Here we are at the third edition of our weekly freeware round-up – today with some cool plugins, samples and synth patches.
Karoryfer Samples continue the series of odd SFZ instruments with String Cyborgs, a collection of three patches – Zinc, Blackheart and Ironface. They use the processed and looped sounds of bowed strings (cello and double bass) as oscillators, and place them in a synthesizer architecture with unison, detune, filters and even some humanization parameters.
The sound of these is “a very organic version of a virtual analog synthesizer”, and they can generate basses, plucks, wobbles, drones, pads, organs, evolving textures, various kinds of leads and of course string sounds. String Cyborg is specifically optimized for use with Plogue Sforzando free SFZ player version 1.848 or above. A readme file with details how to register the sample library in Plogue is included. Download size is around 60MB. Listen an audio demo of String Cyborgs below:
If you’re eager to test some free VST plugins, then you’ll be delighted to know that Davi Santos has released an instrument and two effect plugins. DvnSfxMaker is a free instrument to create sound effects for games; it generates sounds using oscillators and its built-in bitcrusher.
The second plugin is DvnKeyFilter, a low pass filter with the cutoff frequency controlled by key tracking and a second parameter “Expression” assignable to any MIDI CC. Lastly, we have DvnBitCrusher, a bit crusher effect that offers sample rate reduction down to 200Hz, bit depth reduction, distortion unit and low pass filter, dry/wet mix and gain stages at the input and output.
All the plugins are available for both Windows and Mac OS X (VST2/VST3/AU, 32 & 64-bit) and can be downloaded on David Santo’s audio plugins page.
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KVR user Bigcat1969 has released a second version of his Iowa Piano for Kontakt, an instrument that takes its sound from public domain samples from the University of Iowa. He fixed some notes that sounded bad and added some consistency between the mf and f layers, plus other small tweaks.
The free piano instrument weighs now only 175MB, but it sounds pretty decent. Please note that the instrument requires the full version of Kontakt 5 in order to work, otherwise, on free Kontakt Player you will be able to test it within the limit of 15 minutes. But before you use it, you may want to hear it in action:
Starting with this edition, I will bring to light old plugins. For example UpStereo, a free stereo enhancer VST effect plugin (Windows, 32-bit only), which will make your mixes sound bigger by increasing both the loudness and stereo width of the audio source.
To achieve such results, it uses three basic systems: a fixed frequency equalizer which adds bass and “air”, a stereo width unit for expanding stereo sounds, and saturation that gives the mix a more perceived loudness, without clipping.
UpStereo comes with an interactive 3D interface, with changeable colours and light positions.
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Samplelock has announced the release of two new NI Battery 4 kits (with all the WAV’s included): Crt_Dig_Vol 2, a collection of various soul/funk samples, and Chrd_1, a set of 48 WAV chords and hits created with Massive. You can also download a .flp project free for use/modify as you wish. No more info about this, but I guess is based on samples/chops. Here’s how it sounds:
In Synaptic Trancemission, Recursion Loop has gathered 51 presets for Dune 2 he uses constantly in his own tracks. The sound patches were also created in order to explore the sound shaping abilities of Dune 2. Some of the sounds are typical trance and psy stuff, some are of more experimental nature. All the 51 patches are designed by Recursion Loop.
So if you’re a Dune 2 owner, grab the patches as they are available. You will like the demo:
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