Product Reviews by KVR Members

An idiot proof slapback delay with a nice analogue character. It's not gonna work on everything but I find myself reaching for it whenever I want an instrument to sound a little bit retro, especially guitar. Without any repeats it can be used as a subtle thickening effect.

Having tried both versions, I actually prefer this to the premium one (the Comeback Kid). All the different modes are dialled in pretty nicely (except 'cheap', which just puts a mediocre bitcrusher effect on the repeats), and it sounds nice and wide with or without 'ping pong'

Not to be rude, but the other reviewers seem to have missed that Denise Audio email you a link to all of their free plugins after you sign up to their mailing list through their website. I always find myself reaching for this when I need a bitcrusher because of its simplicity and clean interface. The pre- and post-fx filters give you a lot of tone-shaping options, and there's even a fun stutter effect. My only real gripe is that you can't set the stutter effect to latch, it appears to just be momentary.

A lovely vintage string machine emulation loaded with a generous number of presets. It's pretty intuitive to use and you can make lots of fun combinations out of the percussive and sustain sounds.

Invaluable tool if you want to remove low-level noise from DI instrument recordings. I'm not smart enough to know what it's doing, but I assume it's a dynamic EQ targeted at particular hiss/hum frequencies. I think the pro version allows you to change the individual frequencies, but I find the ones in the free version adequately tuned for guitar and bass.

A great distortion for mangling drum loops or anything else you can think of. You can shape your audio with a morphable wavetable, add a clipping/distortion algorithm on top, then use the LFO to rhythmically modulate the wavetable shape, distortion level, and/or a resonant filter.

One of the best ambient reverbs you can get for free. The controls are simple and intuitive so you can quickly create gigantic lush reverbs to use on synth pads etc. The included presets also do a good job of showing off the different sounds you can get (some of them surprisingly subtle).

It's difficult to review this concisely since Chris from Airwindows has made so much stuff, but you're basically getting 50+ premium-level plugins for free in the form of a single multi-effect (though I would recommend signing up to his Patreon if you want to show support). The non-consolidated plugins were originally GUI-less, but this one looks very clean and is a bit easier on the eyes if you use a DAW like Reaper.

I didn't love every effect, but I think these ones deserve special mention:

• The 'Cans' headphone cross-feed algorithms in Monitoring3.
• The tape emulation in IronOxide5.
• His reverb and ambience/ER algorithms.
• The console emulation in Channel9, TubeDesk and TransDesk.
• His saturation and distortion algorithms e.g. Spiral2.

Worth picking up for Free Clip 2 and Free Gain alone. Free Clip 2 is a pretty transparent soft clipper that you can use to make your mixes sound louder without increasing volume, and Free Gain allows you to easily set trim gain in DAWs like Reaper without touching any track faders.

My only issues:

• A simple dB clipping meter at the side of Free Clip 2 would make finetuning a bit easier.
• Free Comp could really use a simple dB gain reduction meter for ease of use.
• It would be nice if Free Convolve had a couple of arrows next to the folder selection box to allow you to scroll through IRs without using Windows File Explorer (this would also allow you to save different IR folders as 'presets').

Even though this is a stripped down version of a premium plugin, the included dB meter makes this one of the best free soft clipper plugins. I love Venn Audio's Free Clip 2, but unlike this one, it doesn't give you a simple readout of how much you're e.g. clipping the mix bus.