The Best New FREE VST Plugins & Deals

Another week, another load of free plugins, new releases and music-production deals worth checking out.

This week we’ve got free synths, drum machines, cassette effects and instruments, plus some huge discounts on RC-20, vintage synths and drum-production tools.

1. FSVR – FREE Yamaha FS1R-Inspired Synth

FSVR is a completely free and open-source recreation of the legendary Yamaha FS1R rack synth from 1998.

It brings the unusual formant and FM synthesis engine into your DAW, complete with the original-style front panel, factory banks, formant sequences and loads of seriously unusual sounds.

2. Bloom Drum Machine Lite – Excite Audio

Bloom Drum Machine Lite is built around classic hardware drum-machine sounds and gives you 56 samples, 75 presets and a set of performance controls for quickly building and manipulating grooves.

Normally $29 — currently FREE for a limited time.

3. PortaTwin – Pointless Audio

PortaTwin is a free cassette channel strip modelled after a late-80s four-track cassette recorder.

You get preamp saturation, wow and flutter, hiss, tape character, crosstalk and plenty of imperfections for turning clean digital sounds into something much more worn and characterful.

It’s pay-what-you-want starting at $0.

4. Slam2 – BeatSkillz (code: slamjam)

Slam2 is an all-in-one track and bus processor designed to make sounds bigger, punchier and wider without having to build a massive plugin chain.

Behind the simple controls are EQ, compression, saturation, sub enhancement and stereo processing, so it can work on drums, vocals, synths, buses and even the full mix.

5. RC-20 Retro Color – XLN Audio

RC-20 is still one of the most popular plugins for instantly making clean digital sounds feel older, warmer and more interesting.

Its six effect modules cover noise, wobble, distortion, digital degradation, space and magnetic-style volume effects.

Currently $29 instead of $99.

6. Jura – AIR Music Technology

Jura is AIR Music Technology’s take on one of the most famous analogue polysynth sounds of the 1980s.

You get the classic oscillator, sub, filter and chorus-style sound alongside modern additions including extra envelopes, delay, reverb, EQ, unison and an arpeggiator.

Currently around 77% off for a limited time.

7. Roland Analogue Emulations Sale

Plugin Boutique is currently running a huge Roland sale covering a load of the company’s classic synth recreations and software instruments.

There are deals on instruments inspired by the JUNO-60, JUPITER series, SYSTEM-100 and plenty more.

Save up to 69% during October.

8. Kickforge – Drumforge

Kickforge is a dedicated kick-drum instrument that lets you combine separate attack and sub layers to build your own kick sounds.

There are more than 2,900 possible combinations, plus EQ, compression, transient control, filtering and harmonic shaping built directly into the plugin.

Currently $39 instead of $119.

9. Frankensteinway – Lunacy NOVA

Lunacy has added another free instrument to NOVA called Frankensteinway.

It joins the growing collection of free NOVA libraries, so if you already downloaded NOVA after my previous video, this is another free sound you can add to it.

DixonBeats Plugins

You can also check out my own VST plugins, instruments and sound packs over at DixonBeats.

Which One Are You Downloading?

Watch the full video for demos, my thoughts and all of this week’s free plugin links and deals.