How To Use Vst Plugins
In Foobar, go to File Preferences Components, then drag and drop the FooVST.dll onto the Components list, hit Apply, and allow Foobar to restart itself. After Foobar restarts, go to File Preferences Components VST plug-ins, and hit the “Add”.
Finding the essential VST plugins to use in your digital audio workstation is important if want to attain any success in your producing, recording and mixing.
While your DAW provides the canvas where you form your musical masterpieces, the plugins are the tools which allow your masterworks to take shape.
So in this article we’ll go over what are some of the essential types of plugins you’d need to pay attention to.
Some other helpful posts:
If you’ve been producing for at least a little while, you’ll know that it can be overwhelming to decide on the right plugins to use.
- Working with VSTs and VSTi Plugins. VST and VSTi are industry standard plugin formats supported in most digital audio workstations. A VST can be anything from a tiny sound effect (similar to LADSPA) to an advanced instrument. VST can be both expensive and free. Luckily, these powerful plugins.
- Here’s our list of the top 50 best VST plugins (2021): It’s a table with a search function, so search for what you’re looking for, & it’ll come up! ‘delay’, ‘mastering’, ‘compressor’ (if you want more in-depth info, use the table of contents to navigate past the table).
- July 26, 2020 July 26, 2020 producersphere how to use serum vst, serum vst plugin tutorial, serum vst tutorial If you mention wavetable synthesis around most producers, the first name you’ll probably hear is Native Instruments’ Massive, the hugely popular VST instrument capable of an enormous scope of electronic sounds.
- Using 64 bit VST Plugins & Instruments in a 32 bit VST Host00:58 Step 1Download jBridgeAdmin jBridge 32bit Host 01:28 Step 2Create bridging files for 64 b.
It’s like a beginner carpenter looking at an expert toolshed. There are a plethora of tools available to you, but which one to use? And for what purpose?
The music production software world is saturated with software plugins. Every week there seems to be a new plugin or plugin update that offers some new or enhanced features. It can get overwhelming, either with excitement or confusion, when deciding on what plugins to use.
Does this mean that the plugins that you find in music production online stores are unnecessary? No, but you do need to understand what VST plugins are, and also very importantly, what it is you’re trying to achieve in your music in the first place. Then you can decide on what other plugins want to use in your music making and recording.
If you start from the simple basics, you’re sure to advance according to your needs.
The Essential Plugins You Should Use
If you don’t know what plugins to choose from, quite likely you will end up wasting a lot of money and hard drive space on trying out unnecessary plugin software.
It is best to stick the basics of what you need. From the basics, you should seek to achieve sonic mastery by becoming competent in the essential tools.
When you break it down, there are only a small portion of essential VST plugins that you need to handle the necessities of recording and editing any audio.
What are the essential plugins?
All the essential plugins you need will come in just four general categories:
- Virtual Instrument Plugins – also called VSTi
- Effects Plugins – sometimes referred to as Effects processors
- Dynamics Plugins – sometimes referred to as Dynamic processors
- Emulation Plugins
Of course, we’ll need to break it down and we’ll find that these two categories consist of subcategories. So let’s take a look at those.
Virtual Instrument Plugins
VSTi’s are plugins that emulate actual musical instruments. They come in a few different types:
- Samplers
- Softsynths
- Drum Machines
What these plugins do is emulate the sounds of a real live instrument in your digital audio workstation. You can “play” these virtual instruments using a midi controller/instrument, or you can write the notes into your piano roll using your mouse.
Sampler Plugins
A sampler takes samples of recorded sound and plays them back. These tend to require the largest amount of GB space in terms of size, simply because they require lots of audio files to be saved onto your system. These audio files are what will be retriggered for playback within your DAW, usually via MIDI controller.
A sample could be anything from a drum kick to a note on the piano. The high-quality ones record them at various “velocities” (soft or loud). Once you trigger a note within the VST from your MIDI controller or from your DAW’s piano roll, the sound sample will be reproduced.
Read: MIDI Controllers for Music Production
Softsynths
A soft synth takes up far less space, but will use up more CPU power.
Softsynths are software synthesizers (hence the name) that work just like your analogue synthesizers, employing various methods of audio synthesis to produce digital audio.
