The best free music production plugins for 2024

In the ever-evolving world of music production, having access to versatile and powerful free plugins can be a game-changer.

As we step into 2024, let’s explore a selection of indispensable free tools that can elevate your productions without denting your budget. Covering a wide array of needs spanning enhancing clarity to adding unique textures, these plugins are great additions for any producer looking to up their game—let’s make 2024 a year of sonic excellence with these top-notch free plugins.

Free audio effect plugins

1. Crispy Clip Light

Derived from Crispy Clip, this lightweight counterpart stands its own as a professional audio clipper plugin tailored for precise and dynamic sound shaping. Featuring Push and Ceiling controls, the plugin enables highly detailed adjustments of the clipping threshold and gain amount.

2. Spread Light

Spread Light is a mastering plugin designed to sculpt the stereo field of your audio tracks. Key features include Width and Tilt controls, allowing users to manipulate the perceived breadth and spatial orientation of the stereo image.

3. Flux Light

Flux Light, the free version of Flux Machine, is a tape emulation plugin that adds analog warmth and dynamic texture to your tracks. It offers both dual-time modes for session synchronization as well as free-running tape movement.

4. Neutone

Neutone offers transformative AI audio instruments that ignite creative possibilities. The platform enables users to share real-time AI audio processing models with its community.

5. Pitch Drift

Pitch Drift breathes life into your tracks by adding pitch fluctuations, creating an organic and natural vibe. The effect spans from subtle instabilities to intense drifting that intentionally takes your tracks out of tune.

6. Magic Dice

Magic Dice transforms your sound with lush delays, reverb, and modulation textures at the touch of a button. Each click unveils a new effect configuration, ensuring you’ll never encounter the same result twice.

7. Baby Comeback

Baby Comeback, a collaborative creation by BABY Audio and Computer Music Magazine, is a free and simplified version of their renowned Comeback Kid delay plugin. It includes an on-board ducker to tidy up delays and four distinct flavor modes in Wide, Analog, Saucey, and Cheap.

8. Magic Switch

Magic Switch is a free chorus plugin that draws inspiration from the iconic Juno “one-button” choruses of the 1980s. It offers a beautifully detuned, rich, and moody effect, infusing vintage modulation into your tracks.

9. Kilohearts Essentials

Kilohearts Essentials is a comprehensive free collection featuring everything from ladder filters to tape stops and more. Its versatile effects can be used as standalone plugins in your DAW or seamlessly integrated as Snapins within any Kilohearts Snapin Host.

10. TDR Nova

TDR Nova is a parallel dynamic equalizer that seamlessly combines parametric equalization with a dynamic section in each band. Its intuitive design, featuring a drag-and-drop display and classic knob interface, provides quick access to powerful processing capabilities.

11. Lofi Oddity

Lofi Oddity is your go-to free toolkit for sonic experimentation and destruction. The versatile tool incorporates effects spanning SketchCassette, Digitalis, ShapeShifter, and more, offering an immediate and user-friendly playground for creative exploration.

12. Prisma

Prisma is a multi-band distortion plugin designed for advanced tone shaping. With a selection of 16 modules, the plugin is capable of producing highly complex and intricate tones.

13. Flex Reverb

Flex Reverb is a free plate reverb accompanied by a convenient graphic EQ. Its gracefully diffused sound is definitely worth checking out.

14. OTT

OTT is Xfer Records’ dynamic multi-band compressor plugin that’s widely used in music production. Standing for “Over the Top,” OTT is known for its aggressive compression and upward expansion characteristics.

15. Supermassive

Supermassive is known and adored for its larger-than-life delays and reverbs. From fast attacks to slow decays, it excels at achieving a wide array of sounds.

Free instrument plugins

1. Analog Lab Play

Analog Lab Play offers a library of 100 synths, keys, basses, pads, and more. Whether you’re crafting trap beats, creating hyperpop bangers, or seeking an authentic retro vibe, Analog Lab Play has the sonic flavors to match your style.

2. Vital

Vital breathes new life into wavetable synthesis with its groundbreaking spectral oscillator warping. By manipulating a waveform’s harmonics, it can generate unique shapes and timbres from simple sources.

3. Oxid

Oxid is a powerful software instrument that faithfully emulates the iconic ARP Omni-2 Polyphonic Synthesizer from the 1970s. The plugin offers a close simulation of the original hardware with 64 voices polyphony, encompassing distinctive String and Synthesizer sections.

