Oh man, that's a tough question…

I bet to one of these: z3ta or Alchemy

 

I dont know why i´m even referencing these, but i feel is important for the thread, Alchemy..Boris Brejcha if i remember but no, not z3ta..very similar to Hypersonic tho, gui wise and still on sale!

The point is, every single one of these is still usable in my opinion.

 

Last edited: Oct 6, 2025 at 9:45 PM

Boris has really nice sound. I super like his music. Bass is punchy, Drums are crystal clear.
He use Cubase and not so many VSTs, but he really knows, what he´s doing!

 

Yeah, he really does, doing it for a long time and still creative..his dark minimal is unbeatable.

 

https://archive.org/details/classic-auto-filter

Yeah, the Classic series still work, the sound is still good esp. the chorus is great for those ultrasweet tones. The UI is showing it's age though and it's a bit fiddly. Same thing with the Autofilter, great stuff.



I use BridgeWize but I'm sure jBridge would handle these as well. And yeah, I know what the guy did but mentioning it is usually a one-way trip to derailing a (great!) thread. Bit like that one Linux filesystem.

 

Last edited: Oct 6, 2025 at 10:17 PM

No mention of Linplug's Free Alpha and Alpha 3, man I used the hell out of those. They still sound good, in a 90's virtual analog kind of way. Alpha made it's way to 64bit but then the company just disappeared.

Why do I like these instead of more complex and capable soft synths? Because they're dead easy to use to make them sound just right in the mix, just the right combination of cutting and smooth.

But you know, as my eyesight is not quite what it was, running them on HiDPI displays is not always fun. Still, great synths and well worth to keep installed.

 

Thank you for the reminder. This is where it gets tricky: what about products that were released as freeware, that are still under copyright, but have lost their original distributor (like the dev's own web pages)? Technically sharing them is copyright infringement, unless the developer allowed resdistribution... and if the dev has disappeared then it's kinda hard to figure out if their license allowed for that.

 

Antress VH-ME



I once had it, lost it, and have never been able to find it anywhere on the internet since!

 

Crazy, what did they take away from us
i played a bit around with JunoX2 and what a screaming phat sounding Beast.
Not many Presets, but holy shi*** I think i´m playing with a Virus C. (Not TI)

The Cutoff Filter is Screaming when you open and The Sound is really bright, but not harsh. Excellent highs.
And The Bass is .... i don´t find words.

What happened the last years :D

 

here you can try, it wont open..

there´s this other version..so no "drive"

 

Many gems have already been mentioned.
Once upon a time when they still innovated...


Antares Filter

 

Both of these

 

Last edited: Oct 7, 2025 at 3:29 AM

What about distortions and saturators?

 

@glassybrick, here are Distortion FuzzPlus 3 & Ronin etc (Now Free):

1. Ronin is a multi-effects plug-in featuring two delays, two multi-mode filters, two tube saturation stages, and two LFOs, with a fully routable signal path, is a total solution for analog-style effects.

2. Audio Damage's first instrument, Tattoo, is a drum synthesizer where everything old is new again.

3. FuzzPlus 3 from Audio Damage doesn't offer many controls, but it does offer a great sound. Its visuals are fantastic, and the distortion is practically nonexistent in terms of CPU usage. This means that you can use this freeware plug-in extensively even on less powerful computers. I see its strengths primarily in the mix, where you can add presence, crunch, and punch to any signal.

Spoiler: Audio Damage - Legacy Products

Audio Damage - Legacy Products

These products have been discontinued or upgraded to new versions. Feel free to download and enjoy them!