With a synthesizer, you can construct and create new sounds. Practically any sound you like can come from a synthesizer, you’d just have to first learn how to use the various parameters of a synth. Once you do, a whole entire world of sound design will be open up to your fingers and ears, with limitless possibilities and potential.
Drum Machines
A drum machine VSTi is just as the name suggests. It is a drum emulation software that creates looped beats and grooves. They are usually more often used in the electronic music genres, like house, but can be utilized in other styles of music as well.
The basic function of a drum machine is to create groove beats and rhythms that can be looped over and over. A good drum machine VST will give you good sounds to use, whether synthesized or sampled. It will have the ability to alter the effects of those sounds using EQ and other effects. You should also be able to create multiple loops that you can trigger to play at various points in your track.
We have just covered the first broad category of plugins. Now we will take a look at the second category, the type of plugins that don’t (usually) make any sounds of their own, but will go a long way to enhancing the sound of your virtual instruments and audio recordings.
Effects Plugins
Effects plugins are used to change or adjust the sound of the audio coming in and going out of your digital audio workstation.
Generally speaking, but not always, effects processors work in the “time domain,” meaning, they alter the way the sound is perceived or produced within time, to produce a desired effect.
They are essential plugins to have, if you want to get any satisfactory sound from your music. Examples of these are:
- Reverbs and Delays
- Choruses
- Flangers and Phasers
Reverbs and Delays
Reverbs and Delays adds an extra tail of sound to your audio. Reverbs are called upon to add more room and space to your sound, like the sound of singing or playing in a small room or a large theater. They can be very important for vocals, giving the singer presence in the mix. In the studio context, this usually means recording them “dry” and then using either a software or hardware reverb plugin to add the desired effect of space and room.
Some reverbs, like spring reverb plugins, act simply as an effect. They work by thickening a sound and providing more presence to drums, vocals, or guitars.
Delays are also called echoes because they produce an echoing feedback effect on a sound. Similar to reverb if you want to add space to your sounds.
Choruses
Choruses double or multiplies your audio signals to make it seem as if there are multiple instruments or voices being played back. Also a good effect for adding presence when you use it right.
Most likely, the DAW that you’re using has all of these plugins already. In many DAWs like Studio One, Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Reason or Ableton, the plugins that come with the software would already be enough to use. Especially if you’re just starting out, but even after you’re an advanced DAW user, you can still rely on the plugins that come with your DAW.
Flangers and Phasers
How To Use Vst Plug-ins In Mixcraft
Flangers and Phasers give audio an unusual “wah-wah” effect to your audio. These are usually effective in cutting out some frequencies and allowing the instrument to sit well in a large mix. But you can also use it for the effects they provide.
Dynamic VST Plugins
Dynamic plugins are dynamic processors that alter the amplitude of the audio signal to provide desired results. This means, the will either boost or cut parts of or whole frequency sections of an audio signal to change the way it sounds, or otherwise change the way the signal’s loudness is perceived.
Some examples of dynamic processors are:
- Equalizers (or EQ for short)
- Filters
- Compressors and Limiters
EQs and Filters
Equalizers allow you to adjust the amplitude of specific or ranges of frequencies in your audio. That means, you can make the lower end (bass) louder or softer, narrow in on certain sounds you’d rather not hear, or boost, or reduce or increase very high sounds in your audio.
These plugins are essential when mixing vocals, or any other instruments, since they carve out spaces for each audio signal to occupy in a mix. That way, one’s fighting for space to be heard. You can find here some examples of professional third party EQs for vocals. Otherwise, the ones that came with your DAW should suffice if you’re just starting out.
Also, filters, another type of plugin, work like EQs, but they allow you to “filter out” entire ranges of frequencies. This can be a useful effect when combined with software automation within the DAW.
Compressors and Limiters
Compressors and limiters are essentially the same things. They both affect the perceived loudness of audio by reducing the volume of loud sounds in your music, or amplifying the quiet sounds. Doing this “compresses” the audio signal’s dynamic range to just a small difference between loudness and softness.
Limiters do the same things, except that it reduces the volume attack (transients) much faster, giving quieter sounds and frequencies the ability to amplify more, therefore increasing the perceived loudness.
