Hello, everyone!

While making music is often considered a "very expensive activity," you can actually find a wealth of free or affordable tools to help with your music production. With a bit of effort, you can discover both budget-friendly and free plugins to enhance your workflow. Of course, be mindful not to overload your computer with too many plugins—cleaning up later can be a hassle!


INSTRUMENTS

Spitfire Audio LABS, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Spitfire Audio offers fantastic instruments through their LABS protocol, releasing free instruments almost every month. With LABS, you can experiment with various sounds and create orchestral arrangements. Additionally, the BBC Symphony Orchestra is available for free for a limited time. Just fill out a survey on Spitfire Audio's website to access it.

Vember Audio Surge
Surge is a powerful virtual wavetable synthesizer that has been updated recently. It features 3 oscillators, 1 sub-oscillator, 6 LFOs, and numerous wavetables. Its stock presets are quite impressive, and you can find more advanced presets, including a custom Surge preset bank I created. I'll include the link in the description.

Ample Sound Guitar M Lite
Ample Sound offers a range of guitar plugins, and you can get 3 of their instruments for free. While I haven't tried all of them, Guitar M Lite is excellent for projects requiring an acoustic guitar.

VCV Rack
If you don't have a modular synthesizer or are new to modular programming, VCV Rack is a great tool. It includes hundreds of free modules that are regularly updated, all at no cost. You can create everything from dreamy tones to rich, analogue sounds and save your own presets.


EFFECTS

Xfer OTT
Xfer OTT is a simplified multiband compressor with fewer knobs than a traditional multiband compressor. Its upward compression feature is popular across many genres, allowing you to bring out subtle details in your audio.

Xfer LFO
Another useful tool from Xfer is Xfer LFO. It can be used for classic LFO routing or sidechaining, offering a straightforward and functional approach.

Valhalla Supermassive Reverb
Valhalla is renowned for its exceptional reverbs, and while their products typically cost around $50, they recently offered Supermassive for free. This plugin functions as both a delay and a reverb and can create extreme effects if desired.

Polyverse Wider
Wider, a collaboration between Infected Mushroom and Polyverse, is a stereo extension plugin. It acts more like a light chorus effect and is available for Windows, MacOS, and iOS devices. Its simplicity is evident with just one control: the % button, which adjusts the expansion amount.


TOOLS

ADSR Sample Manager
Finding specific samples among numerous files can be time-consuming. ADSR Sample Manager helps you locate audio files by sound type, BPM, note key, and added tags. It's a comprehensive tool designed to streamline your sample management.