907A Fixed Frequency Filter
914 Fixed Frequency Filter
ADverb Vintage Reverb
Automaton Cellular Automata Buffer Effect
Axon Neural Network Drum Machine
Basic Subtractive Synthesizer
BigSeq Rhythmic Gate
BigSeq2 Rhythmic Gate
Bitcom Rhythmic Bitcrusher
Deverb Abstract Reverb
Discord Pitch Shifter
Discord 2 Pitch Shifter (use Discord 1 reg key)
Discord 3 Pitch Shifter
Dr. Device Filter
Dubstation Bucket-Brigade Delay
Eos Reverb
Filterstation Filter
Fluid Chorus
FuzzPlus 3 Distortion
Grind Distortion
Kombinat Multi-Band Distortion
Kombinat Dva Multi-Band Distortion
Liquid Flanger
Mangleverb Abstract Reverb
Mayhem Suite (Filter, Delay, Compressor)
Panstation Auto-Panner
PhaseTwo Phaser
Phosphor Additive Synthesizer
QuatroMod Modulation Multi-effect
Ratshack Reverb 2 Delay
Replicant Buffer Effect
Ricochet Multi-Tap Delay
Ronin Multi-Effect
Rough Rider Pro Multi-Band Compressor
Tattoo Drum Machine
Vapor Diffusor

www.audiodamage.com/pages/free-and-legacy

 

Last edited: Oct 7, 2025 at 10:05 AM

Oh man I remember this. I did use it quite a lot, but that must be my faulty memory, because at some point came a new system and reinstallation of everything and this was left out. Then it was out of date etc. etc. you know how it goes.

But what it did was great, I loved that you could display the filter frequencies in musical notes so you could craft all sorts of modal filterbanks, resonators, and tuned percussion. I still love those kind of effects but rely on other tools to do it these days.

I can't remember much about other Antares plugins, I hated Auto-Tune but they had an odd vocal processor/synthesizer... Canto? Cantos? I can't find a mention of it on their webpage. Now that one was a ridiculously cryptic bastard, I never got it to make a sound I wanted. Weird shit for sure, and I've got some things recorded that I still have, mainly farting around with the microphone, trying to coax it to make something cool. Which... didn't really work.

My guess is that it was so odd nobody could make it work... maybe it was ahead of it's time and DSP capabilities and technologies have caught up with the wild idea. But as nobody could figure it out, they dropped it out of their lineup.

But Filter... yeah, I'm gonna try to get it going now, cheers for the memories!

 

Nucleus SoundLab - Viral Outbreak 1.0 VSTi - 32 Bit
ProSounds - PS-1 Performance Synthesizer v1.2 VSTi (32 Bit) jBridge

MaxSynths - Crisalys VSTi - 32 Bit
MaxSynths Plugins now available as freeware/donationware
www.kvraudio.com/news/maxsynths-plugins-now-available-as-freeware-donationware-31697

Maxx Claster - Toxic III VSTi (32 Bit) jBridge
MHC Synthesizers and Effects - Industrial Tones VSTi (32 Bit) jBridge

 

Everything looks great on paper but in practice Kantos failed! From the year 2003!!! was then discontinued.
Antares Kantos VST & RTAS ----> https://antares-kantos-vst-rtas.software.informer.com/1.0

 

Last edited: Oct 7, 2025 at 10:33 AM

Speaking strictly of Audio Damage's plugins, FuzzPlus is underrated. It looks like nothing but beneath the surface it's quite capable and great sounding. 64-bit and updated to modern standards like scalable UIs.

If somebody wants a proper soul-destroying speaker-ripping manglebox then Grind is the ticket. It's a waveshaper/wavefolder, but you can modulate the shaper via a minimal envelope follower and then (syncable) LFO. Also a fairly brutal (modulatable) multimode filter. Also modern.

Kombinat might be a replacement for QuadraFuzz, it's a fairly simple FuzzPlus multiband distortion/compression affair. I never really got along with it but it's worth a shot, maybe it works for you. You need a 32bit bridge, a magnifying glass or the eyes of an eagle for this. Kombinat Dva is a sequel, though sounds a bit softer to my ears, but it's fully modern (scalable UI yay) so there's that.