The 5 best FREE VST mixing and mastering plugins
Once the writing and recording is done it’s time for those last little touches that make your track pristine – these 5 plugins will help you complete your sound with quality and at no extra cost.
Mixing and mastering is often overlooked but one of the most vital stages of producing a finished piece of music. It’s when you bring everything into their proper home within the mix and optimise the sounds to all harmonise as you want them to.
Whilst there are professionals putting the polish to tracks for musicians and creators around the world, sometimes you can’t afford the talent and have to go it alone. If that’s the case, we’ve collected 5 brilliant plugins that don’t cost a dime to help you put those final touches to your tracks and complete mix.
Unlike the last few in the series I won’t provide audio examples as the effects of many of these are done best when they’re subtle and aren’t as easily exemplified as how a crazy synth plugin sounds.
Rescue stereo enhancer by Variety of Sound
Rescue promises a subtle but overall enhancing effect on your full mixes. It offers envelope dependent signal amplification and saturation in a mid/side configuration. In ANALOG mode it can also provide additional signal alterations that you’d get from actual hardware.
Find it with a bunch more effects plugins from Variety of Sound.
Limiter №6 by VladG Sound
This powerful and control-packed plugin comes in a variety of skins so you not only have an incredible amount of power over mixing your loudness but you can make it look how you want.
It features 5 modules for compression, peak limiting, high-frequency limiting, a clipper, and a true peak limiter. For a free plugin you get a high quality processor capable of mastering like a pro with control over the smallest mix tweaks to huge compression.
Browse this plugins skins and download it here from VladG Sound’s blog.
MJUC jr. by Klanghelm
This certainly isn’t the most advanced compressor plugin available for free but sometimes a simple tweak is all you need. It works great to provide a quality final mix that can level your mix nice and smoothly.
MJUC jr. is a mix of Mk1 and Mk2 of its big brother MJUC. It’s combining very natural, dense compression characteristics of the early days of this type of compression with a more forward sounding approach and more harmonics creating of the variable-mu comps of the early 1960s.
Get it for Mac & Windows here.
Overtone GEQ by Voxengo
Overtone GEQ is a 7-band harmonic graphic equalizer with multi-channel operation support (supporting up to 8 input/output channels, host setup-dependent). Overtone GEQ offers extensive internal channel routing capabilities, and supports mid/side channel processing.
Overtone GEQ was designed to allow audio engineers to apply quick EQ shape adjustments together with adding a bit of harmonic richness to the audio material.
See more of Overtone’s features and download it here.
Leveling Tool by AdHd
AdHd Leveling Tool is a Tube Leveling Amplifier inspired by the legends and carefully crafted to meet your compression needs. Perfect for keeping peaks under control and tried and tested as a great accomplice for getting the compression on vocals just right.