There is also another kind of compressor called the “de-esser,” which is designed specifically for those frequencies where you have that “SSS” sound. This removes sibilance from vocals and also from instruments like hi-hats, guitar and bass slides.
Emulation Plugins
Because we work on digital audio files, there’s a tendency for music purely mixed on a DAW to lose that the sort of character that a great sounding mix would normally have.
In this case, you reach for an emulation plugin that, like the name says, “emulates” the sound of analog hardware studio devices.
Some of these plugins come in the form of equalizer or delay/reverb plugins that we mentioned above. But if you can use a plugin to add the sort of warmth that recording on a tape machine would provide.
Though not entirely “essential,” to some, these plugins are a must have, especially when you get into mixing and mastering music.
A similar plugin is also the harmonic exciter. While not an emulator, both these hardware and software variants provide that brilliance often necessary in a dry digital mix.
How many plugins do you need?
The best advice is to start with the very basics of each plugin type. If you keep your choices down to the bare essentials, and learn to use these plugins well to do all the things you need for your production, mixes, and recordings, you’ll have an easier time with keeping yourself from “plugin overload”.
Does this mean that every other plugin you find on the internet is going to be useless? No, maybe even the opposite, because starting with the basics, you have a solid framework of what you’d like from a plugin, and what works for you and your music.
Here’s the thing, if you don’t even know how to use a basic plugin to its full potential, you’ll get lost in all the other features that come with more advanced plugins with all its fancy bells and whistles.
Final thoughts
As you can see, these are just an essential set of VST plugins that you need to use. The plugins that were mentioned will be enough to do all that is required in your production or mix. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can move on to other advanced third-party stuff, or experiment with using a different type.
Naturally, each plugin comes with its own style and way of doing things, so you may find that you develop your own favourites over time.
In the end, continue to have fun. You can give yourself permission to play with your own plugins, and get some new plugins to try out. But as you do so, remember to keep things simple. There’is an acronym for that, actually: KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
VST plug-ins are probably one of the greatest things about using a digital audio workstation, in addition to the fact you can go back to your work at any time and fix whatever you have to make your song sound good.
GarageBand, like many other DAWS, comes with the ability to install plug-ins and they’re fun to use.
In this tutorial, I’m going to lay out a step-by-step process for installing plug-ins into GarageBand. At first, I struggled to make this work, but it became like second nature after a few tries. Voice effects vst free. it’s really quite simple.
Where Do I Find Plug-Ins?
First things first: If you want to get your hands on some solid VST’s, check out VSTforFree(dot)com. It’s a great place for all kinds of plug-ins. Many of them aren’t compatible with Mac, however, there are still some great ones on there.
In this article, I’ll show you some of the more popular plug-ins to use in Garageband so more on that later.
One of the great thing about VST’s is that you can find them all over online. Many YouTubers show you what plug-ins they use, and where to find them, so finding a great plug-in is as simple as just going on YouTube or Google to find them.
Without further ado, this is how to download VST’s for Mac in GarageBand.
How To Install Plug-ins In Garageband
For this tutorial, I’m going to be using the DSK Dynamic Guitars Plugin which you find here at VST4Free.
On this page, you can see the different options for downloading the plugin. We want to use the Mac AU version.
1) Click on the Mac AU file and download the Zip File. I prefer to put it all on the desktop, that way it’s easy to find later when I want to drop it into the library.
It shouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes for it to download.
2) After it’s finished downloading, you can open up the Zip File, and it’s going to show you the components for the plug-in.
3) Now, go to your computer’s home screen, then into the settings on the top left-hand side, and click on where it says “Go.”
4) During this part, you have to hold the “Options” button on your keyboard so that it brings up “Library” in the drop-down menu. You have to hold the “Options” button, otherwise, it’ll disappear.
5) Go into your “Library,” and find the folder that says “Audio.”
6) Typically, it’ll bring up four different folders, “MIDI Drivers,” “Plug-Ins,” “Presets,” and “Sounds.”
7) Open up “Plug-ins.”
8) Open the file, “Components.”
9) If you’ve followed the instructions I’ve laid out, you’ll have the Dynamic Guitars Component sitting on your home screen, that way you can simply drag and drop the component into the “Components” file.
