But if a plug-in is a fully functional 30-day free trial, for example, you can get some good use out of it while it lasts – and hopefully like it enough to buy the full version! The same goes for Rack Extensions in Reason: they are all free to try for a month, though only once of course. Demo versions are generally feature- or time-limited in some way, so they are perhaps an inefficient way to try to get processing on the cheap.
There are plenty of developers who give away a few free plug-ins to tempt you into the wider world of their full, commercial lineup, and there are some excellent ones to be acquired. A number of hardware brands give away generous software bundles with their products Hardware from AKAI, M-Audio and Novation is good for this, and other manufacturers often throw stuff in with a purchase too, so it’s worth investigating if you can get bonus material when buying hardware.Īnother good source for free samples and sounds is, of course, coverdiscs of MusicTech, or indeed downloads from user areas of our website ( head over to our DVD section). Logic is arguably even better value since there’s only one version and it’s inexpensive thanks to Apple’s aim of selling hardware, so you get everything right away.īundled Content The same audio and MIDI interface hardware that sometimes ships with a lite version of a DAW often includes some additional plug-ins and/or sample collections to sweeten the deal. If you move up to a mid-level or flagship version you generally get more stuff as standard, and this is true of DAWs such as Cubase, Reason, Pro Tools, SONAR and Live, whose full versions come with a ton of material.
The included content can vary greatly but you’ll always get at least a basic tool set. When it comes to getting content, your first port of call will probably be the material that came bundled with your DAW. Thanks to the ubiquity of computers in modern music production and the fact that they are powerful with large hard drives, you can have more sounds at your disposal than would have seemed believable a couple of decades ago. Virtual instruments, effects and samples are likely to feature in your productions to some extent, and for many people they form the core of their sound library. In this third and final part of our Music on a budget feature we look at getting the most out of plug-ins and samples, finding a bargain and showcasing online… Even big companies such as NI offer excellent free versions of their heavyweight instruments Using Your Plug-ins and Samples To Their Best
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