Although we have all the tools we need to produce extremely clean and precise music without any unwanted artefacts there’s something about the imperfections of analog recording equipment that triggers certain emotions in us.

If you are looking for a best free tube, analog tape saturation VST plugin emulation, check the list bellow and download some great free saturation plugins. Remember, this is not a top, is a list.

So if you want to produce lofi music it’s important to pick the right sounds and samples from the start. You could, for example, sample old vinyl records or buy an old drum machine. Avalon compressor vst plugin. It would however be easier to just get your hands on a decent LoFi House or Hip Hop sample pack.

Once you have a selection of cool sounds & samples you can further refine your music to sound like it was recorded a few decades ago. Luckily there are plenty of cool lofi plugins available so you don’t have to actually own an old tape machine. Here are some of the best options:

• Virtual tape machines To capture the sound of tape is to capture a living, breathing sound that dynamically reacts to the music going on to it. Slate Digital Chief Technology Officer Fabrice Gabriel utilized his electrical engineering degree as a foundation for a comprehensive study of the physical processes that occur when recording to analog.
• Download Free Tape AU VST Plugins & VSTi Instruments Here is our colection of FREE software, VST plugins, VSTi instruments, audio utilities and DAWs. Should you know of anything that we have not listed here let us know.
• The latest in a growing list of such tape emulation plug-ins is Slate Digital's 64-bit, iLok 2-protected 'VTM' or Virtual Tape Machine. Downloadable directly from Slate's website, this Mac and PC-compatible plug-in offers the sound of two separate tape machines and, correspondingly, the sound of two distinct approaches to the sonically rich.

Free LoFi Plugins

I want to start this list with a bunch of free lofi VSTs, because I know that a lot of producers are one a budget, especially when they’re still going to school (or music is their only income lol). That said, you don’t always have to spend money to get some quality software. The freeware in this list can easily compete with some of the paid stuff I’ll mention later on.

BVKER LoFi Rack

The “LoFi Rack” is a free Ableton Rack based on Live’s stock plugins. It comes with 8 macros allowing you to decrease the band width, add vinyl crackles, detune and distort the source sound. Unfortunately it’s only available for Ableton Live users, so if you’re using another DAW you have to pick some of the other options in this list. If you’re using Ableton however, hop on my newsletter and I’ll send you a free download link.

iZotope Vinyl

As the name suggests, iZotope’s “Vinyl” is a plugin emulating the characteristic imperfections of vinyl records. Since the freeware only comes with a handful of parameters it’s easy to use and setting it up won’t take much time. What I love the most is that you can adjust the year of your “recording”. A must have for every lofi producer if you ask me.

Spitfire Audio Labs

Virtual Tape Machine Vst Free

Labs is a free software instrument made by the London based sound design company Spitfire Audio. There are several extensions available, including pianos, brass, choirs and synths. Most of these instruments are rather unique and therefore a nice addition to the basic instruments libraries you probably already own. The cool part about Labs is that it comes with only a handful of parameters so you won’t spend 10 years trying to get everything perfect. The sound either fits your production or not.

Tritik Krush

Tritik’s Krush is an effect plugin with 3 different distortion types. A bitcrusher , a downsampler and an analog drive knob. It further comes with 2 filters and an LFO that can be used to modulate every parameter. It’s available for both Windows and Mac in VST, AU and AAX format so really everyone can get their hands on this.

HY-Lofi2

This one is a free bit quantizer, waveshaper & filter plugin made by Tadashi Suginomori from HY-Plugins. It’s meant to process “audio to give it a low fidelity sound”. Just like Krush it combines different distortion modes with high and low-pass filters. More precisely it has one drive knob and a quantizer, which can run in different modes and qualities.

Legowelt Ableton Racks

Legowelt is a dutch producer known for releasing samples from analog hardware units, but you’ll also find some Ableton Racks on his website, including the Smackos Tape Station, the Smackos Lemuria Vintage Sampler Simulator, the Smackos 808 Simulator and the Smackos Amiga 909.

