In 2020 Free Plug-Ins Surpass Paid Ones?

[.jon]

But like everything, you get what you pay for.

This isn't really true when talking about plugins. Most commercial plugins aren't any better than freeware, it's just easy to part the fools and their money with marketing and paid endorsements. Software is algorithms, most calculations can only be done in exactly one way- nobody can use higher quality components to process the signals like in the hardware world.

Basically, in software world, the more you pay, the more bullshit you eat.

What about creative effects? What about instruments? Could name some serious free competitors for ... lets say Stutter Edit or Kontakt or Bazille?

A fool

Ok first of all, how fitting username. I was specifically writing about the statement "you get what you pay for", because a high price is not a guarantee for quality. This doesn't mean that I agree with the OP or claim that there are no excellent and unique plugins that are straight up better than others. I simply mean that the price of the plugin does not correlate with quality- and furthermore that the majority of expensive plugins are not snake oil's worth better than cheap or free plugins. Code just doesn't work like that, you can't pour money into the production and expect automatically superior results, and you can't discredit superior code just because some talented developer offered it to the world for free or cheap.

In other words, if you believe that paid stuff is always better, you're a fool.

[revvy]

My payware runs the gamut from reasonable to expensive. I avoid eating bullshit.

Tend to not use freeware but have some in my collection, no problems with it if it's good but also happy to pay devs that charge for their work, helps keep the industry/community going.

Certainly disagree with the premise of the OP.

[Obsolete462444]

SlickEQ isn't supposed to be an emulation, TDR even says it's "proudly digital" sound.

Oh, my fault! But this makes the concept even weirder. The majority of the useres will automatically associate mode names like "british" or "american" to an an analog sound. Then they better should have given names like "rubber duck" or "unicorn" If they market it as "proudly digital", then this is not the eq i'm looking for. I already have enough digital sounding stock eq's in my daw. Maybe I expect to much, but if i load up a character eq i expect some ... um well ... character

As i said: i love the other TDR stuff, but Slick EQ is not for me.

In fact the "proudly digital philosophy" is a common denominator among all present TDR plugins. I saw a German live stream with Fabien talking about different paradigms in the plugin world and as I understood him they would much rather make use of the advanced possibilities that digital offers instead of trying to emulate technically limited analog gear rigidly.

That's not to say that the TDR approach is supposed to lead to sterile or lifeless sounding mixes, many of their plugins feature some sort of saturation or exciter in one way or the other, typically implemented in a more flexible way then what you would get in an analog device / analog emulation (basically saturation in oldschool analog gear was a pleasant side-effect, not a deliberate and user-controllable feature, but something that kicked in once you overshoot a certain gain threshold).

The few people I heard who didn't like Slick EQ were either using it wrong or had wrong expectations as to the effect of parameter changes. For example: since Slick EQ is one of very few EQ plugins that actually have a functioning auto gain enabled by default, changes in the frequency spectrum would not result in the typical obvious volume changes known from less sophisticated pseudo-analog EQ plugins. If you want that effect you would have to turn off auto gain, but then you are also more prone to fooling your own ears, since louder will always be received as better, even if you are taking suboptimal EQing decisions.

[audiot]

SlickEQ isn't supposed to be an emulation, TDR even says it's "proudly digital" sound.

Oh, my fault! But this makes the concept even weirder. The majority of the useres will automatically associate mode names like "british" or "american" to an an analog sound. Then they better should have given names like "rubber duck" or "unicorn" If they market it as "proudly digital", then this is not the eq i'm looking for. I already have enough digital sounding stock eq's in my daw. Maybe I expect to much, but if i load up a character eq i expect some ... um well ... character

As i said: i love the other TDR stuff, but Slick EQ is not for me.

In fact the "proudly digital philosophy" is a common denominator among all present TDR plugins. I saw a German live stream with Fabien talking about different paradigms in the plugin world and as I understood him they would much rather make use of the advanced possibilities that digital offers instead of trying to emulate technically limited analog gear rigidly.