10) In most cases, getting access to this plug-in simply requires you to open up GarageBand and you’ll find your new plug-in in your Smart Control’s plug-in settings.
However, some people struggle with this part, because, for whatever reason, they have to turn their computer on and off in order for the plug-in to show up.
11) So turn your computer on and off just to be safe.
12) Now open up GarageBand.
13) Go into your Smart Controls and find the plug-ins in your options.
14) Open up the Available plug-ins.
15) If you’ve downloaded Catalina, you’re going to run into an error.
From here, you just have to hit cancel.
16) On account of the Catalina update, now, what you have to do is go into the System Preferences at the bottom of your computer’s dashboard.
17) Once this is open, go into the section that says, “Security and Privacy.”
18) You have to hit the option, “Allow anyway.”
19) Now open up Garageband, and go into the plug-ins and try and open it.
Garageband will give you this prompt:
Just hit “Open,” and then you’re good.
20) Then go into your plug-ins and open it up.
It should say, “Dynamic Guitars,” and you just click on the “Stereo” option that it brings up afterward, and now you’ve successfully uploaded your new plug-in and it’s ready to use.
16) In some instances, you might have to adjust the octave, otherwise, the plug-in won’t work correctly depending on the VST.
However, with this particular plug-in, you won’t have that problem because it’s a guitar, and the designer of the VST made it so that you can play the guitar at many different octaves.
With my DrumPro plug-in that I always use, that isn’t the case, and it has to be at Octave 3, or “C3,” as GarageBand refers to it.
Why aren’t my Plug-ins showing up in GarageBand?
Like, I mentioned above, most people can’t find their plug-in in GarageBand because they haven’t turned their computer on and off. I’ve noticed that other tutorials forget to mention this.
How To Install Lepou Plugins in GarageBand?
If you want to get your hands on LePou Amplifier Plug-ins, just click on this link here.
On the right-hand side of the page, you can scroll down and see where it says, “Amp Sim Pack,” and underneath that, “Mac AU (Universal Binary).”
You want to click on that, and then download the 5 different components listed in Google Drive. There’s a download button on the right-hand side of this page where you can download all of it.
After that, just follow the steps that I laid out above. Just as a quick refresher, you’ll have to unpack the downloaded ZIP file and then open up the file and drag and drop the individual “component” files into your library.
When I was having trouble, I turned my computer on and off, and then I had to reboot GarageBand in order for the LePou plug-ins to show up in the “Audio Units” file.
These are quite possibly some of the best Amplifier plug-ins that you can use in Garageband in my opinion. The Clean setting in the LePou plug-in is pretty great.
What Are The Best Plug-Ins for GarageBand?
Like I mentioned at the beginning of the article, there are a ton of free plug-ins on the internet that are a lot of fun to use. I’ve scoured the internet looking for the best VSTs, and I came up with this list.
As a side note, even though they’re paid plug-ins, I included Superior Drummer and Amplitube 4 because they have such a good reputation.
Superior Drummer, especially, is a great program for people interested in making rock and metal songs. However, I’m sure that hip-hop producers can put it to good use as well.
Additionally, for this list, I polled users online and asked them what some of their favorite VSTs are to use, so I can’t vouch for all of them personally.
Without going too far off topic, here’s the list (I provided links to where you can find each one):
This is a synth plug-in made by U-he and based off of the Roland Juno-60 which came out in 1982. It’s a classic. This plug-in has quite a bit more functionality, however, and it’s powered by Amazona.de. U-he has a reputation for imitating analog models well.
This is a collection of 28 plug-ins that are extremely popular with not only GarageBand users but for other DAW users as well. You can pay for the license for added functionality and other features, but from what I understand, most people just take the free version and are happy with that.
This package includes reverb, mixing and mastering tools, modulators, filters, compressors, flangers, phasers, tremolos, tuners, vibratos, limiters, loudness analyzers, notepads, oscillators, and shapers.
This plug-in is known for its “classic” stereo reverb which is very simple to use but sounds great. It also has a bunch of different presets that you can use.
LePou guitar amplifier simulators are pretty awesome. However, I actually like the clean version of the amps they give you, rather than the distorted channel.