Sound-Base Audio Retro Boy

The Retro Boy is a Windows only VST synth. It comes with one oscillator, 7 waveforms and controls for ADSR, vibrato and decimation, which makes it perfect for Chiptune or 8-bit music. Since there isn’t much processing going on, the synth is quite CPU-friendly.

Best LoFi Plugins

Although you can definitely do some cool stuff with the freeware I mentioned so far there are some paid options no lofi producer should miss out on. A lot of them do more or less the same thing so in the end it’s up to personal preference (and budget), which ones you should get. Luckily most of these plugins aren’t that expensive compared to some of the stuff by other brands.

XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color

Probably the most hyped plugin of this list is the R-c20 Retro Color by XLN Audio. It combines 6 different effect units, including noise, wobble, distort, digital, space and magnetic. Combining these options basically allows you to recreate any lofi characteristic you could possibly think of. If I could only pick one plugin of this list I’d probably go for this one, since it comes with the most features.

Baby Audio Super VHS

Considering that Baby Audio is a rather new plugin company, their products already gained quite much attention. Super VHS again combines multiple effects, including a distortion unit, a retro sounding VST reverb and detune knob labeled “drift”. All knobs sound surprisingly good and I really dig the design.

D16 Group Decimort 2

Decimort 2 is a bitcrusher on steroids. It offers two optional anti-alias filters, adjustable jitter, two quantization methods and controllable dithering. If you’re looking for a cool bitcrusher, this is definitely the one you should get your hands on. With less than 50 bucks it’s also pretty affordable.

AudioThing Vinyl Strip

The Vinyl Strip is just like RC-20 a multi-effect plugin consisting of 6 different modules: Distortion, Compressor, Bit Crusher, Tilt EQ, Vintage Reverb, and something they call Vinylizer. In contrast to most plugins mentioned in this list, you can change the signal flow simply via drag-n-drop. On their website is stated that you can activate your license without an internet connection, which is pretty cool if you still live in a cave 😉

Devious Machines Texture

Tape Vst Free

Texture is a plugin I just recently found out about watching Virtual Riot’s production workshop he did for Cymatics. It allows you to add noise to any kind of source sound. The cool part is that unlike similar effects you can even load your own noise samples and can adjust the exact frequency range, amount, ADSR and stuff like that.

Cableguys ShaperBox

When it comes to beat making, there’s one plugin every FL Studio user slaps on their melodies: Gross Beat (you’ll find plenty of memes about this). The problem is that it can’t be used in other DAWs (at least on Mac). This is where the Cableguys come into play. Their ShaperBox combines different effects that can all be modulated. The Time one is especially interesting for lofi producers, because it allows you to play back your melodies in halftime, add cool pitching effects and mix everything in with the dry signal.

Initial Audio Analog Pro

Analog Pro is once again a plugin meant to bring your digital audio tracks to live by simulating analog hardware. It comes with a variety of adjustable controls, including Noise Level, Noise Type, Impulse Type, Impulse Mix, Emphasis, Stereo, Lowcut, Highcut, Wow, Flutter and Amount. While I’m writing this the plugin is on sale for €26.10 (which is 64% off) so feel free to check out if this offer is still available.

Aberrant DSP SketchCassette

SketchCassette is a VST inspired by 4-track cassette recorders. It comes with most features the other plugins in this list have. Since it’s however available for only $20 it’s particularly interesting for producers on a tight budget.

Goodhertz Wow Control

Wow Control focuses on the weird and random modulations of analog playback devices. According to their website Goodhertz has carefully studied the essence of three different tape machines to make sure their plugin is the most comprehensive tape model they ever heard. I haven’t tried it out to be honest, but there are some videos about it on YouTube so feel free to check them out if you’d like to learn more about it.

PSPaudioware VintageWarmer2

The PSP Vintage Warmer is a tool simulating the saturation of analog compression / limiting. It comes with classic compression controls, such as knee or release time, and since it can run in multiband mode you can further control the individual bands a bit. In contrast to most usual compressors it comes with a big drive knob. Since it also comes with a mix knob you can drive the compression / saturation quite hard and mix it in just a bit to make your drums or vocals or whatever a bit fatter.

