Relica 2, Orra Tone Zone, Okay Distortion: Free Plugins of the Week
Relica 2, Orra Tone Zone, Okay Distortion: Free Plugins of the Week · Source: Hivetune, Orra Audio, Okay Synthesizer
Our freeware picks of the week include a retro gaming synth, a powerful tone shaping tool, and a seriously wacky distortion plugin. Check out Relica 2, Tone Zone, and Okay Distortion!
Free Plugins of the Week
Hivetune Relica 2: The Ultimate Retro Gaming Synth?
Hivetune Relica 2 is the follow-up to the original Relica, released a couple of years ago. And boy has it grown up! Like the first version, Relica 2 is a software synth that takes you back to the glorious days of 8-bit game soundtracks. If the sounds of the NES era give you warm fuzzy feelings, this is a free software synth you won’t want to miss.
Relica 2 offers a choice of four oscillator waveforms: square, sawtooth, triangle, and sine. Interestingly, you can apply pulse width modulation to all four waveshapes, which puts a variety of unusual timbres at your fingertips. There’s also an ADSR envelope, as well as a bit crusher for classic 8-bit vibes. Unlike the original Relica, Relica 2 lets you toggle anti-aliasing on and off: leave it off for the raw grit of retro hardware, or activate it for a more modern, polished sound.
The new version also adds a noise generator, a versatile vibrato engine with multiple LFO shapes, and portamento. Most importantly, however, Relica 2 now features a BPM-synced arpeggiator for those classic chord sequences that defined the game soundtracks of yesteryear.
Hivetune Relica 2 is available for macOS and Windows in VST3 and AU formats.
Orra Tone Zone: Free Tonal Curve Correction Plugin
Orra Tone Zone must be one of the most powerful free tonal shaping and EQ-matching plugins I’ve ever seen. The plugin analyzes your track using 40-band spectral analysis and then compares it to a target curve. You can choose from the 24 included, genre-specific target curves, or import your own reference track.
You can then turn up the Correction knob to nudge your frequency spectrum toward the target. There are four slots for quickly comparing different settings. For fine-tuning, Tone Zone also includes a 6-band parametric EQ with draggable nodes, as well as per-band analog-style saturation with three modes (tube, VCA, British). Fantastic!
Tone Zone is available for macOS and Windows in VST3, AU, and AAX formats.
Okay Distortion: How Much Distortion Would You Like?
Okay Distortion by Okay Synthesizer lets you go absolutely berserk with distortion. Originally developed as part of the Bingo Drum Machine plugin, this freebie offers no less than five distortion engines chained together, with an added feedback line for good measure.
In addition to a pedal-style distortion module that sits somewhere between a DS1 and a RAT, Okay Distortion offers a wavefolder, a soft and hard clipper, a bit crusher, and a sample rate reducer. There’s also a main module with an overall mix slider and the aforementioned feedback path. You can freely rearrange the order of the modules, which opens up the door to some seriously wacky effects.
Okay Distortion is available for macOS and Windows in VST3 and AU formats.
Check out our archive for many more free plugins like Relica 2, Orra Tone Zone, and Okay Distortion!
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