It comes with five amplifiers: the Hybrit, Le456, LeCto, LeGion, and LeXtac. Each one is great for its own reason. I would say that my favorite, thus far, is the LeGion and the LeXtac.
- Crystal Synth
This is an old-school synthesizer plug-in that has been around for a long time and comes with all kinds of effects. The effects, honestly, sound pretty authentic for a free VST. Some users claim there are better plug-ins and there probably are, but this is great for what it is.
Made by TAL, the purpose of this plug-in is for voice processing, but it can be used for a number of different functions. From what I understand, it’s not compatible for Mac’s that are 10.10 and higher, unfortunately. But I’m sure there is a way to make it work.
The Blue Cat audio plugin comes with a range of different modulation effects, including a 3-band equalizer, a gain-suite, a chorus, phaser, flanger, and a frequency analyzer.
This is an EQ plug-in that is now compatible with almost every DAW, depending on whether you get the professional version or not. It’s styled after the Pultec EQ.
- Amplitube 4(Costs Money)
Amplitube 4 is a great plug-in for many users because they have an official Mesa Boogie Amplifier pack, including the dual rectifier, the triple rectifier, the Mark-III, and the transatlantic TA-30.
It has more features than that, including a cabinet section where you can choose microphone placement and a bunch of other settings. Moreover, Amplitube has worked with a bunch of other companies, including Orange Amplifiers.
You can actually get a free demo version of Amplitube though with the purchase of an iRig HD 2, which you should get anyways (if you’re a guitar/bass player).
You can read more about the iRig HD 2 and some of my other favorite products here.
- Superior Dummer 2.0(Also Costs Money)
Created by ToonTrack, Superior Drummer has a great reputation for being one of the greatest drumming software. It has over 50 GB of drum kits and samples that you can choose from, and like Amplitube, companies worked with them directly in the creation of the samples.
Also created by u-he in 2005, this is a fairly old plug-in, but is considered as a classic synthesizer that comes with a ton of different presets. It comes with a filter, an oscillator, an envelope, an arpeggiator, and a sequencer.
This is another legit synthesizer plug-in created by Archetype Instruments. It’s fairly simple to use, but can be used for a wide range of effects, including filters and distortion.
Another polyphonic synthesizer plug-in compatible for both PC and Mac. Modeled after an old Roland synth, the settings are adjustable with sliders rather than knobs, which some people prefer.
The SGA1566 is a virtual pre-amp that is used for boosting particular instruments and channels.
EZ Drummer, like Superior Drummer, is also created by Toon Track, but it’s simpler, less expensive (about half as much), and doesn’t come with as many drum-kits and settings.
The Nova-67P is another equalizer plug-in paired with a compressor. With this, you can input a side-chain signal.
This is akin to the Digitech Whammy Pedal, which you can see in the image for this blog post. Nonetheless, you can use this to make pretty bizarre sounds.
Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine is known for using the stomp-box from which this VST takes its inspiration. Essentially, the Pitchproof plug-in is a pitch-shifter and harmonizer.
I actually own the Digitech Whammy Pedal, and obviously, the real analog model is far superior to any form of a plug-in that you can use. It’s a great little piece of equipment for guitar playing. You can probably check it out on Amazon and get it for a good price.
Multiply is a nice little chorus effect that I like to use for guitars, piano, and vocals, primarily. Garageband comes with a chorus effect, but it isn’t quite as good as this one.
The Voxengo Marvel GEQ is a 15-band equalizer that allows you to really take control of the EQ of your track. I actually own an MXR 10-Band EQ, and it’s very similar to this plug-in, albeit, superior.
You can also grab one of those off of Amazon if you’re interested in a legit piece of equipment.
This is, basically, a super powerful and useful compressor that allows you to do more than the compressor that comes with Garageband. It’s pretty cool and worth checking out.
This, like the M-Audio FX Bundle, comes with over 20 effects and processors, 24 to be exact. It’s a fairly old set of plug-ins, but I’m sure it can be quite useful.
I use this one quite a lot whenever I can’t get ahold of my real acoustic and nylon string guitar. It’s superior to the guitars offered in GarageBand, but still, not quite as good as the real thing, of course. For what it is, it works great.
