The Sound Exchange website of the Philharmonia Orchestra came into being earlier this year. In development since 2000 and based on an idea by Olivia Lawson, The Sound Exchange is an educational project of the orchestra providing access to a large collection of instrument samples and musical phrases available to download for free. The sound [...]

REDU(P)CER is a free VST Effect plugin from Morfiki. It is a bit reduction effect using a very cool control set up that allows you to morph between five presets at a time. By assigning a midi controller you can get some really interesting automation effects in realtime. The effect wiorks really well and is simple and fun to use. [...]

Ableton gave its registered user a nice Halloween treat with the Solid Sounds Live pack made in congunction with Loopmasters. There are 400 loops, 128 Simpler presets and 12 instrument racks. The loops are of the typical high quality Loopmasters is known for and cover musical genres from Rock to Techno.

Livecut from Mdsp at Smartelectronix is a free vst effect for beat mashing and glitchy resampling of an audio signal on the fly. Livecut has a modern simple, elegent and effective gui for controling its signal processing. It uses comb filtering, bitreduction, pitchshifting and beat warping to reassemble whatever you feed it. These are some of [...]

Fretted Synths Audio has a free vst effect plugin called Free Amp which is an amplifier and speaker simulator with effects. Great for use with live instrument line feeds especially guitar and bass but will work well with other audio sources as well. You have a choice of speaker boxes and microphone placement. You can display the effects as stomp boxes or as rack units. [...]

I watched a new tutorial for Ableton Live by Tom Cosm on creating glitchy basslines which used the free softsynth Superwave P8. I realised that it had not yet been included in our series of article on free VST instruments. The Superwave P8 is another one of those must have synths in any home music production studio. It produces excellent sound, is straight forward and easy [...]

Puremagnetik is probably the most well known provider of third party resources for the popular Ableton Live sequencing software. They provide quality downloads of Ableton live packs as well as NI Kontact and other sampler packs on a resonably priced subscription basis. Their products are centered around reproducing hardware synths but cover many other forms of [...]

The Kjaerhus Gold and Mastering Series are well known for their excelent, well designed sound and mastering vst plugin device lines.
The Kjaerhus Classic line of audio effects is probably the best that you will find for free.
These nine units rival many of the better and much more expensive VST signal processing effects on the market. [...]

Glitch is one of the more interesting free VST effect plugins available. Glitch from DBlue (Kieran Foster) is a good multi-effect processor with some unique features. DBlue Glitch is a multi effect sequencer. The incoming audio gets divided into individual steps of various lengths. A variety of effects can then be applied and mixed into those segments and the sequence looped.

Mixxx is a free digital DJ mixing platform. Its open source software, a complete package with features for both amateur and profesional DJs alike. Fully featured with vinyl and MIDI control, can use multiple soundcards. The software is constantly being improved and updated. It was written by and for DJs with features constantly being improved based on users input.

Oatmeal by Fuzzpilz is another one of the top must have vst synths that is available for free. The designer is well known for his work with the Buzz Machines sequencer and its plugins. This is no exception and is a very complete and well thought out softsynth package. Oatmeal is a two oscillator polyphonic subtractive synth with a great sound and a lot of tweakable effects.

Music video production and realtime animation software tool Visual Jockey (VJO) is available for free. VJO is a very sophisticated, yet user friendly program to make animations and video presentations in realtime in sync with your music. The freeware version of VJO comes with a huge assortment of effects and examples to get you started [...]