Drift Ritual, Portacrunch 424, gFractor: Free Plugins of the Week
Drift Ritual, Portacrunch 424, gFractor: Free Plugins of the Week · Source: Manu Riga, Schulz Audio, Growl Audio
This week’s collection of free plugins brings you a great-sounding software synth, classic 4-track crunch, and a powerful spectrum analyzer. Check out Drift Ritual, Portacrunch 424, and gFractor!
Free Plugins of the Week
Manu Riga Drift Ritual: This Free Software Synth Sounds Expensive
Drift Ritual by Manu Riga is a great-sounding software synth released on a name-your-own-price basis. You can download it for free, but we suggest making a donation to support the developer, because this thing is awesome. With a solid synthesis foundation, powerful modulation, and great internal effects, Drift Ritual excels at atmospheric sounds, evolving textures, expressive pads, and cinematic soundscapes.
Drift Ritual offers dual high-quality oscillators based on the PolyBLEP architecture, as well as a sub-oscillator. There’s also audio-rate cross-modulation with a dedicated envelope, which can produce some pretty wild timbres. The sound is then shaped through a multi-mode filter with Body control and analog-style filter lag. The main panel offers quick access to the VCA and VCF envelopes, and there’s a dedicated modulation panel for assigning additional loopable mod envelopes, LFOs, aftertouch, and the mod wheel. You can also quickly set up four macros using a MIDI learn function.
In addition, Drift Ritual offers two built-in effects. Bloom is a harmonic delay based on musical pitch intervals. The Space reverb offers two modes (Sanctum and Halo). Together, these effects help produce a wide spectrum of organic and expressive sounds. The software synth comes with a good selection of factory presets, including pads, leads, basses, plucks, drones, ambient sounds, and more.
Drift Ritual is available for macOS and Windows in VST3 and AU formats.
Portacrunch 424: That Classic 4-Track Crunch for your DAW
For someone like me who learned the basics of recording and mixing on 4-track cassette recorders, this one hits close to the heart. Portacrunch 424 by Schulz Audio models the gain stages of the iconic Tascam Portastudio 424 – down to the individual transistors, op-amps, and capacitors. If that classic 4-track sound makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, this is a freebie you won’t want to miss!
It’s important to note that Portacrunch 424 is not a tape simulation – there are other plugins for that. Instead, it focuses on the gain circuits that gave the bedroom recordings of the ‘80s and early ‘90s their signature warmth and dynamics.
If you’ve ever used a 424, you’ll feel right at home. You can adjust the input gain, input level, output gain, and output level, recreating the feeling of recording and mixing on a cassette 4-track. In addition, Portacrunch 424 models the 2-band EQ of the original.
While Portacrunch 424 is free for now, the developer points out that this offer may end at any time. So grab it while it lasts! You’ll need to create a user account.
Portacrunch 424 is available for macOS and Windows in VST, VST3, AU, and AAX formats.
gFractor: Powerful and Flexible Spectrum Analyzer
There are many free spectrum analyzers, but gFractor by Growl Audio takes it up a notch. If you’re looking for an analyzer that provides helpful visual feedback at any stage of the production workflow and helps pinpoint problems in your mix, this one is worth checking out.
You can switch between mid/side, left/right, and transient/tone analysis and monitor individual components separately, such as the mide or side channels or just the transients. gFractor also lets you visually compare your signal against a sidechain reference, revealing the spectral relationships between the tracks. And you can save peak hold curves for later use as a reference.
What’s more, gFractor also offers a full suite of stereo metering tools, including a goniometer, correlation meter, and even a tool that breaks down the stereo width per octave. An extremely useful free metering tool!
gFractor is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux in VST3, AU, and standalone formats.
Check out our archive for more free plugins like Drift Ritual, Portacrunch 424, and gFractor!
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