- VSTBuzz and Plugin Boutique sometimes have some great deals on audio and synthesizer plug-ins.
- Don't Crack has a lot of audio and music software for sale and they work directly with developers to get you excellent prices.
- Both ZZounds and Musicians Friend carry a huge assortment of Musical supplies and equipment.
- Inexpensive reconditioned Macs can be found in the Apple store here. The inventory may change frequently though.
- Amazon sometimes has some good deals on computer hardware and has an excellent return policy.
- A fairly exhaustive list of freeware/shareware AudioUnit (AU) and VST plug-ins can be found here and here.
- FXpansion has a cool little synth plug-in named Orca.
- An Incredible wealth of professional quality plug-ins can be had for free from apulsoft. Including a chorus, reverb, scope, thick sounding synthesizer name daHornet, Clav synth, EQ, compressor, phaser and more.
- Togu Audio Line has a bunch of cool plugs including TAL-Dub, a cool little delay, and their hugely phat Noisemaker and U-NO-60 synthesizers are great.
- U-he makes Triple Cheese. The most delicious free pizza.
- GreenOak has some very useful VST plug-ins and amazingly they are free!
- Smartelectronix destroyfx has many excellent and free Audio Units.
- Creed has some excellent plug-ins and a very useful MIDI Keyboard for those who must use QWERTY.
- SilverSpike has a very cool early reflection plug named RoomMachine 844 and digital amp tube plug-in named RubyTube as well as some inexpensive high quality plugs.
- If you want to control resonant filters after Apple's DLS synthesizer, check these excellent plug-ins out: Ohm Force's Frohmage and Prosoniq's NorthPole.
- alphakanal Multimedia has a cool free synthesizer named automat.
- reFX had a cool free synth called the claw. Here is their download page.
- PSP has a free VU Metering and a free PianoVerb plug-in.
- PowerFX has a free version of their Miracle Drum Loops tempo matching plug-in. They also have a commerical sample-loop-preview-before-you-purchase-online-plug-in called Soundshuttle.
- Izotope has a lo-fi record simulator for adding noise named Vinyl.
- Camel Audio has a free version of their flagship synthesizer, Alchemy.
- Luxonix makes a killer free AU and VST multi-effects plug-in named LFX-1310.
- Samplebase makes a sampler Satellite free that allows one to add on reasonable priced sound blocks at any time.
- Ultimate Sound Bank used to have a product named Ultra Focus that contained a vast diversity of musically phat synthesizer sounds and was also very processor efficient.
- Native Instruments makes some amazing sounding plug-ins including AbSynth 5, Reaktor, and Battery.
- Toontrack makes a realistic sounding drum plug-in, named Superior. The sound library is huge so reserve room on your hard disk.
- M-Audio has a lot of PCI Cards. The delta series work quite well. They also have numerous other firewire and USB interfaces.
- Echo Digital Audio has the Gina and the Layla. Both excellent PCI cards but require Metro 6.2.5 or greater to record in stereo properly.
- Phonic makes some incredible fireWire mixers that have been tested and work quite well allowing you to stream up to 18 channels of 24bit 96kHZ audio.
- Frontier Design makes Tranzport, an excellent cordless DAW remote control that works seamlessly with Metro.
- The most complete set of Soundfonts available can be downloaded for free from SF2Midi.
- Hammersound has a lot of excellent Soundfonts.
- Many links to Soundfonts can be found here.
- A sfArk converter that decompresses Soundfonts is now available for Mac OS X. Find it here.
- Some nice and large Soundfonts can be found here.
- A fantastic synth plug-in made by Audjoo.com named Helix is no longer free but still sounds great.
- A very nice sounding Grand Piano modeling plug-in that does not use samples, thus uses very little disk space, is Pianoteq.
- FXpansion makes some quality drum sample/drum machine plug-ins, namely GURU and BFD. They are also very responsive to customer bug reports and feature requests.
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- U-he makes some amazing synthesizers and effects including the new Diva, ACE, Uhbik, Filterscape, Zebra 2, and More Feedback Machine 2. Synth aficionados must check this one out.
- Tone2 makes several cool synths and effects including ElectraX and Gladiator. They also have a plug-in named Filterbank3 which has some crazy wild filters.
- Kong Audio makes some terrific sounding authentic chinese instrument emulations in (Windows only) plug-in form, including chineeguzheng.
- SonicCharge has released a radically new interface with its synth 'Synplant'. While capable of producing a varied array of sounds, Synplant uses a metaphor based on life for editing which is both fun and visually rewarding.
- UVI has a powerful free program UVI Workstation that is easily upgradeable through payware sound cards and sound packs.
