For the first synth article in the bpb Freeware Studio series, I’ve decided to try and make a list of the best free subtractive synthesizer plugins for Windows and Mac.
Note that I’m using the term subtractive a bit loosely here – some of the included synths can do a whole lot more than just subtractive synthesis, while some others are indeed just simple virtual analogs. This sort of classification is a convenient way for me to organize things a bit, so that I don’t simply put all the good freeware synths into one huge mess of an article. I’ll soon be creating separate lists for FM synths, additive synths, hardware emulations, etc.
Follow the links for screenshots & download info:
- Abakos by HERCs Music Systems (Windows)
- ASynth by Antti@Smartelectronix (Windows)
- Atlantis by Jeremy Evers (Windows)
- Automat by Alphakanal (Mac)
- BR808 by Benjamin Rosseaux (Windows)
- Charlatan by Dominique Wurtz (Windows)
- Crystal by Green Oak (Mac, Windows)
- Daedalus by Northernbeat Audio (Windows)
- Free Alpha 3 by LinPlug (Mac, Windows)
- Logana by TorQue Audio (Windows)
- MauSynth by Pekka Kauppila (Windows)
- Nitrox by Sonic Lion (Windows)
- Oatmeal by Fuzzpilz (Windows)
- PG-8X by Martin Lüders (Windows)
- polyIblit by Andreas Ersson (Windows)
- SQ8L by Siegfried Kullmann (Linux, Windows)
- SuperWave P8 by SuperWave (Windows)
- Synth1 by Ichiro Toda (Windows)
- TAL-NoiseMaker by Togu Audio Line (Linux, Mac, Windows)
- TAL-U-No-62 by Togu Audio Line (Mac, Windows)
- The blooo by Full Bucket Music (Windows)
- TS-Substance by Tactile Sounds (Windows)
- Tyrell N6 by Urs Heckmann (Mac, Windows)
- V2 by farbrausch (Windows)
- Voyager by Arguru Software (Windows)
- Xhip by Aciddose (Windows)
- ZynAddSubFX by paulnasca (Linux, Mac, Windows)
It’s really hard to pick a favorite from the list above! I actually use quite a few of these synths on a daily basis – most of them come with one or several features that I can’t find in other synthesizers. In the rest of the article, I’ll write a bit more about the ones I use most often, and also provide links for some of my favorite banks, presets and add-ons for these awesome freeware synths.
Tyrell N6 by Urs Heckmann.
Urs Heckmann and Amazona.de shook the freeware world recently with the great sounding Tyrell N6 synthesizer. It was designed by the members of Amazona.de online community, and then programmed by the chief developer at u-he. It sounds great, works very well, and will also provide a decent cardio workout for your machine’s CPU. ;] A pack of free Tyrell N6 patches from the KVR patch contest is available for download here. And thanks to KVR’s One Synth Challenge, you can hear some music made using Tyrell N6 only by clicking here.
TAL-NoiseMaker by Togu Audio Line.
TAL-NoiseMaker continues Togu Audio Line’s leagacy of well-designed and great sounding software synthesizers. Combining solid sound with a great feature set (topped off with a brilliant envelope editor!), TAL-NoiseMaker is a must-have in anyone’s freeware synth collection. For some extra sets of free presets, click here and here.
Synth1 by Ichiro Toda.
There’s not much I can say about Synth1 that you don’t already know. A legend among freeware synths, with thousands of available user-made presets and the recent updates which allow browsing through all of those banks and presets more easily, this little Nord Lead clone is a great source of quality sounds for your tunes. The pre-installed sound bank may sound a bit disappointing, but the actual sonic range of this synth is simply astonishing. There’s an old Latin proverb that says Synthus Unus cum omnia potest, si peritiam (meaning Everything can be made with Synth1, you just need to pratice more). When it comes to free presets, my personal favorites are Mr Wobble vol. 1 & 2, and Ann Preset Banks 1, 2 & 3. For a set of tracks made using Synth1 only, click here.
SQ8L by Siegfried Kullmann.
Another synth that I seriously love using is SQ8L, an emulation of the Ensoniq SQ-80 hybrid synthesizer (and a pretty close emulation, as often reported by the owners of the original harware synth). It comes packed with two banks of lovely retro sounds, and the fact that it also loads the original SQ80 Sysex patches is what makes it my ultimate favorite 80s machine. Speaking of 80s sounds, you might also want to grab Matt’s free patches for LinPlug’s Free Alpha 3 (an Alpha Juno emulation) – it’s a really nice free set of classic synth sounds. And here’s the SQ8L One Synth Challenge page.