That's not to say that the TDR approach is supposed to lead to sterile or lifeless sounding mixes, many of their plugins feature some sort of saturation or exciter in one way or the other, typically implemented in a more flexible way then what you would get in an analog device / analog emulation (basically saturation in oldschool analog gear was a pleasant side-effect, not a deliberate and user-controllable feature, but something that kicked in once you overshoot a certain gain threshold).

The few people I heard who didn't like Slick EQ were either using it wrong or had wrong expectations as to the effect of parameter changes. For example: since Slick EQ is one of very few EQ plugins that actually have a functioning auto gain enabled by default, changes in the frequency spectrum would not result in the typical obvious volume changes known from less sophisticated pseudo-analog EQ plugins. If you want that effect you would have to turn off auto gain, but then you are also more prone to fooling your own ears, since louder will always be received as better, even if you are taking suboptimal EQing decisions.

Thanks for the detailed explanation I didnt want to turn this thread into a discussion about Slick EQ. My needs for a character EQ are pretty basic, like "Can it improve my shaker track?", so i mainly use such EQ's for boosting. And in my tests Slick EQ didnt work that well (compared to some others like NobleQ) ... and i'm aware of the louder-is-better-problem For lowering or cutting duties i just use my graphical stock EQ's and Crave EQ.

Might depend on my focus on electronic music, but i think that i'm not in the target group ... and i'm happy for all people who found a valueable tool in Slick EQ

[chk071]

From the freebies I have, I probably use the NI ones the most (Raum, Replika (even though I upgraded that to the XT version), Driver). The thing with those: They're actually payware, and were only free with their Xmas campaigns. Which kind of twists the point, and leads me again where I was: You get what you pay for.

The best synth freebie ever probably was z3ta+. Again, a former payware distributed as magware, so, technically rather not a freebie.

[pixel85]

Are there any free plugins that have quality of sound like Massive X, Repro1/5, T-Racks, and additionally have functionality of GuitarRig 6, Ozone, Neutron, Nektar, Melodyne?
I don't know any free alternative nor free plugins that would surpass any of these in matter of sound quality and functionality (+ stability, updates and customer support!) so my answer is: No, free plugins didn't surpassed paid ones.

[Tj Shredder]

Free and paid don’t need to be exclusive. Depending if you mean free as in speech or free as in beer... If nobody would pay for free software it would not even come close to paid software...
(There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch...)

[Qkimat]

I tried Amplitube 5 a couple days ago. About the same time, I found Vadim Taranov's site. I was truly disappointed with Amplitube 5. Not that its not good software - it's a whole suite of pedals, amps, cabs, a tuner, a looper and loads of routing possibilities. However, when it comes to the amp tones, Vadim's amps do not sound any worse, and their either free, or silly cheap. With a bit more GUI polish, a cab section, some booster pedals, and a whole lot of marketing, his plugins would surely make some serious waves on the ampsim market.
I will not be paying for Amplitube for sure, especially that there are free plugins and host applications which provide all the functionality of Amplitube. I know, that many people will pay for it, because it's much easier to use, than separate pedal/amp/cab simulators, and that's where it's at with most paid software - comfort and ease of use.

[vurt]

Free and paid don’t need to be exclusive. Depending if you mean free as in speech or free as in beer... If nobody would pay for free software it would not even come close to paid software...
(There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch...)

just eat it before you get to the checkout in a supermarket, then just pay for a pack of mints at the till.
the chicken pasta salad, two doughnuts and the coke were free!

thank me later.

[AudioAlien]

Super Massive is at the top of my list for great free plugins.

[Russell Grand]

In 2020 Free Plug-Ins Surpass Paid Ones?

Some of 'em, yep.

[Russell Grand]

Super Massive is at the top of my list for great free plugins.

+1

[Russell Grand]

Free and paid don’t need to be exclusive. Depending if you mean free as in speech or free as in beer... If nobody would pay for free software it would not even come close to paid software...
(There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch...)

just eat it before you get to the checkout in a supermarket, then just pay for a pack of mints at the till.
the chicken pasta salad, two doughnuts and the coke were free!

thank me later.

[dionenoid]

Well, the free FirComp compressor surely beats a lot of paid ones.

[wwjd]

found some cool new (to me) plugs because of this