Wavesfactory Cassette

According to Wavesfactory’s website “Cassette is an audio plugin that imparts the unique character and sonic imprint of an often maligned recording medium”. You can also get your hands on their free Cassette Transport plugin, which “simulates the sound of tape speeding up and slowing down”. Or with other words: it’s a pretty cool tape stop plugin.

Psychic Modulation EchoMelt

Echomelt is “designed for adding character, texture and warmth to your sounds”. It doesn’t look that stunning, but it comes with an echo and chorus unit, which sets it apart from the other options in this list.

Aphex Vintage Exciter

The Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter by Waves is modeled on a tube-powered hardware unit. It allows you to increase high frequencies without raising the level too much.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of lofi plugins available that make your productions sound like they were recorded with a toaster (or something like that). The free offers, especially Vinyl and Labs are no brainers, since . well, they’re free, so make sure to download them straight away if you haven’t done so yet 😉

Virtual Tape Machines

Virtual Tape Machines is an audio plugin that replicates the analog tape machine sound. Using this plugin, you can have the sound of both, a 2-inch 16-track analog deck or a 1/2” 2-track analog deck right in your DAW. Your mixes will come to life, things will be easier to balance, tracks will need less EQ and compression, and depth, space and warmth will be easier to achieve.

• Publisher: Slate Digital
• Home page:slatedigital.com
• Last updated: March 27th, 2017

Banjodoline Virtual Banjo & Mandolin VST

Banjodoline is a Virtual Banjo and Mandolin sample-based software, including a Banjolin, Octave Mandolin and Electric Mandolin fretted stringed instruments.

• Publisher: Syntheway
• Home page:syntheway.com
• Last updated: June 29th, 2015

Virtual Remote Machine Client

Remote control sessions of virtual machines are grouped in a single window using Tab pages. The interface enables sorting virtual machines based on various properties like name, status and description. Multi-select of virtual machines enable you to perform actions to change their status or open remote control sessions all at once.

• Publisher: MikeH.Admin
• Home page:www.microsoft.com

Lexicon PSP 42 64bit

Lexicon PSP 42 is a high-quality digital stereo delay and phrase sampler plug-in (VST and RTAS for Windows; VST and RTAS for Mac OS classic and AudioUnit, VST, RTAS for Mac OSX Universal Binary) based on the legendary Lexicon PCM 42 processor famous for its distinctive sound and unique concept.

• Publisher: PSPaudioware.com
• Home page:www.pspaudioware.com
• Last updated: July 24th, 2011

Chainer

Chainer is a digital signal processing application that records: audio, effect plug-ins, and audio synthesizer signals, by utilizing VST and ASIO technology. It contains 10 channel presets. Each channel consists of 10 slots, the signals passes from one slot to another and the signal of each channel can be either routed directly to the output or it can be routed to another channel.

• Publisher: Thomas Putolski
• Home page:xlutop.com
• Last updated: February 26th, 2008

BizFax

BizFAX allows consumers to save greatly on resources such as paper, electricity, time and money.Main Features :- Virtual Fax Machine on your PC- Compatible with PSTN (FXO), E1/T1 ,SIP(T.30,T.38).- Auto create a single fax document with multiple pages from multiple documents.- Send a fax to multiple numbers at the same time.- FAX to Email or E-mail to FAX.

• Publisher: YEASTAR TECHNOLOGY
• Home page:www.yeastar.com
• Last updated: December 1st, 2011

Free Tape Machine Plugin

Dino Dollars 5

The Dino Dollar poker or slot machine game provides you with just as much fun as a traditional slot machine. Easy to download, the program adjusts your screen resolution automatically, and all you need to do is choose the settings you want from the Options menu to control your sounds, music, graphics and gameplay.

• Publisher: Pokie Magic
• Last updated: May 5th, 2008

MegaBonus Slot Machine

MegaBonus Slot Machine is a free gambling game. It is a fairly simple game that the users can enjoy without prior registration or adding money to an account.The users of the game can try their luck with this virtual slots machine before spending their money in a real casino.

