Analog Obsession has re-released all of their VST plugins as donationware, with no minimum payment required. Users can support the developer via Patreon (subscriptions starting at $5 per month).
At the moment, the developer is offering over thirty donationware products that can be downloaded for free. The plugins are available for download directly from Analog Obsession’s website, with no registration required. You don’t need to activate the plugins after installation, either. To support the developer, users can sign up for a $5 monthly subscription plan. The subscription is optional (the plugins will work without it) and can be canceled at any time.
Also, this doesn’t mean that the plugins are discontinued. Analog Obsession stated that they will continue developing plugins. It’s not clear working on new plugins and provide support for the existing ones.
Analog Obsession specializes in developing analog-style compressors, equalizers, and creative saturation tools. The company has recently expanded its product range with a series of hardware-inspired guitar stompbox plugins. A while ago, the lead developer offered to sell Analog Obsession, but it seems that he gave up on the idea and decided to go donationware.
As for the quality of the Analog Obsession software, I am (personally) not the biggest fan. Take that with a grain of salt, though. I haven’t tested Analog Obsession’s newer releases (yet) due to the fact that I was disappointed by their early plugins. The sound quality was never the problem, but I had encountered various performance and GUI-related issues.
That said, I have seen some good feedback about Analog Obsession’s more recent products and it’s safe to assume that there are some hidden gems among those thirty plugins. I have also noticed that many of the plugins have been updated in the meanwhile, presumably fixing some of those early bugs.
Also, several BPB readers have suggested that Analog Obsession should be listed in our article about free compressor VST plugins. If you use Analog Obsession plugins regularly, please leave a comment and let me know which one of their compressors is your favorite.
UPDATE #1 (February 24th, 2020): Be sure to re-download all Analog Obsession plugins from their Patreon page (linked below), instead of the ones on their website. These are new and updated installers that the developer provided because he suspects that some of their old installer files were compromised in an attack. Thanks to our readers heavymetalmixer and INSPECTORGADGET for sharing the info in the comments.
UPDATE #2 (February 25th, 2020): The plugins are no longer free to download. The developer has now moved their website to Patreon and you will need to support them on Patreon if you wish to download any of the installers.
UPDATE #3 (February 25th, 2020): OK, false alarm. The plugins are free to download once again from the Patreon page. The developer was updating and reuploading the software, which is why it wasn’t available for free download previously.
More info: Analog Obsession (hosted on Patreon, optional $5 monthly subscription)
More articles:
40 Comments
INSPECTORGADGET
onThere seems a problem over at kvr & GS about maybe false positives in some of the files, which doesnt seem solved yet. Could be this or that, not sure. So just saying so people are aware. AV should detect those though.
Tomislav Zlatic
onThanks for the info!
dr.sound
onsounds ok… but some of these plugins are buggy ( i’m using reaper 6 and windows 10)
Tomislav Zlatic
onSame here, some buggy behavior here and there but also some decent sounding plugins.
Adam
onAaaaaaaaand site went down :/
Tomislav Zlatic
onYes, they probably had a spike in traffic after this post was published. Their site is back online, but I linked to their Patreon page either way.
INSPECTORGADGET
onSite got hacked & heavily attack yesterday & seems finished. The Dev now has put everything up on his Patreon & giving answers on KVR.
INSPECTORGADGET
onSite has been attacked & some files downloaded before that seem to be infected. Check KVR for more info!
Tom
onI did several AB tests of Rare (their free Pultec-style EQ) versus equivalent paid plugins (some costing $100+) and preferred Rare every time! Now, that’s obviously down to my personal sonic preferences, but still some huge kudos to their plugins. That’s pretty nuts that they’re made them all donationware! :)
Tomislav Zlatic
onThanks for the input! I’m still testing the entire plugin suite, but I do agree that some of the EQs are very good.
heavymetalmixer
onBetter download the plugins from his Patreon and erase the old ones, because those are infected.
https://www.patreon.com/analogobsession
It seems a few days ago someone hacked his website. There’s no info about who did it or why, or even if it was a bot.
He will upload the clean files one by one, for now only a few of them are in the Patreon.
Tomislav Zlatic
onThanks for the info, much appreciated! I updated the link.
Johannes
onHi Tomislav,
I can confirm that his recent plugins are actually pretty good. His version of the Helios EQ is really nice (the first version was buggy as hell, the SE-version has corrected filter curves and is very stable)
Right now I tried Kolin and must say: He started to become a decent plugin developer. This vai-Mu comp is doing a great job! I was quite surprised.
Tomislav Zlatic
onHi Johannes, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have also noticed that the EQ plugins have improved. Not so sure about the compressors and I’m yet to test the guitar stomps.