- Applied Acoustic Systems have some great cross platform synths and instrument models, including Tassman, Ultra Analog, Strum, Lounge Lizard and more.
- NUSofting has many very good and low priced plug-ins for Macs including Instrument modeling synths such as Modelonia, MicroRock Pro and more.
- Lennardigital makes an incredibly thick and versatile synth named Sylenth1, currently VST only.
- Genuine Soundware has a couple of good modeling/sampled synths: Mr.Ray Mark II and Key Performer.
- Stillwell Audio makes several nice plug-ins including a synth, Schwa Olga and a virtual analog effects package Schwa Oligarc,. It's about the sound.
- db audioware has some very cool effect plugins including their modular effect building system Quantum FX, some nice guitar amp models, sidechain compressor, sidechain compressor gate and more.
- XLN Audio makes Addictive Drums. A very complete and easy to use plug-in. Check this one out.
- Spectrasonics has the ultimate drum machine groove construction plug-in Stylus RMX.
- Synapse audio has an excellent bundle deal called Synth Pack Pro which includes Hydra, a multi-model synthesizer, designed for use in all genres of electronic music, Scorpion, a virtual analog synthesizer, Poly-850, and Plucked String. Note also that the demos of these plugins currently have very few restrictions and are quite usable.
- KResearch has a very interesting reverb-like plug-in named KR-Space.
- Antares has several plug-ins including Auto-Tune 5, the ultimate pitch correction plug-in.
- Nomad Factory has many very cool plug-ins, including the Analog Signature Pack , now available for mastering on Intel Mac computers as well as Power PC's.
- WaveArts makes a very nice EQ, Finalizer, a sweet MultiDynamics and a Reverb plug-in to name just a few.
- FabFilter Software Instruments has released a fabulous compressor plug-in named Pro-C, a delay plug-in Timeless and a powerful filter plug-in Simplon. They also produce FabFilter Twin, a versatile, easy to use powerful synthesizer and Volcano, a filter plug-in.
- Izotope will slice up your audio with the great Phatmatik Pro (formerly by Glaresoft ). They also have a very clean Drum machine plug-in iDrum,a very nice mastering plug-in named Ozone 4, a guitar speaker and cab modeler named Trash and a morphing EQ named Spectron.
- Sonic Charge makes a very unique and cool VST drum machine plug-in named µTONiC.
- The very nice SFX Machine RT houses quite a few audio effects in a single plug-in.
- Korg, makers of incredible hardware synthesizers, now have available the analog legacy collection, consisting of software versions of the MS-20 and Polysix analog synthesizers, and the WAVESTATION . They also have the digital legacy collection which contains a software version of the classic Korg M1 and WAVESTATION synthesizers. The M1 soft-synth surpasses the original in many ways. Both packages contain very powerful soft-synths.
- PSP has a many incredible plug-ins including Nitro (the ultimate multimode filter plugin!), Lexicon emulations, EQ's, mixing, mastering and more.They also have a killer limiter plug-in named Xenon.
- Synful has the realistic orchestral instruments in their Synful Orchestra product that are not samples and it is available as a free trial.
- Cakewalk has two soft-synths plug-ins for, get this, Macintosh computers. Dimension Pro is a nice all around sound generating/sampling soft synth and Rapture is a wavetable synthesizer with advanced sound manipulation capabilities, well suited for electronica-related music styles.
- IK Multimedia makes an excellent sampler plug-in.... SampleTank II. They also make a fantastic mastering suite: T-RackS. IK Multimedia also makes an unbelievable Amp Simulator plug-in named Amplitube 3.
- Audio Damage has some unique and innovative plug-ins.
- Synthogy makes a great grand piano simulation plug-in named Ivory.
- Swar Systems makes SwarPlug, which contains 49 virtual Indian instruments in VSTi/AU technology. There is also a Librarian to browse and select among a collection of over 1000 MIDI loops from the Indian classical and folkloric repertoire.
- Arturia has quite a few very good synthesizer emulation plug-ins.
- reFX has some really cool synths including Vanguard, and Virtual E-Guitar + FX + AMP + Cabinet + FX synth; Slayer 2, both released as Universal Binaries (UB).
- Sugar Bytes has some very good sounding plug-ins including a synthesizer named Unique.
- Native Instruments makes an incredible sample playback editing system with a vast array of capability named Kontakt. They have other amazing sounding plug-ins including but not limited to Vokator and Reaktor.
- VSamp is a good low cost sampler for your basic sample playback needs.
- An extrememly versatile virtual instrument plug-in by Vember Audio is named Surge. Definitely worth checking this one out.
- Melda production has a huge assortment of very good plug-ins available here.
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