Envosound, jdrummer, Fuzz: Free Plugins of the Week
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Envosound, jdrummer, Fuzz: Free Plugins of the Week · Source: Tsuga Audio, Justin Ehrlichman, VZtec
This week’s collection of freebies brings you retro chiptune arpeggios, a versatile drum plugin, and an analog fuzz: check out Envosound, jdrummer and Fuzz!
Free Plugins of the Week
Tsuga Audio Envosound: Chiptune Sounds and Retro Arpeggios
If you’re into retro computing and chiptune sounds, you’re going to love Envosound! This unique software synth by Tsuga Audio is all about the sparkling arpeggios and retro sounds of early video games.
Back in the heyday of video gaming, game sound designers had to work with the limited capabilities of the sound chips of the time, which could only produce monophonic sounds, most typically square waves. So how do you play chords on a monophonic synth? Easy: simply play rapid arpeggios, which became a defining feature of most music written for the C64 and other early computers.
Envosound doesn’t just bring back the classic sounds (including a bunch of extra waveforms in addition to square waves), but also offers a relativistic arpeggiator that excels at creating typical chiptune patterns and sequences. One of its most unique features is a beat-locked gliding clock, which allows you to change the speed or density of the arpeggio while everything stays perfectly synced to the beat – an awesome feature for creating tension and seamless transitions!
For further sound shaping, Envosound offers an envelope-controlled multi-mode filter, as well as delay and reverb effects.
If you want even more, you can buy Envosound’s big brother Glaid for $29.99. This gives you dual oscillators, more modulation options, MIDI out for controlling external synths, and a step sequencer.
Envosound is available for macOS and Windows in VST3 and AU formats.
Justin Ehrlichman jdrummer: Free SoundFont-Based Drum Machine Plugin
jdrummer is a surprisingly capable free drum plugin based on SoundFont drum kits. It comes with 28 kits, including standard acoustic kits, electronic kits, and even some special kits like orchestral percussion. The 16 drum pads are velocity-sensitive and offer volume, pan, mute, and solo per pad, as well as individual outputs. You can also load your own SoundFont files. Simple and effective!
However, there’s a whole lot more. jdrummer also includes an extensive groove library with drag&drop MIDI export to your DAW. You can build complete drum parts by combining multiple grooves and fills, and then export your entire arrangement to your DAW.
Amazingly, the plugin even offers a groove matching feature that can analyze audio files and detect their rhythms. It’ll then find matching rhythm patterns in your library, and add the best match to the groove composer. Neat!
jdrummer is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux in VST3 and AU formats.
VZtec Fuzz: Analog Fuzz Pedal as a Plugin
After Overdrive, Argentinian pedal manufacturer VZtec has released another one of its own pedals as a plugin! Fuzz digitally replicates the analog pedal of the same name. This way, you can add it to your collection of virtual FX for free and try it out before buying the hardware version.
According to VZtec, the plugin is a faithful recreation that accurately captures the behavior of the analog circuit. In addition to Volume, Gain, Bias, and Tone controls, Fuzz offers a Voice switch to toggle between two distinct tones (Face and Muff), as well as an Octave switch that activates an Octafuzz mode.
Fuzz is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux in VST3, AU, LV2, and AAX formats.
Looking for more free plugins like Envosound, jdrummer, and Fuzz? Check out our archive!
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