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Free VSTs that don't suck? Yes, that's right, here's our recommendations of the best VST effects you can have for nothing.

You can pay good money for high-quality professional plugins, and that’s all good, but for the more budget-conscious, there are some great free VSTs out there that are going to help your music sound amazing. Sure, you’ll get more if you come up with some cash, but there’s plenty here to transform your mixes, sculpt your tracks and boost your vibe.

These would be a great companion to the stock plugins that come with your DAW. It’s easy to be tempted into the next shiny plugin when, actually, your DAW probably has most of what you need. For that added verve, try these fantastic plugins and move one step closer to releasing your music.

So, for this round-up of fabulously free plugins, I’ve tried to gather a range of effects to cover all sorts of bases. You’ll find deep reverbs, silky saturation, gritty filters, lush chorus and fat compression, all for free.

Here are our picks for 2024‘s best VST effects and you can get for nothing:

  1. Valhalla Super Massive
  2. Kilohearts Essentials
  3. BPB Dirty Filter
  4. Izotope Vinyl
  5. Auburn Sounds Graillon 2
  6. TAL-Chorus-LX
  7. Baby Audio Reverb, Chorus, Delay
  8. Tokyo Dawn TDR Nova

Note: “VST plugins” is a term that often covers both software effects and software instruments. We’ve decided that it’s more helpful to separate them out into “Free VST Effect Plugins” and “Free VST Instruments” and so if you’re looking for synths and sound machines, check out our other article on best free VST instruments.

FAQs about free VSTs

Best Free VST Effects (2024)

Read on for our picks for the year’s best free VST effects.

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Valhalla Super Massive

Super Massive is a ridiculous reverb capable of generating vast spaces and never ending delays. It’s the sort of thing that blows your mind. You can lose hours simply playing with it, running sounds through it, trying it with synths, with guitar, with drums and whole mixes just to see what will happen.

You’ll find clouds of reverb and delays for other worlds all wrapped up in a simple interface that’s deeper than you think it is. Super Massive has many different algorithms that change and warp it into other dimensions so just whn you think you’ve got the hang of it you find yourself upside down and reversing through a universe of sonic reflux.

It’s lush, it’s brilliant and it’s free.

ValhallaDSP.com

Kilohearts Essentials

Kilohearts have built up quite a collection and a great reputation for top quality effects and instruments. From the award winning Phaseplant synth to the stunning Snapheap effects playground the artistry, build and interaction is superb. While some developers give you a tiny taste of the good stuff with a freebie plugin Kilohearts Essentials gives you a whole meal.

Kilohearst Essentials offers 33 individual effects that can be plugged into their modular effects system. Plugins include 3-band EQ, compression, delay, filters, chorus, frequency shifters, distortion, phasing, shaping and ring modulation. There are even cool performance effects like tape stop, trance gate and a really decent reverb.

It’s a selection of effects that you can use on every project and you can build up preset arrangements for your next one. And if you choose to upgrade to something like Snapheap then you’ll find these effects appear directly within that environment. Kilohearts says that they will continue to add plugins to the Essentials collection as time goes on, so I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t want to snap these up.

Kilohearts.com

BPB Dirty Filter

The Dirty Filter is all about driving, filtering, distortion and sonic layering. It has both a high-pass and low-pass filter and in the middle is a big fat Drive knob that’ll push up the resonance for both filters while adding analog style saturation.

While it’s awesome at the whole filtering thing, doing sweeps and pulling in drops and cuts the drive aspect gives it the flavour of a multi-band distortion. You can be quite specific about the frequencies you want to boost and corrupt making it scream and bite or just add a little bit of grit.

Dirty Filter is a lot of fun, versatile and very easy to use.

BedroomProducersBlog.com

Izotope Vinyl

It’s an oldy but a goody, Izotope Vinyl has been around a long time but a recent update has made its authentic lo-fi vibes even groovier.

It has that instant satisfaction factor. Drop the needle on the record and you’re already loving the sound. You can choose an decade of music as a reference and then explore the amount of mechanical and electrical distortion you want to add to your mix.

