In 2020 Free Plug-Ins Surpass Paid Ones?

[pekbro]

No! You must buy and then buy again, free stuff is for communists...

[Teksonik]

Considering how badly reverb gets abused I think it will be a perpetually unsettled argument

That's the point. "The Best" anything is going to be a "perpetually unsettled argument".

[melomood]

Pretty much

[El°HYM]

Air Windows? I appreciate that Chris is out there doing his thing, but I can't be assed to explore the world of weird designs with 5 revisions which all sound different, that do a portion of a job, with no GUI. "ToTape6 paired up with FromTape2 with WowandFlutter16 and Dither259RevB sounds awesome on drums!" There might be some great sounding stuff in there, but it's like exploring the Guided by Voices catalog. Rob Pollard can shit out 60 songs a year, and some are absolute gems, but between lofi recordings, the loose takes, lack of structure, it can be hard to find the time to obsess in order to find the truffles among the turds (so to speak - I'd kill for a tenth of that guy's talent). I feel that way about Air Windows. I'd love it if the plugins were more polished, less R&D tinkering and more complete, had GUI's, and there fewer (but more complete) revisions. So do Air Windows compete with commercial plugins? Not in my opinion they don't, but others can disagree.

While I do like some of airwindows stuff a lot, I have to agree with this. At this point it might even make sense for Chris to join forces with another Developer. You cannot dig into all of his already released plugins & check out every possible useful combination. Then also keep all the hints & tricks in mind, to even properly use some of them. So a revision in a more modern, compact form would make good sense, like the bundle made good sense, so people have a starting point. Yet, just releasing one plug after the other each week, doesnt really add anything valuable, imho.

[Passing Bye]

Agree, he could combine all those algorithms he released as single plugins and make few good plugins that cost little more and have nice GUI and actual manual, I mean having end-all Airwindows Saturation without having to actually check out bunch of different plugins with silly names and thinking "Can't remember what the hell this sucker does?".

[pixel85]

I agree that TDR is an exception (great sound for free). Other free stuff is also very good but it's just few plugins vs tons of great sounding commercial plugins.
I also appreciate Air Windows for hard work but none of his plugins stayed in my folder. Just quick test of some of his plugins but never find them good enough to keep.

A lot depends on what music we are making. If it's mostly or only based on tracked instruments and when recording session is done properly then even native DAW plugins can do the job (especially acoustic music that doesn't need to be squashed with 3 limiters at the end).
For electronic music which require a lot of processing situation may be waaay different. So far I can't say that any free plugin surpassed IKM Tapes (not even closely), Ozone Limiter or Zynaptiq Reverb to mention just first three on my mind. But of course I would like to see that happening one day.

[imrae]

Airwindows is open-source under an MIT license, if someone wants to do the GUI work for that they can.

Clearly Chris is motivated by working on algorithms. And he has been doing more "combination" effects recently: a multi-distortion plugin and combined dither/bitcrushers.

There are some community projects to collect documentation and recipes, but I agree there is room for improvement. If it's something you feel strongly about, I'll say that pretty much every software engineer out there appreciates help with documentation.

[planetearth]

Air Windows? I appreciate that Chris is out there doing his thing, but I can't be assed to explore the world of weird designs with 5 revisions which all sound different, that do a portion of a job, with no GUI. "ToTape6 paired up with FromTape2 with WowandFlutter16 and Dither259RevB sounds awesome on drums!" There might be some great sounding stuff in there, but it's like exploring the Guided by Voices catalog. Rob Pollard can shit out 60 songs a year, and some are absolute gems, but between lofi recordings, the loose takes, lack of structure, it can be hard to find the time to obsess in order to find the truffles among the turds (so to speak - I'd kill for a tenth of that guy's talent). I feel that way about Air Windows. I'd love it if the plugins were more polished, less R&D tinkering and more complete, had GUI's, and there fewer (but more complete) revisions. So do Air Windows compete with commercial plugins? Not in my opinion they don't, but others can disagree.

While I do like some of airwindows stuff a lot, I have to agree with this. At this point it might even make sense for Chris to join forces with another Developer. You cannot dig into all of his already released plugins & check out every possible useful combination. Then also keep all the hints & tricks in mind, to even properly use some of them. So a revision in a more modern, compact form would make good sense, like the bundle made good sense, so people have a starting point. Yet, just releasing one plug after the other each week, doesnt really add anything valuable, imho.

+1 to both of these. I tried to get into AirWindows' stuff, but for the reasons you both articulate very well, I just can't. I spent more than an hour just trying to discern the differences in the 61-1/2 versions of "ToTape" that I lost interest in making any music.

And that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

Chris obviously knows his stuff, and he clearly enjoys what he does, and that's great. But a half-hour "intro" video for each version of "ToTape" (with extraneous stuff thrown in) makes it even more difficult to dedicate enough time to learning them all, deciding which one(s) to keep, testing it with your projects to see if you like it -- and then going through the whole thing again a couple of weeks later when he introduces updates with changes to the version(s) you liked. Now you have to decide if you want to keep the version you had, or move to the new one ... which may or may not be "better".

There are some great freebies on the market right now (and I use quite a few of the ones mentioned in this thread), but I'm not sure how many are "better" than commercial ones (for reasons others have expressed). One I'm dealing with now are Dexed. It's a great DX7 emulation, but it's been all-but abandoned at v0.94. (Others have made a "fork" of it, but that's only served to confuse some people because it's not 100% compatible since it's a VST3 version, where the original is a VST2 version.) I'm not sure Dexed is better or worse than Arturia's DX7 V (which I also have). They both sound so much like a real DX7 that either is great -- but DX7 V is easier to use and has built-in effects. And frankly, I know which one I'll use more often if I'm concerned about being able to continue to use it in the future.