I use this plug-in almost every day, especially the Trap Kit setting it comes with. It comes with over a dozen drum-kits, which makes it pretty handy for hip-hop producers.
- Melodyne 4 and 5 (Buy here from eBay)
Melodyne is a very advanced audio editing tool from the company, Celemony, and it’s easily the best pitch-correction software that’s compatible with Garageband. I wrote all about it here.
For more tools, books, and software, check out my recommended products page.
What Plug-Ins come with GarageBand?
When you download stock plug-ins in Garageband, it comes with a plethora of useful VST’s, including all of the software instruments.
Software Instruments
Garageband comes with 15 different categories of software instruments: bass, drum kit, electronic drum kit, guitar, mallet, orchestral, percussion, piano, synthesizer, vintage B3 organ, vintage clav, vintage electric piano, vintage mellotron, world, arpeggiator.
Each category has a number of different software instruments within it, especially the arpeggiator, which must have close to 50-70 models.
Plug-ins
In the plug-in settings, there are 12 categories of plug-ins with a ton of different sub-categories:
Amps and Pedals, Delay, Distortion, Dynamics, EQ, Filter, Imaging, Modulation, Pitch, Reverb, Specialized, and Utility are the main categories.
Amps and Pedals – Amp Designer, Bass Amp Designer, Pedalboard.
- The Amp Designer has 26 different Models, 26 Amps, and 26 Cabinets. Garageband’s Amp Designer is actually pretty solid considering Garageband is a free program.
- The Bass Amp Designer has 4 different models, 3 amps, and 8 cabinets.
Pedalboard – The pedalboard comes with 36 different effects. It pretty much has everything you could need for playing guitar, including overdrive, wah, a whammy pedal, delay, chorus, overdrive, and so on and so forth.
Their quality isn’t quite as good as some of the plug-ins that you can download or buy, but they’re sufficient, nonetheless.
Delay – Delay Designer, Echo, Sample Delay, Stereo Delay, and Tape Delay
Distortion – Bitcrusher, Clip Distortion, Distortion, Distortion II, Overdrive, and Phase Distortion.
Dynamics – Compressor, DeEsser, Enveloper, Limiter, Multipressor, and the Noise Gate.
EQ – Channel EQ and Single Band EQ.
Filter – AutoFilter, Filterbank, Fuzz-Wah, and the Spectral Gate.
Imaging – Direction Mixer, and the Stereo Spread.
Modulation – Chorus, Ensemble, Flanger, Microphaser, Modulation Delay, Phaser, Ringshifter, Rotor Cabinet, Scanner Vibrato, Spreader, Tremolo.
Pitcher – Pitch Shifter, Vocal Transformer
Reverb – EnVerb, PlatinumVerb, SilverVerb, Space Designer
Specialized – Exciter and Sub-Bass
Utility – Gain.
How To Use Vst Plugins Audacity
Audio Units – This setting has a ton of different dynamics tools, including AUBandpass, AUDelay, AUDistortion, AUDynamicsProcessor, AUFilter, AUGraphicEQ, AUHighShelfFilter, AUHighpass, AULowpass, AULowShelfFilter, AUMatrixReverb, AUMultibandCompressor, AUNBandEQ, AUMultibandCompressor, AUNBandEQ, AUNetSend, AUNewPitch, AUParametricEQ, AUPeakLimiter, AUPitch, AUReverb2, AURogerBeep, AURoundTripAAC, AUSampleDelay.
Where are the Plug-ins in GarageBand?
How To Use Vst Plug-ins Fl Studio
When you first open the program, Garageband shows you all of the 15 software instruments on the left-hand side, and as I mentioned above, there are a ton of instruments and pre-sets within each category.
The other plug-ins are located in the bottom within the Smart Controls area, including within the plug-ins option as well as within the Amp Designer, Bass Amp Designer, and the Pedalboard.
Whenever you download plug-ins through the way I showed earlier in the article, the plug-ins will often appear in the Audio Units tab.
The plug-ins are in several locations, but it also depends on how you define plug-ins. If we’re talking about the plug-ins that you’ve downloaded, then you’ll find these in the “Audio Units” tab within the Smart Controls plug-in settings.
YouTube Video Tutorial
Watch this video on YouTube
That’s It!
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