• Publisher: GetFunGames
• Last updated: July 14th, 2011

iZotope iDrum

iDrum turns your Mac or PC into a powerful and flexible virtual drum machine. Inspired by both vintage and modern-day hardware, iDrum was designed from the ground up to capture the same feel in software form. The result is an indispensable, easy-to-use tool that is also a blast to use.

• Publisher: iZotope, Inc.
• Home page:www.izotope.com
• Last updated: October 7th, 2011

CNC-SIMULATOR

The idea of the new CncSimulator is to provide the machining industry with a contemporary competent Fanuc-like CNC ISO simulator. It will simulate in full 3D with visible cutting tools for operations like drilling, slot milling and more.CNC Machine profiles will allow users to define machine data for their own systems for a realistic simulation.

• Publisher: CNC SIMULATOR
• Home page:cncsimulator.info
• Last updated: December 3rd, 2010

CheckBeat

CheckBeat is a virtual drum machine designed for quickly creating simple beats. It can be used like a fancy metronome and is handy when you need to create a backing beat for a drummer-less jam session.Programming a beat is as simple as clicking a few checkboxes. It plays sound using .wav files, so you can use the built-in drum sounds, or any sound you can dream of.

• Publisher: Zeta Centauri, Inc.
• Home page:www.zetacentauri.com
• Last updated: May 26th, 2020

Drum Pro

Drum Pro is a free virtual drum machine for Windows users. The program features 20 kits, sampling 9 vintage drum machines, 16 drum pads, an ADSR envelope for the volume, volume and pan controls for each drum pad, a reverb mix control and the global volume control.

• Publisher: StudioLinked
• Home page:www.studiolinked.com
• Last updated: February 24th, 2016

Analog Channel

The AC101 configuration acts as a digital pre-amp allowing even excessive amounts of gain without digital distortion. A drive control determines where the audio “sits” in the saturation/compression region, and even the attack and release times of the distortion character are adjustable.

• Publisher: McDSP
• Home page:www.mcdsp.com
• Last updated: June 10th, 2008

Tuts Treasure 5

If you enjoy playing traditional slot or poker machine games, you will enjoy the Tuts Treasure 5 virtual slot machine game. The game's Ancient Egypt theme, which I certainly find attractive, has 13 Egyptian style symbols of play. Several play modes are triggerable.

• Publisher: Pokie Magic
• Last updated: March 21st, 2008

MeraGana's Virtual Karaoke Pluggin

Meragana's Virtual Karaoke Plugin enables you to sing using the microphone connected to your computer, converting your computer into a Virtual Karaoke machine, anywhere, anytime.You can manipulate and mix the volume levels of- the incoming audio stream- the level of the microphone- the output level of the computer’s speaker.

• Publisher: MeraGana.com
• Home page:www.meragana.com
• Last updated: May 14th, 2008

Maidens Treasure 5

The Maidens Treasure slot or poker game provides you with as much entertainment as a traditional slot machine. Easy to download and install, the game presents you with a bright interface with cheerful music. Maidens Treasure 5 is a 20 payline, 5 reels and a virtual poker machine with a medieval theme.

• Publisher: Pokie Magic
• Last updated: March 20th, 2008

Scheme 48

Scheme 48 is an implementation of the Scheme programming language as described in the Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme. It is based on a compiler and interpreter for a virtual Scheme machine. Scheme 48 tries to be faithful to the Revised Scheme Report, providing neither more nor less in the initial user environment.

• Publisher: Richard Kelsey and Jonathan Rees
• Home page:s48.org
• Last updated: November 17th, 2015

Sonicart

Sonicart is a jingle encoding, scheduling and playback system designed forsmall community based radio stations.Sonicart can be used to playback pre-scheduled jingle playlistsand also customised jingle playlists, which can be scheduled per show

Tape Machine Plugins

• Publisher: Babyfishmouth Software
• Last updated: April 27th, 2008

Tape Machine Vst Free