Steve

[skipscada]

Agree, he could combine all those algorithms he released as single plugins and make few good plugins that cost little more and have nice GUI and actual manual, I mean having end-all Airwindows Saturation without having to actually check out bunch of different plugins with silly names and thinking "Can't remember what the hell this sucker does?".

In Tracktion Waveform you can combine and route them in a rack and slap a (reasonably) pretty faceplate on it with the controls you want. A bit of work the first time, but neat once it's done. At least in theory. I've never bothered myself ...

[DJErmac]

OK. What free reverb SURPASSES the best commercial reverbs ?
If you find one, maybe it's time to change your monitors, earphones or ears.

As I was saying earlier some freeware plugins are better than some payware.

The one that comes to mind is the free OrilRiver reverb versus bx_rooMS.

OrilRiver just destroys bx_rooMS which is still listed at a ridiculous $199. I got my license for $9 and it's not even worth that.

Is OrilRiver the best reverb out there ? No of course not but it's miles better than the payware bx_rooMS.

I imagine you could find a freeware EQ that's better than some payware EQ's and so on.....

No, this comparison is unfair and you know it.
My personal question was : "what free reverbs surpasses the BEST commercial reverbs ?", not "what free reverbs prove that you can get ripped off ?"
If anyone can find a free reverb that sounds better than a Relab VSR S24, then this thread will start to be freaking interesting.
The question of the OP is "surpass", not "come close" ! Of course if we base our comparisons on bad payware plugins, I'm sure we'll easily find better freeware plugins, but is it the point ?

[Teksonik]

No, this comparison is unfair and you know it.

No, this is a perfectly fair comparison and you know it.

My personal question was : "what free reverbs surpasses the BEST commercial reverbs ?"

First of all you have to define the BEST which is an impossible task. You found one that you like but that doesn't make it the best since we all make different music and all have different tastes and needs. Ask 10 people what the best reverbs are and you'll probably get eleven different answers and start an argument. Someone probably thinks bx_rooMS is one of the best reverbs while I think it is horrid sounding and so on.....

The question of the OP is "surpass", not "come close" ! Of course if we base our comparisons on bad payware plugins, I'm sure we'll easily find better freeware plugins, but is it the point ?

The thread title is "Free Plugins Surpass Paid Ones". Like I said some freeware surpasses some payware. That's my point.

But again I said.....

On the whole is freeware superior to paid plugins ? Generally not....

On the whole payware is better than freeware but again the point I'm trying to make is some freeware surpasses some payware. There is brilliant freeware and dead common payware.

[DJErmac]

No, this comparison is unfair and you know it.

No, this is a perfectly fair comparison and you know it.
(...)
First of all you have to define the BEST which is an impossible task. You found one that you like but that doesn't make it the best since we all make different music and all have different tastes and needs. Ask 10 people what the best reverbs are and you'll probably get eleven different answers and start an argument. Someone probably thinks bx_rooMS is one of the best reverbs while I think it is horrid sounding and so on.....

Of course not my friend. And this even makes this thread turn into a total nonsense bull$#it.
If you compare BEST freewares with WORST paywares, of course the answer is always yes, and there's no point asking.
And please don't pretend to misunderstand me : EVERYBODY knows what a $hitty plugin is. If you start to compare a payware plugin everybody hates with a freeware plugin everybody loves, you're simply unbalancing the debate.

But...

Like I said some freeware surpasses some payware. That's my point.
On the whole is freeware superior to paid plugins ? Generally not....

... we perfectly agree on this. And I'm not here to assault you in any way, so let's say we mostly agree.

[Teksonik]

Of course not my friend. And this even makes this thread turn into a total nonsense bull$#it.

Just about every thread at KVR turns into "total nonsense bull$#it" these days.

And please don't pretend to misunderstand me : EVERYBODY knows what a $hitty plugin is.

That's where you're missing the point. Not everybody agrees with a plugin being crappy. I love the sound of Synth 1 but some people think it sounds like sh*t. There may be a plugin I think is fantastic and you may think is rubbish and vice versa. There is no consensus on what is good or bad. It's all just too subjective and that's why these kinds of thread go off the rails so quickly.

If you start to compare a payware plugin everybody hates with a freeware plugin everybody loves, you're simply unbalancing the debate.

Again there is no "everybody".

I'm not trying to argue with you. I don't agree with the OP's contention that Freeware surpasses Payware....on the whole....but the point is in my opinion there are exceptions.

[DJErmac]

Simply replace "everybody" with "most of the people" to get what I mean. Of course some people might prefer some plugins, that's true, but you can't deny it's easy to find what plugins are popular and what are not.

Anyway we're arguing on nothing, we agree on the most important lines.

[Danilo Villanova]

People spent way too much on plugins when it’s totally unnecessary. Your daw probably has everything you need to make killer records. Add some free stuff and you are set for life. Most of us should spend our money on front-end gear instead and spend more time learning composition and production. We didn’t get into music because we want to collect expensive bits of code, but because we have something to express/communicate. Consumerism has made us into slaves and as a consequence the world has been deprived of the music that we haven’t made because we were collecting stuff we don’t need. Damn shame. And yes, I know this is KVR and I included myself in this too.