probably use it in a slightly more tame way down here. Of course, they do have commercial versions of this plugin, which give you control over different frequency bands. So this is over the whole spectrum, but it is, nonetheless, quite a handy plugin to have around. Now, probably the final plugin that's going to be in your chain. Well, probably your metering is always going to be the final plugin, but the final plugin, which actually changes the sound at all, would be a limiter of some kind. Now, this is really new to my collection in terms of a free limiter. This is called Unlimited. I'm trying to think who made it. Oh, a sonic anomaly. It's right there at the top. I'll put a link for that in the description. This is really worth getting hold of great for sort of modern metering where you're going to care about your loves, of course, most of the time, you'll be looking at around a bit minus 14 here for a streaming, maybe up to minus 11 for some things. So it's you could do lots of different things with this. But the basic use of it is to, as I say, have it in its limiter mode down here. You're going to play a song and keep an eye on the metering here. You can adjust your threshold and here again, louder there. And you would be looking at a whole song and just, for example, I would be using it just to get that love's value right most of the time. Also, you've got this for controlling the sort of peak. I would often have true peaks switched on and usually I'm looking at around about minus one there. So once you've got that set, then nothing's going to go over that. Nice interface, by the way, I have to say, I really like this one. I haven't covered this in any other videos, but I was looking out for one I was looking out for one and this just really fits the bill in terms of the final plugin that you're going to use to get your music to really healthy levels before you send it out to the world. Now, that's all of the plugins. How does everything sound together? Let's have a listen to the demo. I bet there's some of you who disagree with my picks for the best free plugins ever. That's OK. We can disagree and still be friends. Let me know about it in the comments down below. Which plugins did I miss that you find invaluable and can't do without? Now, if you do happen to agree with my picks, I want to know from you. What's the very best plugin? Which one could you absolutely not do without? Love to hear from you about that. Now, do check the links in the description down below for all of the plugins I've mentioned in this video. And while you're there, check out my link for Patreon.com, where for this one dollar per month, you can help me help you by making more videos like this and I'll see you in the next video.