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Gig Performer Blog
When it comes to selecting audio plugins, there is a myriad of choices and decisions to make. Everyone has their favorites and everyone is trying to find the right combination of plugins to create that great sound on stage. If you are a guitar player or a singer, you will be leaning more towards the effect plugins. If you are a keyboard player then you are likely to pay more attention to instrument plugins.
A great write-up of what audio plugins a pro keyboards player is using these days comes from our own David Jameson. Read his “Go-to plugin list” here.
Easily combining, inserting and tweaking those plugins is essential for any serious musician. That’s why a great audio plugin host application (hint: Gig Performer😀) is a must. Otherwise, you might very well try a plugin and a few of its presets but then give up on it before you explore all the cool options it might offer.
When it comes to pricing, usually you get what you pay for. Creating a great sampler plugin for example takes a lot of development and studio time, using great instruments and great players to capture a particular instrument faithfully. Then some serious development time to actually allow players to play those samples back properly.
Having said that, there are some hidden gems that are absolutely free! Typically they are used as promotional tools for other commercial plugins made by the same company.
Anyway, you can never have enough plugins – right?
Most of the plugins listed here will have an installer so all you have to do is install them and restart Gig Performer. Some, however, come only as compressed files so you will have to manually drag the files to the appropriate folders. These will usually have instructions within the archive. Check out this blog article to get you started with plugin installation on Windows.
Without further ado - here is my go-to list for some of those free VST and Audio Unit plugins.