Vunyl is delicious, it’s intoxicating and makes anything sound vintage and on fire.

izotope.com

Auburn Sounds Graillon 2

A strange name for a plugin that brings you the power of Auto-Tune for free. They call it a Live Voice Changer and although the free version doesn’t include the more complex pitch-tracking modulations and vocal enrichments it does have the important stuff – pitch correction.

Through its advanced pitch detection it can analyse the incoming audio and push it to a predefined scale. Just set the notes and you’re good to go.

If you want to turn your vocals into something else entirely then Graillon 2 will happy oblige with robotic pitch shifting and weird effects ready to go at the tap of a mouse. It has a lot of scope of vocal based sound design and creating crazy effects.

AuburnSounds.com

TAL-Chorus-LX

Sometimes you just need a good chorus to thicken and add movement to a sound. The chorus on the Roland Juno-60 synthesizer is the one that people talk about for its ability to transform a simple synth sound into something altogether more interesting. The TAL-Chorus-LX is a model of the Juno-60 Chorus.

It’s very simple, has two modes, just hit the button and then decide how much of your sound you want to bathe in it and how wide you want the stereo to go.

TAL-Chorus-LX is just lovely and feels good in any groovy situation particularly on keys and synths.

Tal-Software.com

Baby Audio Freebies

Baby Audio excels at modern interfaces and creative effect plugins. Startling and smooth to look at while adding gorgeous elements to your audio. In this little collection of freebie plugins we get the Magic Dice multi-effect, Magic Switch Chorus and Baby Come Back Delay.

Magic Dice is the weird idea of randomly generating reverb, modulation and delay effects to create inspiring textures at the touch of a button – or the roll of a dice. There’s no control or possibility of bending it to your will, you just hit the button and go with what it produces. It’s based on the same engine as the Spaced Out plugin and contains 50 individual effects for an endless creation of possibilities. Sounds fantastic but you’ll never come across the same result twice.

Magic Switch is inspired by the Roland Juno Chorus but Baby Audio makes this their own take on the one-button chorus. It’s going for detuned, lush and moody sounds and is based on their Super-VHS sound engine with nothing but a wet/dry mix slider.

Baby Come Back is a delay plugin based on their Comeback Kid engine. It has 4 modes of flavor; Wide, Analog, Saucey and Cheap. It also has an on-board ducker for cleaning up your delays while the dry signal plays.

BabyAud.io

Tokyo Dawn TDR Nova

Less of an effect and more of a workhorse processing tool, Tokyo Dawn’s TDR Nova is a parallel dynamic equalizer. Easily as good as many similar professional plugins for massaging your music’s frequency content.

It’s ability to dynamically react to incoming audio gives it wide range of applications. You can straightforwardly use it as a parametric EQ, to sculpt and rework your tracks in the mix. You can turn on the dynamics and let it compress and process the energy back into your track. You can compress ranges of frequencies very selectively to really nail down wayward signals. Or push it into a creative filter mode for interesting cuts and resonant boosts.

In terms of compression TDR Nova can handle multi-band and wide band compression for either settling individual tracks or applying to a whole mix at the mastering stage. Clever dynamic loudness functions ensure that things don’t get out of hand.

Tokyodawn.net

FAQ

Are free VST effects any good?

Robin Vincent

Many free effects are promotional versions of premium plugins and are made to the same level of quality. They may have a reduced feature set or some limited options but they are going to be great for your music-making.

Some others are developed by enthusiasts who don’t have the backing of a brand and they can look a bit rough around the edges but also they can be full of creativity and original ideas. Besides, any plugin listed here is going to be top-notch.

Where can I get VST plugins for free?

Robin Vincent

Always go direct to the source. I would be suspicious of any website offering downloads of software they don’t make themselves.

Some websites offer free downloads of premium plugins but they are best avoided not only on legal grounds but because the downloads may well contain malicious software that you don’t want infecting your music-making computer. Besides, there are so many genuinely free and fabulous VST plugins and this article will tell you where to get them.

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