Most revered free instruments?

[YnJ]

Vital is the free synth I've used most, so it's Vital I guess

[pandashake]

I had to google for Albino 3. Surge was one of the commercial competitions at is time (2006) I guess… Albino is abandoned, Surge is still actively supported and now open source. Actually supported only because Clas set it free as open source, else it would have seen the same destiny as Albino…
I would agree that Alchemy and Zebra are not easily replaceable with free instruments, the other three are, but as this is a matter of taste I can see your point to stick to those…

For those who never got to use Albino 3, Dead Duck's Reducktion kind of reminds me of a baby Albino, but with only one layer.

[mixyguy2]

Just that there's such a range of sounds and engines that make it worth the download. Pretty good system that if you need to edit or write your own that you would want to buy the engine controls.
I didn't see in the subject line where that was the main concern though.
So for what it is, it's completely painless!

And I like the sounds it has much better than some of the others that have been mentioned.

Agreed. They have some really nice patches.

[Tangential]

Spitfire LABS

[Maechyl]

Spitfire LABS

Between LABS and Komplete Start you've already got a fairly endless amount of sounds to work with.

Akai's free daw MPC Beats comes with synths as well, I think (or those might have been free with my MPK Mini instead)
The BBC Symphony Orchestra via Spitfire as well
Orchestral tools via SINE player
MT Power drum kit
Steven Slate Drums 5 has a free version too.
Shreddage 3 Stratus free version
Ample bass lite

Sforzando by Plogue can use a whole lot of free instruments out there, a lot of which you can find herehttps://sfzinstruments.github.io/

Splash Sound's free Concert Vibraphone is really good also. I'd just check out all the bigger companies making vst, a lot of them give our some freebies. Sonuscore do some nice phrase libraries.