Good free soft synths

[The Paul meister]

Hi everyone,

Usually I find that free soft synths are a waste of time, but not these:

Flite player at wavea.co. The sequences on this one are good.

If you go here: https://www.gearnews.com/manufacturer/u-he/
you will see the link to free plugins of the week from Sunday the 23rd March. This might change soon, but at the moment one of the things is the u-he Tyrell N6.

This is how I found these: https://u-he.com/products/#synths. If you scroll down you will see Zebralette, Podolski, Triple Cheese and TryellN6 Beta. Out of these Triple Cheese probably comes in last place but it's worth checking them all out.

There's no access to the Beatzille, BazilleCM or ZebraCM any more. Clicking on Beatzille will take you to Beat magazine. The other 2 links are dead.

I hope you enjoy using these,

Cheers, Paul

[resistorman]

Not to long ago I would have paid a lot of money for quality music making software, it's astounding what you can get for free or almost free. No excuses anymore...

[SafeandSound Mastering]

Good shares Paul, U-He's free ones are solid.

My excuse is I cannot play well though I have plenty of ideas, I am currently working on a track and wrote my own chords, by singing them, only problem is you cannot sing a chord, right. So for those chords I cannot find, despite playing almost but not entirely random triads that almost work and fail, I hum the note which is usually the root and then work out the other notes myself, painful but I get there through effort alone.

Try this free softsynth it is great it is the V3 I have used only the first one but it was amazing and I used it in full tracks before. Charlaton 3 for Windows and Linux.

https://www.blaukraut.info/

Also very good and free and in 2017 I paid £89.00 for it so you did not have to.

https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/

And the cut down version of this Vital is free:

https://vital.audio/#getvital

I started a list of synths I own. It is long. Almost 'cringe many' but I use and enjoy every one of them over many years. I am a softsynth collector it seems, when synths went software I saw the immense potential for a lot of enjoyment and ran with it 100pct.

I believe I will not have to purchase any more synths now. Although the occasional oddity and classic appears that tempts.

It is not that I have any regret at all buying any of them, it's a great place to be. I just love to sit and either play chords, sound design and listen to sounds or make actual tracks. I generally hear enough variation in them to have made them all worthwhile.

[The Paul meister]

Thanks SafeandSound,

I knew about Surge and Vital. I don't use those so much as the ones I said.

I'll have a look at Charlatan 3 but it's PC and Linux only. My main music computer is my Mac, but I have a PC laptop which connects in my studio.

Cheers

[yeroc]

TyrellN6 is very good! Recommended

[The Paul meister]

[BigRedX]

I just use the synths that come free with Logic. Most of the time Retro Synth will produce the sound that I am after, and on those few occasions when it won't ES2, Alchemy or Sampler will.

[The Paul meister]

Ok, good point.

I have used Alchemy, but not the other ones you mentioned. So will give that a try.

Cheers

[The Paul meister]

Hi SafeandSound,

I tried this but can't find it anywhere in Cubase Elements 13. Can you advise on where to put the VST3 file? Or do I need to put the CLAP file somewhere?

Try this free softsynth it is great it is the V3 I have used only the first one but it was amazing and I used it in full tracks before. Charlaton 3 for Windows and Linux.

https://www.blaukraut.info/

Thanks, Paul

[The Paul meister]

I figured out where to put the VST3 file, it's here:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3

I now have it open in Cubase but where do I need to put the presets folder?

I can't access the presets at the moment.

Cheers, Paul

[The Paul meister]

I figured out how to load the presets:

Firstly I copied the presets which are in the downloads folder. In the synth, you click on 'INIT'. This brings up a blank page where the presets should be. You then click on the hamburger menu - ie 3 lines - on the bottom right of that window. Then click on 'open file browser' and paste the presets into the window that opens. On my PC it is this:

C:\Users\DELL\AppData\Roaming\charlatan\presets

Then restart your DAW and they should all be there. I pasted the 6 individual preset folders into this folder. I don't know if you can just paste in the 'presets' folder.

Cheers, Paul

[The Paul meister]

U-he have made 2 more synths available here:

https://u-he.com/products/#synths

They're BazilleCM and ZebraCM. Unfortunately Zebralette doesn't seem to be available any more as the link takes you to the paid version - Zebra Legacy or also called Zebra 2.

[ajay_m]

Crystal from Greenoak is very nice.