The Telenator.
The TelenatorI know I’ve posted a lot of these bundles and collections of free plugins, but I couldn’t resist adding these as one more option, too. I actually use most of this bunch and recommend them highly for those needing standard-duty effects. This collection also includes the famous clone version of the Waves limiter — George Yohng’s W1 Limiter — this version nicely skinned unlike George’s own edition. The MonstaChorus and SVF2 filter are among my favourites too.
Of course, you can download each plugin from BetaBugs separately taking only the ones you want, or grab the whole 9 or 10 together. The bundle of all is 2 down on the right.
Considering that the classic Kjaerhus collection of standard FX plugins are out of business now and becoming harder to locate, these BetaBugs, the JB collection in another thread, the FREE87, the Synthescience VSTs, and one or two more posted in these threads at Zynewave will more than make up for the discontinued Kjaerhus. All together, all of these collections of plugins we have linked are enough to get anyone up and going fast. Now you can devote your VST search time to the more exotic offerings among the free and inexpensive ones out there. Enjoy and Cheers!
Jiri_SmolikI have tried WideBug stereo enhancer and made my Podium free 2.42 go insane. Turned most of my tracks into overdriven “robotic” mode, some track didn’t play at all.
The TelenatorGreetings, Jiri, and thanks for posting your experience with that WideBug. It occurred to me after posting that link that I can’t be 100% certain which ones I’ve used in Podium and which I’ve only employed in Reaper, since I have and love both DAWs.
I do know for a fact that the highly rated W1 and certain others work well in Podium. I suggest any user having issues with any particular plugin simply toss it in the rubbish and grab a similar from one of these other bundles. We have enough linked now to keep everyone happy for a good while. The JB collection are simply incredible.
The best stereo widener I know of is probably the CMX, made by one of the Reaper devs. Unfortunately not free, it is in the category of ‘almost cheapware’ nonetheless. Here is the link to that very cool Stillwell Audio site:
http://www.stillwellaudio.com/plugins/
There is another, better than WideBug, plugin that I also use but am drawing a blank right now. I can tell you that the freeware UpStereo touting the same abilities crashed badly in both DAWs and simply does not work at all. Too bad, it has a state-of-the-art GUI! There is also one called ADT (for Artificial Double Tracking) and comes with only a generic GUI that Podium will replace with its own GUI builder. Any of these double tracking plugs can stereo enhance when turned down to be much more subtle than, say, a doubled-tracked vocals effect. It’s free too.
The TelenatorOn a somewhat loosely related tangent, it seems to me someone here posted a link to the free ReaPlugs site but can’t recall for certain, so I’ll tie it in here to be sure.
If you would like to use Podium yet have free access to all the very best of REAPER’s included plugins, including one ReaPlug called the ReaJS that is a wrapper plugin that will load any of the 200+ of the JesusSonic plugins that Reaper also installs with, here is the link to obtain those free and clear. The link to download is about middle left:
http://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/
Now is a good time to post this link if posted before, because all ReaPlugs just went through a significant update. If you obtained any before Jan. 15, 2013, you should go and get the ReaPlugs bundle and install over the top of your old ones.
It must be said that the GUIs on all of these are very ‘plain jane’ and ‘vanilla-flavoured’, HOWEVER, their ReaComp compressor and a few others are rated throughout the internet as better than, for example here, many of the commercial compressors. The GUIs work just fine and are all-business even though they have no flashing lights, bells and whistles. Now you can have the best of both worlds — Podium as your DAW, employing all of Reaper’s great plugs!
I think this nicely concludes my postings of a zillion great free plugins. There is much to use and like in all of these, so again, Enjoy! and Cheers!
Jiri_SmolikThank you very much for response :wink:. I have tried other plugins from Betabugs and the rest works allright, but Widebug caused problems. I have searched on Google for answers and I found some people encountered problems with it as well, though they weren’t able to use it because their DAW could not detect it at all.
I got UpStereo and noticed no problems with it. Actually, it works really well so far. I hope it will be stable like that in future. In the worst case, I will keep ADT in my mind.
The TelenatorPut it through a file shredder! (Hehe!)
Maybe I had an old version of UpStereo. I should look into this and thanks for the headsup on it. It went wacko like you said of WideBug when I tried it, then crashed.