Oatmeal by Fuzzpilz (Lumina skin).
Reading the headline of the thread in which fuzzpilz announced the release of Oatmeal on KVR Forums, it would be hard to guess that it will quickly become one of the most popular freeware synths around. But the reality is that Oatmeal packs a set of pretty interesting features (X-Y pad, custom waveforms!) and it also looks rather nice, thanks to Limeflavour’s awesome design skills. Grab free soundbanks here and here. An all-in-one bundle (conatining skins, banks and patches) is available here.
Voyager by Arguru Software (new skin).
Another favorite of mine is Voyager, a very nice sounding virtual analog synth which also features a neat built-in vocoder (it’s been featured in BPB’s best free vocoders list). People are often not very fond of the original GUI (although I actually use the default skin and really like it), so you might want to check out the updated Voyager skin, as well as a free pack of presets, on Limeflavour’s blog. Anyway, looks aside, thanks to its four oscillators and a set of nice and soft sounding filters, Voyager works great for creating rich and lush sounds, evolving pads, etc. More free presets for Voyager are available for download here and here.
ZynAddSubFX by paulnasca.
Not for the faint of heart, but ZynAddSubFX is probably the most powerful synth on the list. Featuring three separate synthesis engines (one of which is subtractive), a range of effect modules, as well as microtuning, this one is for the synth wizards among us. If you find yourself having trouble taming this wild beast, perhaps a tutorial like this one will help speed things up a bit. To hear some music made using ZynAddSubFX only, click here.
BR808 beta by BeRo.
Somewhat less complicated for use than ZynAddSubFX, yet also very powerful – Benjamin Rosseaux’s BR808 features a mod matrix, 8 oscillators per instrument, freeform envelopes, a speech synthesizer (!), and a hole lot more. Note that it’s currently in BETA and that it might go commercial once officially released. Quite similar to BR808 is farbrausch’s V2 – a great synth which you can hear in action by clicking here. A little tip for new users – the output level is set to -inf dB by default and you’ll have to manually turn it up in the Instruments/Global section!
Charlatan by Dominique Wurtz.
And of course, my recent favorite – the lovely sounding Charlatan by Dominique Wurtz. There’s a certain something about this synth that just makes it sound so organic! The oscillators are great, the filters sound very nice, and the limited feature set forces you tweak the synth to its limits, trying to get the best of it. Sometimes having only a basic set of features at disposal is actually inspiring rather than limiting – I’m seriously enjoying creating new patches for this synth on a daily basis.
Finally, many thanks to Jimmy James and mono for suggesting Abakos!
To conclude the article with some practical examples, here’s a nice video presentation of the Tyrell N6 synthesizer (via Konnekta):
So that’s all for now, but feel free to suggest your own favorite free virtual analogue synthesizers in the comments section below.
Also, please support BPB by sharing a link to this article on your favorite forums, social networks, etc (you can do that easily by using the sharing buttons below). Now go and make some great music with these awesome free synths!
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A rock solid list there mate. Try Abakos also…
hi Jimmy, thanks for the comment. i know Abakos and i like it… not sure if i’ll include it in the main list (although if a few more people vote for it, it’ll be added to the main list for sure), but i will certainly update this article soon with a bonus synths section, where i’ll include Abakos and some other cool freebies.
Hi there, I think u-he Zebralette could be added to this very good list. It was set as freeware only a few months ago. One oscillator only, but what oscillator!
- Mario
Oh just saw it was suggested below… sorry mate.
hey no problem, have fun! :]
Nice set of tools for the synth user on a budget. And thanks for the shout-out to my patches BTW :). I’ve also got a few for Tyrell as well here:
http://www.box.net/shared/plbfl4vg4d
Also bookmarked your site.
Cheers,
Matt
hey, thanks for the awesome Free Alpha 3 patches! i’ll check out the Tyrell stuff too. :]
i think abakos should be thrown in there too its certainly been a keen va and the cpu management is also noteworthy in a list like this. good job though. lists like these are tricky but i think overall you have highlighted the cream of the crop and will have satisfied a good spectrum of users too.
hi mono, thanks for the comment! indeed, it’s hard to create a “best of” list that will satisfy everyone’s taste – but i’ve tried to include a large variety of VAs, and i’m always open for suggestions posted by the readers.
btw, Abakos has been added to the list now, due to popular demand. ;]
Great list! Have and love most of these, but still there was a couple of them I still have to try out!