Johannes
onI understand your thoughts on his comps. The “Kolin” was the only one I really liked. To be fair, though, when I tested the other ones Kolin didn’t even exist. To me, this one is a real improvement.
Lost
onThe guitar stomps are quite good!!! The dod clone and the russian muff clone are my favs. But… We have to wait until the guitar stuff is up on his patreon site.
Tomislav Zlatic
onWell, looks like it’s too late now.
J-Man Digital
onI really liked the SPre Sampler Filter and left a comment here after experimenting with it in FL 20 32bit. Then one day last month I went to load it into a new FL project and it would not load. I tried to rescan the plug in folder and it did not work. I tried deleting the plug in and putting it back in the folder. When I did that BitDefender quarantined it.
I don’t think I will be trying any of these free ones.
Tomislav Zlatic
onWeird! I scanned the files (the ones I reviewed) with Kaspersky and it didn’t detect any viruses, but still… It seems like there was something going on there because the developer pulled the installers from their website.
sean
onSome of them sound pretty good but a few of the VST3s are glitching terrible, even causing issues with other plugins. Not sure if that has to do with the website being hacked
Tomislav Zlatic
onI believe it’s more related to unoptimized source code, but hey… either way I decided to give up on these plugins and move on.
alex
oni´m not 100 % sure but i think they are now not free anymore. looks like he changed it ;) i never was a fan of that realistic type of gui, but maybe intressting for some others
Tomislav Zlatic
onYeah, the installers aren’t available without a subscription anymore.
INSPECTORGADGET
onAll patreon – only now, not sure what happened.
Tomislav Zlatic
onThe developer probably got hit with a lot of download traffic and figured that the optional donations won’t be enough to cover it.
Tunca
onHi,
All downloads are public, now. There was an update.
Thanks.
heavymetalmixer
onI just confirmed this.
Tomislav Zlatic
onThanks for the info, much appreciated! It would be helpful if you could post a notification on Patreon when changes are being made, just to avoid any confusion. Cheers!
Johannes
onI understand your thoughts on his comps. The “Kolin” was the only one I really liked. To be fair, though, when I tested the other ones Kolin didn’t even exist. To me, this one is a real improvement.
Tomislav Zlatic
onCool, thanks for letting me know! Sounds interesting. I still haven’t tested Kolin, but I’m looking forward to checking it out. I’ll wait for a while, though, until it’s 100% clear if the plugins will remain donationware long-term.
INSPECTORGADGET
onI will wait a bit too before testing them fully. Too many hickups with this for me. One day all free then changed text on Patreon “Only free for Patreons” then changed again to “All free” Lets settle this and calm down a bit until jumping on a dead horse.
MRG
onOh, and the now-public-on-patreon downloads have no more Win VST 32bit DLLs… What a mess. :/ Unless you’re a compulsive collector, wait a couple of weeks, the dev promised some bugfixing on many of the plugs anyway.
Tunca, if by any chance you read this, consider doing things à la Airwindows too, providing big zips for all plugs, at least by system (Win VST/ Win VST3/Mac, etc…). It’ll make things easier on everyone. :)
Kurgle
onI would definitely try these and if necessary wait to download what he releases later on. (I downloaded them just before there were any virus/hacking warnings and they seemed to be clean then). There are some real gems there. I tried the compressors in a mastering setup and I can’t now recall the one/s that sounded just excellent, but some of them really suited mastering well – it was a pleasant surprise! The equalizers are really good too and I especially liked to boost with them and add some character (or a lot) with them. The HP filters seemed to be great too. Honestly I can’t fault these plugins at all and would consider them to belong on the top tier of what you can find these days. So in conclusion I do hope that everything gets sorted out for the developer and he can make some money with his hard work – honestly he deserves it. Cheers!
Lost
onYou are absolutly right! And again… His guitar line is very good! It seems his support and his management with bug fixes is quite good since he changed to the patreon site.
peter.piper
onHe deserves some props for this:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/34420510
Also the Patreon move seems good for his work & plugs, as we have never seen such quick fixes & updates from AO for some time. This new plug does sound very good, smooth distortion overal.
Tomislav Zlatic
onIs Konsol a new release?
heavymetalmixer
onYep, it was released today. Also, he has been fixing bugs, so all plugins should be more stable now.
Chris
onSince they’re not .32 or .64 any more, are they all now 64-bit?
Chuck Baker
onThere’s nothing wrong with these plugins. They sound quite good. I mean, for free, how can you complain (I’m on a Patrion monthly pledge). Very nice with current and active updates.
Atme
onThank You very much for the wonderful freebies and support Analog Obsession/Tunca! Maybe You could make a reel-to-reel tape recording machine emulation/saturation plugin?? And a mixing/recording console/channel/desk emulation plugin?? Thanks! :)