4. Koala Sampler

Koala, a full-fledged pocket-sized sampler on iOS, is now available for Mac and PC, bringing instant creativity to your music-making process. Record anything with your computer’s mic and use Koala to craft beats, add effects, and compose a full track.

5. Rasa

Rasa provides a glimpse into the expansive creative potential of Mntra’s unique instruments. Leveraging four sample maps, Rasa integrates the large Tibetan Horn (Orakle), the Morin khuur (Arca), Pitched Volcanic Rocks (Atma), and “Viper” Death Whistle (UDW).

6. LABS

LABS is a renowned series of free virtual instruments by Spitfire Audio, offering an extensive collection of high-quality sounds for music production. It covers a diverse range of instruments and textures, providing composers, producers, and musicians with a rich palette of sounds to enhance their creative projects.

7. Syntronik 2

Leveraging IK Multimedia’s advanced sampling techniques and a hybrid sample and modeling synthesis engine, Syntronik 2 delivers a comprehensive array of rare and coveted synths with great sonic precision and extensive editing capabilities. Its latest update introduces 12 new synths, incorporating exciting and highly requested features for enhanced functionality.

8. Modo Bass C2

IK Multimedia’s Modo Bass offers a great virtual instrument for bass guitar emulation. With IK’s physical modeling technology, Modo Bass authentically reproduces the nuanced characteristics of real bass instruments.

9. Synthesizer Expander Module

The Synthesizer Expander Module is a free emulation of the classic Oberheim® self-contained synthesizer from 1974. Originally designed to complement the Oberheim DS-2 digital sequencer, the keyboard-less mono module became an iconic part of early polyphonic synthesizer history.

10. Retrogrit Lite

Retrogrit Lite offers a free demo version of the Retro Lofi virtual instrument plugin, featuring nine multi-sampled presets extracted from the full version. Despite having fewer presets, the free edition is fully functional and royalty-free, providing a comprehensive experience.

11. Ample Guitar Lite II

Ample Guitar Lite II is a free virtual guitar instrument that’s designed with a focus on simplicity and ease of use. While it offers fewer features than its premium counterparts, it provides a user-friendly platform for adding realistic guitar sounds to your compositions.

12. Regency

Regency presents a unique synthesis approach, drawing inspiration from traditional phase distortion synthesizers. Its architecture includes two generator layers, each featuring three editable multi-segment curves—these curves, applied in series to distort the phase of the generator, offer modulate-able amounts for creative sound shaping.

13. SyndtSphere

SyndtSphere is an innovative take on the polyphonic synthesizer Syndt, presenting a sphere-based interface that allows users to “surf” between presets seamlessly. With a minimalistic approach, this unique design morphs all parameters based on the proximity of different presets, offering an intuitive way to dial in the perfect sound without dealing with specific parameters directly.

Free utility plugins

1. SonoBus

SonoBus is a user-friendly application designed for high-quality, low-latency peer-to-peer audio streaming between devices over the internet or a local network. Offering flexibility, it connects multiple users with precise control over latency, quality, and overall mix.

2. Samplab

Samplab is a powerful tool for detecting and editing chords, ensuring they stay in key even when modified. With the ability to export MIDI, it allows you to seamlessly integrate its output into your projects.

3. Front Row

Front Row is a delightful and entertaining visualizer plugin. It brings a unique twist to the visual experience by featuring dancing animals that react to incoming audio, with the added feature of customizable threshold settings.

4. YouLean Loudness Meter

YouLean Loudness Meter is a versatile metering tool available as both a plugin and a standalone application. It offers various formats such as VST2, VST3, AU, and AAX, catering to both Windows and macOS operating systems.

5. SPAN

SPAN is a free real-time audio spectrum analyzer plugin, compatible with AAX, AudioUnit, and VST formats. It offers customizable spectrum preferences, multi-channel analysis, secondary spectrum display, and visual smoothing.

6. NeuralNote

NeuralNote is an advanced audio plugin that introduces cutting-edge audio to MIDI conversion capabilities to your preferred DAW. Compatible with any tonal instrument, including vocals, NeuralNote supports polyphonic transcription and pitch bend detection.

7. Wave Observer

Wave Observer is a versatile oscilloscope and monitoring plugin designed for time-domain audio analysis, providing valuable support for mixing, mastering, and sound design. Its envelope mode is suitable for analyzing envelope shapes and signal dynamics with long sweep times, while the waveform mode allows for viewing individual waveforms and oscillations using a specialized stabilization algorithm.