Best free plugins and freeware of the month: September 2023It’s always nice when you uncover some useful or creative tools online – and it’s even nicer when they turn out to be free.

READ MORE: Best sample packs of the month

We’ve rounded up a handful of this month’s free releases for you to check out, including a chord-based ROMpler, a transparent limiter, a fully-featured spatial 3D instrument, an epic, endless reverb, and a fun sample chopping sequencer.
Polyverse Music – Filtron
Polyverse Music – Filtron

macOS and Windows
VST, VST3, AU, AAX
Download: Polyverse Filtron

Let’s start things off with the excellent Filtron from Polyverse, which is a vibrant-sounding, 12dB state variable filter plug-in, with state of the art zero delay filter design. It can smoothly transition between low-pass, band-pass and high-pass cutoff, is capable of self oscillation, and includes a fat sounding internal saturation.

There are also Cold and Hot post overdrive modes for some additional bite, and the parameters can be modulated via the sidechain signal. This means you can do some very cool “CV” style modulation, and each channel in the stereo pair is treated as a separate modulation source.
Artists in DSP – Transpanner
Artists in DSP – Transpanner

macOS and Windows
VST3, AU
Download: Artists in DSP – Transpanner

Transpanner is a simple but effective way to control and experience 3D audio panning through stereo speakers. The concise interface offers a main 360-degree Panning dial to control where the sound is placed around your head through clever use of phase. There’s also a Rear Filter slider that enhances the effect when it’s panned behind your, plus a button that flips the input between mono and stereo.

Although Transpanner works on headphones, it’s been primarily designed with speakers in mind, and features a Loudspeaker Distance slider to help optimise the crosstalk cancellation delay. It’s available as free/pay-what-you-want, so it’s worth considering supporting the developer.
Bertom Audio – EQ Curve Analyzer v2
Bertom Audio – EQ Curve Analyzer v2

macOS, Windows and Linux
VST3, AU, AAX
Download: Bertom Audio EQ Curve Analyzer v2

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what your analogue-modelled EQs are doing to your audio, then this could be the plug-in for you.
EQ Curve Analyzer is an analyser and signal generator tool that can show the magnitude and phase of any plug-in. You simply insert it on either side of the plug-in that you want to examine, then set the first one to act as a signal generator and the second as an analyser.

New features for version 2 include a Freeze button for the graph, latency estimation and level calibration features, persistent GUI scaling and resizing, and more. This one is also available as free/pay-what-you-want.
Ohmforce – Legacy Plug-ins
Ohmforce Legacy Plugins. Image: Ohmforce

macOS and Windows
VST, AU,AAX
Download: Ohmforce Legacy Plugins

Ohmforce has decided to make eight of its legacy plug-ins available for free.
The collection includes Ohmicide (4-band distortion), Quad Fromage (4-band filter bank), Hematohm (frequency shifter), Mobilohm (phaser), Symptohm (synth), Ohmygod (comb filter), Predatohm (distortion), Ohmboyz (delay).
Ohmicide and Quad Fromage in particular are fully featured products, so we love that they’re now available for free, and many of the plug-ins include innovative features like the ability to perform preset morphing via a MIDI keyboard. As with other announcements of this sort, there’s a possibility that they may not run on recent operating systems, and there’s no ongoing support, but they’re still worth a look.
Wide Blue Sound – Audio Plugin Uninstaller
Wide Blue Sound Audio Plugin Uninstaller

macOS
Standalone
Download: Wide Blue Sound Audio Plugin Uninstaller

How many times have you installed demos or bits of freeware, only to decide down the line that you no longer want them on your system? Our final piece of free software is a useful macOS-only utility for cleaning up your unwanted plug-ins.
Unfortunately, uninstalling a plugin often results in a number of unwanted files scattered across different folders. Audio Plugin Uninstaller reads the installation receipts and then reverses the process to uninstall all related files for a particular plug-in, while leaving all the other files intact.
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