This week’s round-up of the best free plug-ins takes you back to the glorious days of 8-bit game soundtracks with Hivetune Relica, an easy-to-use retro synth. Also check out our other freebies of the week: Growl Filter and TWD DLX.
Hivetune Relica: The Sounds of Retro Gaming
There’s something about retro game soundtracks that just continues to fascinate people. Unlike many other chiptune synths, the new Relica by Hivetune doesn’t try to emulate a specific sound chip or gaming system. Instead, it gives you all the tools you need to create vintage gaming sounds from scratch.
Designed to be easy to use and fun, Relica offers a choice of four waveforms: square, sawtooth, triangle, and sine. Interestingly, you can apply pulse width modulation to all of them, which opens up a wide range of sonic possibilities. There’s no filter, but you can run your sounds through a gritty bitcrusher effect for those lovely lo-fi digital vibes.
Relica also offers an ADSR envelope for volume, as well as an LFO for vibrato. While it’s not the world’s most versatile synth, it is great fun to play with – even if you’re not a gamer!
Relica is available for macOS and Windows in VST3 and AU formats.
Zayne Growl Filter: Animated Comb Filter
The scary-looking Growl Filter by Zayne is a unique comb filter plugin that can turn simple waveforms into screaming leads and basses. There are five knobs across the top for controlling the filter, including one named “Comb F*ckery” – I wonder what that does! In addition, Growl Filter offers formant shifting, as well as a pair of highpass and lowpass filters.
The best feature, however, is that you can animate all parameters using dedicated LFOs with drawable waveshapes. This lets you create all sorts of rhythmic filtering and growling effects on the fly.
Growl Filter is a VST3 plugin for Windows.
Helmut Keller Audio TWD DLX: CPU-Friendly Tube Amp Simulation
TWD DLX by developer Helmut Keller, a guitar player and retired R&D engineer, is a tube amp simulation modeled after the 5E3 circuit of the Fender Tweed Deluxe amplifier. The developer claims that his emulation sounds at least as good as commercial solutions, while being efficient enough to run on fanless tablets with very low latency. He achieved this by simplifying the circuits without sacrificing any aspects relevant to the sound and playing experience. You can read more about his approach in the research paper available on his website.
TWD DLX is supplied as a JSFX script that you can load into the free YSFX plugin by Joep Vanlier. YSFX is available in VST3 and AU formats for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is included in the download. Alternatively, TWD DLX runs natively in Cockos Reaper.
Want more free plugins like Relica, Growl Filter, and TWD DLX? Check out our huge archive!