And ZynAddSubFX would probably win the most-aweful-gui-ever contest if you made one! Still… I agree it’s a really powerful synth!
haha, not a bad idea actually… bpb Freeware Studio: Best Free God-Awful Looking VST/AU Plugins
i bet i could dig out quite a few that look ugly as hell and yet sound awesome. :]
I’d vote for synth1
Thanks for that list, a whole bunch I didn’t know of.
Will be trying out the Charlatan and TAL-noisemaker for sure…
glad to hear you like the list, cheers!
Thanks for this great informative page! Really appreciate it.
You may want to include a link to KVR’s Charlatan page in that section’s text… Of course if it’s not 2 a.m. as it is right now, most people will probably notice the Charlatan links elsewhere on the page. :?)
hi Ander, i figured the links in the upper part of the article are enough. the section with more info about the synths is used for linking to preset banks and custom skins.
KX77Free synths (http://kx77free.free.fr/English-page.html) and Analog Pack (http://elektrostudio.ovh.org/index2.php?go=2) are one of the best !
thanks, both will be included in upcoming bpb Freeware Studio articles!
Good news – my favorite (from freeware) Synth1 is for Mac too now! I love this synth – quality sound, easy to tweak (recalls me my old Roland JX-3P) and lite for CPU (hate CPU hogs).
indeed, Synth1 is amazing. i’ve even used it live with my band, before getting a Micron.
You have to add Zebralette.
cheers for the suggestion, although i’m not sure it would fit here. it’s more of an additive synth, right? it will be included in a future article for sure!
Hey
Thanks for the plug on the Tyrell video – i love that thing :) When I made the video I thought around 20 sound geeks like me might be interested. Its now tracking >35k views. I seriously wish I had gated that mic when playing the controller keyboard.
Keep up the good work
Nick
cheers man!
Pink synth
http://www.signaldust.com/plugins.html
GSinth2
http://www.gvst.co.uk/gsinth2_manual.htm
never heard of Pink Synth, thanks for the tip! i’ll check it out.
ZebraCM and daedalus are missing from this list IMO. noisemaker and charlatan are aight but I’m not sure what about them that everybody seems to like so much. especially charlatan. probably cause its missing some good presets. I like both plugins GUI nonetheless
ZebraCM is awesome, but it’s not really free. i’m thinking about including it anyway though, will have to think about it a bit more.
Daedalus was already on the list. :D
Charlatan is very simple, but it just sounds so good to me. it’s definitely one of my top 5 favorite freeware synths.
Hello BPB,
I go to your site as first choice for VST news and downloads thanks to non-nerdy atmosphere and clear layout.
I have just started writing FM synths on Synthedit and invite you to listen to my first 4 creations on http://whitebox.yolasite.com and… feel free to criticise and advise.
Cheers!
hi Nick, thanks for the kind words!
your synths look interesting, i’ll download them and check ‘em out, thanks.
My pleasure. I’m reworking those synths “as we speak”.
i’ll definitely include one of these in the ‘Free FM Synths’ article:
http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2011/09/12/bpb-freeware-studio-best-free-fm-synthesizer-vstiau-plugins/
still trying to decide which one, tho. :]
Hey, nice one! Thanks.
If it helps decision making, I’ve currently removed LoFrequencyOrchestra as it’s hard to use in any musical way other than horror film stabs and FX. I’m also reworking the skins…
Very pleased with this news.
i love to make music, it is my life, and i hope this download is foreal, cuause i`m exited for new sound in my studio.
of course it’s for real, enjoy! :)
thanks
You should check out the free synths of HGFortune.
They look pretty good.
http://www.hgf-synthesizer.com/nfg—pro-vsti-free.html
Charlatan is a pretty average synth. It sounds very clean, but also very digital. The GUI is okay, but the sound of the oscillators lacks character.
I prefer Tyrell and the skinned version of Voyager (by Arguru Software) any day over it.
Missing Triple Cheese.
podolski or whatever its called as well, another uhe synth.
I must have downloaded 200 free synths the other day to do a massive evaluation project will come back and let you know what strikes my fancy
My current favourite sounding free synth is Cakewalk rgc Square I ( http://www.cakewalk.com/products/squareI/default.aspx ), very warm, smooth analog sound, very very little CPU usage ( one of my main requirement for any soft synth )
Hey there,
Thank you so much for the valuable VST’s you’ve laid out on here.
Having problems locating a specific VST, perhaps Im going to need to design it myself. its quite complex thought.
Here’s a 30 minute movie describing (the theory) as well as some basic maths on how it works… https://vimeo.com/24673884 (cosmic 432)
Do you recommend any specific VST Designing/coding language? I have a Mac!
Thanks in advance!