Ronan Fed releases Essence Plus, a freeware subtractive virtual synthesizer VST plugin for Windows.
Free synths are always a welcome addition to the great pantheon of freeware plugins. Ronan Fed has made Essence Plus available for Windows users.
Essence Plus is an advanced subtractive synthesizer with a fairly familiar and easily navigated interface.
There are five total oscillators in Essence Plus, three of which are devoted to your typical analog waveforms. Users also get the option of blending in sub-oscillator signals and a noise oscillator with stereo width control.
Each of the three main oscillators is multi-voice, capable of eight voices of unison, each with appropriate detuning and stereo controls.
Filtering is provided by a single multimode filter. While parallel filtering might be nice, the one implemented in Essence Plus sounds fine and functions as expected. Users can use it as a bandpass, lowpass, or highpass filter, so there is a degree of flexibility.
Filter modulation is provided by the prerouted filter envelope, but you can also use one of the two modulation envelopes or either of the LFOs.
The filter envelope and amplitude envelope have curve control, which is an excellent addition to a freeware synth. There are a good few effects on offer, which complement the core sound of the synth. Chorus, delay, reverb, compression, and distortion make for some versatile sound design.
Essence Plus’s overall design is quite nice, with it being very clear and offering a good amount of visualization of the output of the synth. This isn’t something seeking to reinvent software synthesizers, but it is a fairly nice little freebie.
Sure, it could have multiple modulation sources, but the two LFOs and two modulation envelopes can do quite a bit of work with some clever implementation.
Essence Plus is freeware and, unfortunately, only available for Windows users. Users have the option of using VST or VST3 for 64-bit clients. Ronan Fed has no stated plans for a Mac or Linux port as far as can be seen.
Do you like synthesizers? There are dozens of free synth plugins that you can add to your DAW right now. We highly recommend Vital and Surge XT.
Download: Essence Plus
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12 Comments
V
onIt looks like Spire… I’m gonna test it, let’s see what it can do!
Numanoid
onEssence+ benefit over Spire, is that all Oscillators are shown in the GUI, in Spire there are submenus
But Essence+ only got 7 waveforms, so Spire wins out in the end
But Essence+ goes to show that decent plugs still can be made with Synthedit
V
onI would add FM Function and the possibility of adding more waveforms, plus better effects and you can have some kind of Synth1 but better!
muzzix
onLong time lurker to this site since 2020, have to finally chime in and give a huge thanks to those who runs this website. You guys are amazing, thank you.
And if Ronan Fed every reads this: dude, you rock! The Pneuma vst is my go to for 303 sounds and the rest of the synth is really nice. Just did a quick run-through of Essence Plus, and I see it quickly belonging to my top 3 synths with Surge-XT and DS-Thorn. It’s a really fun synth and well laid out. Fits in super nice with my DAW of choice, MPC Beats. Amazing what you do. Thanks!
Ronan Fed
onHi MUZZIX, thanks for your kind words of support!
I’m glad you like my plugins.
Ronan Fed
onThank you BPB and William Frady!
I hope this post doesn’t overload the (temporary) free hosting I’m using. I already had an account deactivated last week.
But if it were to happen, there are direct download links to Essence Plus from the YouTube demo video.
Regards,
Ronan Fed
Tomislav Zlatic
onThank you, Ronan! I’m happy to help with hosting your plugins on BPB if you’d like.
Tom
onBig thanks to the bedroomproducerblog. Big BIg BIG thanks to Ronan Fed! What a gift to all music lovers! BUT – where is the donation button? Fantastic sounding plugins (at least for my taste in music ;o) Brilliant work! That has to be thanked/honored.
(P.S. now with the best DAW, but could Synapse Orion’s piano roll affect the notes – video RF-AB303 PSY DEMO. FL Studio can only do this with stock plugins or those in FL format, such as Apricot.)
Best Regards from Berlin
Jed
onAll synths by Ronan Fed are so powerful + low cpu usage + nice quality! I am so surprised that they are absolutely FREE. Like, how comes? Those synths can be easily used in any banger.
Try his Essence , Pneuma , RF-AB303 (my fav) , RF-Bassline and the drums and pads. They all sound fantastic !
Grownden
onHi! I just downloaded this plugin along with Pneuma and I just gotta say.. Roman Fed, thank you for creating dope free plugins! My only issue is that it locks up Ableton 11 AND my Windows 10 laptop when saving a project involving either plugin. How can I fix this?? I’d love to use these plugins but this is a very annoying issue. Thank you! And thanks BPB for always giving us dope plugins!
Wing Yee
onAll Ronan Fed plugins Rock! Handy and useful. I like Pneuma the most and I use his SoundFont player on several of my songs. Thank you Ronan Fed and BPB!
Artur
onThanks BPB, thanks Ronan Fed. Great synth, really liked the tone, similar to Massive, nice design, easy to use, cool detune. If Ronan Fed creates a wavetable synthesizer with the same tone, I’m ready to buy it.