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bpb Freeware Studio: Best Free Filter VST/AU Plugins

By 15 Comments3 Mins Read

bpb Freeware Studio: Best Free Filter VST/AU Plugins

Filters and delays are my favorite effects to play around with, so this edition of bpb Freeware Studio was a rather easy one to write. I’ve included all sorts of different types of filters in the list below, from simple transparent ones for cleaning up the low end, to some more complex and dirty sounding filters for sound design. Check out the links, read the descriptions and pick your own favorites.

Follow the links for screenshots & download info:

Classic Auto-Filter is part of the well-known Kjaerhus freeware bundle. It features a built-in LFO and envelope follower, but I like it because the actual filter sounds very juicy and works great for build-ups, filter sweeps and such.

Frohmage is a much praised multi-band resonant filter with a highly resonant LPF and up to 15 additional bands and a distortion stage.

BiFilter features an arsenal of different filter types, including formant filters, comb filters, Moog filters, as well as distortion, saturation, etc.

Atlantis Filter Delay is a very powerful filter module with some very interesting filter types (including the Commodore 64 SID filter), LFOs, delay line, etc.

TAL-Filter-2 is a nice sounding filter with a built-in waveform editor, similar to the one found in FilterShaper 2 by Cableguys.

Niveau Filter and bx_cleansweep V2 are very good transparent filters, great tools for cleaning up the sub bass area or extreme highs on individual tracks. A video demonstration of the Niveau Filter by JamesAndrewMuir is embedded below.

Rubberfilter is a butterworth filter, with an extreme slope range of up to 384 dB/Oct. Such extreme slopes often produce artifacts like zips and sweeps, but this can work great when used creatively.

Nebula3 Free includes several awesome sounding hardware filter models. It introduces latency which can be a pain, but those filters sounds so good that it’s worth the trouble.

NorthPole is a very old plugin, the latest version only works on Mac, but an old PC version is also available for download here.

Oligarc Filter sounds very good, can be downloaded for free and the commercial licence costs $20 (all money goes to the alliance for climate protection).

YouTube video

That’s all for to day, feel free to leave comments, suggest more VSTs, suggest a topic for the next bpb Freeware Studio article, etc.

Tomislav is a music producer and sound designer from Belgrade, Serbia. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief at Bedroom Producers Blog.

15 Comments

  2. joemaro

     on

    ATLANTIS!!!! :)
    is soooooo amazing … one of the best modulation-concepts i know of …
    just wanted to give that one a lil push :)

    Reply

  3. 333

     on

    WWAYM NWEQ (filter bank) 64-bit internal free
    Tiny Four-Way Zone (include Multimod Filter) free. Old but still good, because good sounding filters and not standart lfo-shapes.
    Leslie Sanford AutoFilter free
    KarmaFx Filter (One Pole and Two Pole Multi) free
    argotlunar 2 (include nice sounding filters) free
    dfx Rez Synth (resonant bandpass filter banks) free
    GVST GLFO free
    TAL Old Multi Filter (If TAL-filter cold this one Warm) free
    VCS UltraPhazer (multi notch filter/read manual) free
    ConcreteFx Qwah 2 (From ConcreteFX FX_Pack) free

    For the commercial one it’s of course CableGuys Filtershaper2. Because may easy transfom from complex sounding filters to Fx-processor.

    Reply

  5. Ward S (ARack Audio)

     on

    QB Filter is really useful
    for Ableton: drop it on a track, and you get a normal vst rack with all parameters automapped!

    What also a good thing is (for dj’s): the’re is a lowpass/highpass combo like on the pioneer djm900 color effects
    So: when the freq is at ’64’ the signal is dry, turn to the right for hp, to the left for lp!
    Really useful for in dj racks (like eq + qb filter + reverb = simple dj rack)

    Reply

  7. Guardian Angel

     on

    Hi BPB,

    You opinion is valued and trusted. Contrary to so many other opinion, thanks to you, after almost 5 years of putting off using Nebula out of concern about high CPU usage, etc. I tried it out myself today, because of your advice on the quality of its filters. Thanks. I will never take any one’s word in the future. Nebula as you have said is really good, I have never heard such clean, transparent change to audio before, Wow, considering that these are sampled from hardware, now I know why some people freak out over hardware. It sounds GOOOD, and does the least “damage” to the audio. Thanks again.

    Reply
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