Since I haven’t got a chance to actually hear it yet, what can you tell me about the quality of sound from UpStereo? Does it work well, Jiri?
Jiri_SmolikAs far as I can say, it does the job well enough. I used it in my latest song to make the sound less flat and it did the job. I am not a sound engineer, but it doesn’t screw up sound quality. It also offers an additional air and bass knobs to tune a sound a bit more and you can add gain in case of having a song way too quiet. You can check its job on my soundcloud page (https://soundcloud.com/ji-smol-k).
To be honest, I do not know which version I have as I grabbed it from http://www.vst4free.com. I actually found it few minutes before you posted your response. Not sure when and where you got it, so I can not tell you for sure if it was a matter of old version or not, but it might be worth checking out the latest ver., if older ones do not work.
I hope this will help you. Enjoy.
The TelenatorI grabbed the plugin last year, so it might be a first release, but use a different one for this purpose. I will find out more when I can get the time, but you know, it had such a marvelous, state of the art, rotating globe GUI that I just assumed it must work great!? Odd coincidence, it is about the only plugin besides epicVerb that has ever crashed Reaper, a DAW that is virtually crash-proof and very forgiving of weird or buggy plugins. If I get too busy, I can live without it, because I have the other widener that behaves.
If nothing else, I should add that the BetaBugs I like best is the almost-must-have W1 Limiter, which was tested against the Waves L1A (or whatever its called) and the two graphed virtually the same. The MonstaChorus if you need a small but full-sounding chorus, and I rather like the filter plug SVF2 also.
Is the widening on all tunes there? I heard I think 3 before when you posted them because you were new and I wanted to see what was going on in the Czech Republic for tunes these days. I’ll play some again and listen for it. Thanks.
Jiri_SmolikOnly in “Through the clouds” because I needed to enrich its sound. One problem I had with this song in particular was “flatness”, which I could not solve. Adding global reverb made tracks undistinguishible from each other. Thankfully stereo enhancicg did the job. Never though about global use of it but judging by its results, I should consider utilizing it a bit more as it really helped me with making the tune less flat.
The TelenatorI sort of thought that might be the case. That sort of music requires more careful or subtle mangling. I still haven’t made it back to your tunes! Where does our time go? I’ll go there now and have a closer listen. Thanks.
The Telenator“Through the clouds”
Nice. I listened under my best set of cans so it was very stereo and very balanced. I’m sure I’m wrong but let me guess anyway: the high-pitched, plucked-sounding sort of chime-y thing. It sounds a bit too refined for String Theory but could be, too lightweight for a Diva-type synth unless you cut out voices. Is it Alchemy? Curious listeners want to know.
Whatever it was, it happened to be the perfect chill pill, as I just came off an all-night mixing session for a friend who said nothing about a deadline earlier. Very pleasant, and I particularly like the way the bass line follows instead of forcing the beat ahead.
So I go over to vst4free and that UpStereo looks not much like the one that I had explode in Reaper. The globe-like ‘thing’ in my edition looked more like a clouded over alien planet. Same basic layout, though. Hmm?
Jiri_SmolikI am glad you like it. I think you refer to main e-piano track, which comes from Yellowtools Independence FREE from Magix. It is really complex and I was not able to get into its innards yet, however bundled 2 GB sample pack is great. Electronic pianos, drums and guitars (both electronic and acoustic) sound fantastic (to me at least).
I checked a homesite of UpStereo’s authors (http://www.quikquak.com) and its “globe part” looks like you described it. Official features mention something about movable 3D interface, which seems a bit useless for a VST to me. Can not say how long it has this gimmick, but something is telling me that 3D might cause a problem. The version from vst4free has no 3D stuff at all.
I hope this might help. Enjoy.
The TelenatorNo wonder! I know what Independence FREE is but have never listened to any of its sounds, probably much to do with your comments about it. That was the part I meant, though.
Yeah, that GUI is really something on the UpStereo I had. I’ll bet it is the problem. And you should have seen what it looked like for about 3 ms just before it took my DAW out quick.
Oh . . . you know what? I have the 3D function in my nVidia graphics turned off because I do not game or do much visual stuff on that PC, and it is a real hog on CPU when it kicks in and is running. I could have set it to manual but it has never been needed since I first started for what we do, until perhaps that one day with UpStereo.
Cheers!
Tele