Top 5 FreeWare AU Effects Plugin Bundles for Use in Logic Pro (Logic Studio)

I talk to a lot of people every day about Logic Pro. Some on the phone, some online, some via comments on YouTube. It seems that a lot of people are just not content with the extent of the plugins in Logic Pro. This is not to say that the included plug-ins are bad, in fact they are some of the best plugins available. They just simply do not have enough "weirdo" effects for the sound-tweakers of the world. I have assembled a quick rundown of my Top 5 Favorite FreeWare AU Plugins for Logic Pro for those of us that want a quick reference.

First off, many plugin manufacturers release "lite" or demo versions of their plug-ins that are free. I don't consider these to be FreeWare in the traditional sense, so I'll leave those for another day. Also, many developers release plug-ins in bundles or packages of multiple plug-ins. I'm going to count those bundles as one item each to maximize the amount of cool plugins we can fit in this article.

1) MDA AU Plugin Pack - Let me just say that this plugin pack by MDA-VST is a killer. It includes 13 plugins accomplishing various tasks. Included are Combo amp & speaker simulation, Degrade sample quality reduction, Detune pitch shifting thickener, Dub Delay with feedback saturation and time modulation, Dynamics compressor/ limiter/ gate, Leslie rotary speaker emulator, Re-Psycho! drum loop pitch changer, RingMod ring modulator, RoundPan 3D panner, Shepard rising/faling tone generator, Talkbox vocoder, TestTone pink and white noise generator and Tracker pitch tracking oscillator or EQ. A great pack of plugs at a great price, free and open source!

2) Blue Cat's Gain Suite - A great little suite of plugins including MIDI Gain, Stereo Gain, Mono Gain and Widening Gain. Easy to use, simple interfaces and effective gain applications make these a welcome expansion to Logic's simple "Gain" plugin. For a free plug, the widening effect actually creates some pretty good imaging, without sounding too "phased" from the effect. Blue Cat makes great paid plugins as well.

3) Soundhack's freesound Bundle - An interesting pack of plugins with a purpose. That is purpose is; be different. From the art of the plugs to the algorithms that they use to create the effects, these plugins look and sound different than others in their category. The freesound bundle includes 5 plugins; +chebyshev for odd or even harmonic distortion using chebyshev polynominals, +compand for compression/expansion and a level meter, +decimate for sample rate reduction and aliasing, +matrix for mid-sed to L/R encoding and decoding (very useful for applying effects only to the center or sides of a mix) and +phasescope for a graphical view of phase relationships between L and R channels. A very interesting suite, which would be number 1 on my list if I could find more places where I needed these effects. They have their place though, and when I do need them, this bundle is my first choice.

4) Nomad Factory's Free Bundle - Free-Sweeper, Free-Tremolo and Free Phaser round out this little collection. I find that Free-Tremolo is a little deeper than Logic's included Trem plugin and the Free-Sweeper can be really fun to automate over a synth track. All in all, they are solid plugins with a purpose and most importantly, free. They can also be really useful when used in combination with Logic's included plugs to achieve a really deep Trem or Phaser effect with a slightly different sound and algorithm. Try juxtaposing a guitar with Logic's Tremolo against a lead sound with Free-Tremolo for an interesting way to make your lead tone "pop out" in the track. Nomad Factory as well has some cool paid plugins as well available on their website.

5) Soundhack's Spectral Shapers - Four more plugins from Soundhack that fit in the same vein as the freesound bundle. Very weird, very cool and a little hard to find a place for. Unless, that is, you make crazy electronic music. Then you might find yourself using these everyday. +Spectralcompand is for timbral filtering or noise removal, +morphfilter is a dual filter-shape capable of filter inversion and morphing between the two filters, +binaural can place sound at a specific point in a listener's head (extremely interesting applications for ambient music) and +spectralgate is (guess what?) a spectral version of the freesound gate plugin that can be made frequency dependent. Again, hard to find a place to put them, extra awesome when you find the right sound with one of these plugs.

Any of these plugs should be available via the links in the article. If not, you can search around on www.dontcrack.com for a ton of cool free plugins and bundles. Keep a lookout for my article about FreeWare Virtual Instrument AU plugins soon!