What are your favorite free Linux VSTs? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 weeks ago by countrypunk@slrpnk.net to c/musicproduction@sh.itjust.works

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[-] sefra1@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Analogue simulation: Surge FX's tape Calf Vinyl

Compressors, gates and equalisers: Anything by LSP

Limiter: x42 seems to be a clean and save limiter LSP seems to be more tunable and a bit dirtier and potentially louder.

Saturation and distortion: Several good options on surge fx

Guitar sim: Guitarix.vst (also includes a Neural Amp Sim host)

Synths: Surge Zynaddsubfx Odin2

Sampler: Liquidsfz DrumGizmo (very resource intensive)

There's ofc tons of stuff I haven't tried, but these work very well for me

[-] azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago

Calf plugins are awesome

[-] sefra1@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

I used to love Calf, but plugin version seems be have its GUI broken on some plugins for quite some time and it seems to be rather hard to fix judging from what I read online. LSP is more feature completely for most usecases anyway.

Also I read sometime ago that calf has some serious phasing problems? Sounds good to me but I'm not an expert.

Some calf plugins I haven't been able to replace yet, like the stereo tools, and the psychoacoustic clipper.

[-] pebbles@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

I just can't get those to work on fedora with Ardour. What is your set up?

[-] azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Just regular Arch with pro-audio meta package. I literally put no effort at all to set that up, just some basic stuff from ArchWiki to optimize performance

[-] pebbles@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Ah cool. Guess I just lost the distro lottery. Thanks for the info.

[-] pebbles@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago

LSP (Linux studio project) for all the basics like EQ, Compression, Multiband Compression

Airwindows for tone and effects

Surge XT for synthesizer

Liquidsfz to play soundfonts like virtual playing orchestra

TAL vocoder for when you want to feel like the coolest guy in school

[-] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 weeks ago

Dexed is a great free FM synthesis with tons of great presets.

[-] BerenstainsMonster@kbin.earth 3 points 2 weeks ago

Love the stuff by ChowDSP.

AudioThing and TAL have some handy freebies.

There's a whole treasure trove in Airwindows' stuff.

I get a lot of use from Reaper's stock plugins, particularly the EQ, compressor, and limiter.

Reaper users can also help themselves to community-made JSFX.

Vital is my go-to synth.

Cardinal synth is super powerful and a fun can of worms.

[-] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

Mini hijack here, but don't regular vst's work in linux too? I thought the daw kind of sandboxed it.

[-] UniversalBasicJustice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

As a recent Linux convert and guitar player, my Scarlett 2i2 works like a charm and I've been running Guitarix into Reaper and using Tuxguitar (the actively maintained fork off GitHub) for practicing. Tuxguitar is functional but truthfully I'm missing Guitar Pro, which I purchased a license for years ago. Will GP work within Wine/Bottles? I was concerned about latency but Tux has me looking at getting GP to work.

More on-topic; Guitarix has been functional enough though admittedly I should spend more time learning about it. I had pirated NeuralDSP's Archetype Abasi plugin on Windows but didn't have much luck installing it. Granted, that was shortly after my switch from Windows and I could potentially try again but for this would prefer to remain within the Linux/FOSS realm. Any suggestions for that sort of highs gain/modern metal sound?

[-] UniversalBasicJustice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

GP works and I was able to get the VST working in Reaper via Yabridge.

[-] speed_skirmish@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

LSP Plugins for mixing
Dragon Reverb
Surge XT for a modular synth
sfizz for sfz instrument playback
Bonus: for cover art and logos I used GIMP, the G'MIC plugin, and Inkscape.

Edit: Formatting and some additional entries.

this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025

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