Suggestions for VST's

[revporl]

I'm in the UK on lockdown so am going to spend some of my free time learning how to use Reaper DAW (my mate who is a composer for BBC radio and Theatre says that is the best one, as he is classical and also a Rush fan I'm assuming he knows his onions-also he can offer me support)

What I would like us recommendations for free (or v cheap) instrument DAWs, proggy stuff, analogue synths, organs, pianos (electric and acoustic), mellotrons and guitars that don't sound awful.

Please let me know which you've found to be the best

[Momentvm]

Hello,
I'm using free vst's in my productions (see my other thread, don't want to spam here)

First of all you can get Native Instruments freebies (Kontakt Player with some usable sounds for example)
Great free drumkits are Sennheiser DrumMica (needs free Kontakt Player), even better Steven Slate Drums Sampler 5, MT Power drumkit is also kind of usable. Anarchy Drums feel fine as well.
Ample P Bass Lite is a bass VSTi which is nice
Redtron SE is a nice mellotron (but I couldn't get it to recall my settings in Cakewalk, so I immediately bounce it)
Keyzone Classic is a very usable set of piano sounds.
VL122 is an OK hammond recreation. Use it with SpinnerLE to get a very decent organ sound.
SQ8L is a nice Ensoniq SQ recreation (can read SysEx from the original thing)
OB-xd is a virtual Oberheim synth, nice as well.
MrTramp is a very nice e-piano.
PG-8x is a good virtual synth too.
If you need a string synth (like arp solina for instance) you should get eSLine String.

Every one of these plugins is FREE.

I used kvraudio website to browse for much of these.

Oh, and I also use Sforzando .SFZ player with some free orchestral libs. My last song (which I posted here) uses these as well as many above.

Cheers!
Chris/Momentvm

[Zeuhlmate]

Beringer makes cheap clones of Moogs a.o.

https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizer...ve_comparison/

[revporl]

Wonderful Momentvm, that's really comprehensive, thank you. Any suggestion for guitar sound (I know this is the hardest to get right!)

[Momentvm]

No problem, revporl. Glad I could help.

Regarding guitar sound - there are some free plugins like stripped down version of Guitar Rig in the NI freebies pack. There's also Ignite Emissary (amp modeller) and Ignite Nadir (IR processor). They work fine together, but the sound is rather on the heavy side. However, with Nadir you can get a very good sound, especially with some 3rd party free cab IRs (just google it ).
You also can try freebies from IK Multimedia - there is also a stripped down version of guitar modelling plugin IIRC.

I, however, use a Boss Katana 50 to model my sound. I use amp's Direct Out with built-in cab sim into the audio device. I try to dial in a good tone in my amp and then tweak it to fit into the mix in the Cakewalk by Bandlab(very good DAW, completely free) using EQ, compression and other plugins.
Cakewalk also has some guitar processing plugins bundled but I find them not so good, but I haven't played with these too much, maybe there are some good tones there somewhere .

Cheers!

[progmatist]

For a Hammond organ VSTi, go with Organized Trio. It's activism donationware. Every time you load it, or open the user interface, it'll nag you to donate to Greenpeace for about 10 seconds. Once you send the developer proof you donated to Greenpeace, you'll receive a code to stop the nag screen.

[Progbear]

Redtron SE is an excellent freeware option for Mellotron sounds. I do wish there were more variety in the samples (I would have included the pipe organ tapes in lieu of yet another bank of string samples) but I guess beggars can’t be choosers. On the plus side, the sound is very convincing, far more so than any other freeware option I’ve heard.