Resources

This is a list of free resources that I find useful in the creation of art. I don't think that the tools to create art should cost an arm and a leg, especially in music production where some will charge over a hundred dollars for a simple equalizer. Here are a bunch of ways you can avoid being ripped off, and probably get a better result.

# Music production

All plugins are FOSS and work natively on Linux unless stated otherwise.

# DAWs

Ardour
Website
A Digital Audio Workstation that can do just about anything: it's got video support, flexible routing options, it accepts many plugin formats and is highly customizable. However, it can be hard to learn, and it doesn't ship many useful plugins so you'll be relying on external plugins a lot; most notable is the absence of a sampler. (See also: Harrison Mixbus, which is just a proprietary version of Ardour with a few extra stock plugins and a slightly different UI)

Bespoke Synth
Website
A really awesome, FOSS, modular DAW that's great for creating generative patches. It's unconventional, but much easier to use than you'd expect thanks to the fantastic UX, and it accepts external plugins.

Bitwig
Website
Born from dissatisfied Ableton designers the same way Brave was born from Firefox, Bitwig possesses killer features such as modulators that can change any parameter at any time, even at random. It's not as mechanically versatile as Ardour, but where it excels (such as at generative music) it is second to none. Unfortunately it is paid and proprietary, but it has Linux support.

Reaper
Website
A lightweight but powerful DAW from the guy who made WinAmp (the good version). It's nagware with an unlimited trial period and proprietary, but multiplatform. Reaper is potentially the most unintuitive DAW you'll ever use. It's customizable to a degree, but you'll quickly run into walls if you try to do "radical" things like hiding the toolbar, or inserting post-fader plugins. It can be very good at performing repetitive tasks thanks to its extensibility. In terms of raw power, it's about shoulder to shoulder with Ardour (surpassing it in some areas while falling behind in others), but the user experience is much worse in my opinion.

Renoise
Website
A tracker-like closed-source DAW with native Linux support. All of the cool breakcore kids love this one.

Studio One
Website
A proprietary DAW that allegedly supports Linux. I haven't tried it and have no desire to, but it seems like a capable piece of software— it's certainly an option.

Qtractor
Website
Honestly no clue about this one, but hey, it's FOSS.

Zrythm
Website
A relatively new, cross-platform, FOSS DAW. I haven't gotten around to trying it yet, but it has a free version and even the paid version is very affordable. It's a little early to tell, but worth keeping an eye on.

LMMS
Website
A very limited DAW in terms of features. There's no audio recording, for example. Don't actually use this.

# Virtual instruments

Vital
Website
A subtractive synth developed by Matt Tytel, a free alternative to the industry standard Serum. The source code has become unavailable since after the first release. Account required to download.

Helm
Website
A subtractive synth developed by Matt Tytel before he made Vital. It's simpler, and doesn't require an account. It's also truly FOSS unlike Vital.

Odin2
Website
A retro-ish subtractive synth.

Dexed
Website
FM synth based on the Yamaha DX7. Linux port available here.

SurgeXT
Website
A light but powerful synth with a wide range of effects and wavetables.

Cardinal
Website
A modular synth, like VCV rack. If you don't know what that is, you don't want to know.

RipplerX
Github
A physical modelling synth, similar to Ableton's Collision.

Terrain
Github
Weirdomode wavetable synth, for weird sounds.

Audible Planets
Github
"An expressive, quasi-Ptolemaic semi-modular synthesizer."

Vaporizer2
Github
A wavetable synthesizer.

Geonkick
Website
Specialized synth for making kicks and other percussions.

# Effects

Airwindows Consolidated
Website
The greatest plugin collection of all time, free or paid. You've got colorful distortions, experimental audio-crushing effects, spacey reverbs, hardware emulations, clippers, dithers, and the list goes on. There's a little something for everyone. Everything is extremely light on resource usage and takes up very little space.

Linux Studio Plugins (LSP)
Website
A great collection of creative effects and utility plugins. The UI can get a little convoluted.

Guitarix / lv2-guitarix-plugins
Website
Iconic Linux effect collection for electric guitars. The all-in-one version can be tough to get working on some DAWs, in which case you might try the standalone LV2 versions of the modules which you should be able to find in your distro's repositories.

Calf Studio Gear
Website
A huge collection of Linux audio plugins, with questionable DSP quality (or so they say). I wouldn't trust these for surgical tasks like mixing and mastering, but they should do fine for sound-crushing.

SWH (lv2 port)
Github
Some bread-and-butter FX like comb filters, allpass filters, basic delays, a ring modulator, and a bunch of other stuff, developed by Steve Harris. These are present in most distros' repositories.

MDA
Github
A de-esser, some vocoders, and there's a synthesized piano in there too, among other things. These are liable to make some very loud sounds if you're touching parameters during playback (it's happened to me), so make sure to use a limiter.

zam-plugins
Github
More of the same. If you already have everything up to this point, you probably don't need this.

Invada Studio Plugins
Website
Same as above.

tap-plugins (Tom's Audio Processing plugins)
git.hq
LADSPA plugin collection which includes a pretty good pitch shifter and some other stuff. You might have to build this from source, since it's not always packaged (there's also an LV2 port somewhere).

Unplugred
Website
Experimental audio-crushing plugins. Some of them are very CPU-intensive.

Chow-DSP
Website
An interesting collection of plugins that includes the fantastic Chow Tape Model.

Dragonfly Reverb
Website
A cool, modular reverb that allows for precise tuning.

Room Reverb
Website
Another highly tweakable algorithmic reverb that aims for realism.

Maim
Website
A plugin for creating mp3-like audio artifacts.

Spectral Compressor
Github
An extremely powerful and versatile compressor. It can be used for many things, including de-essing.

Lamb
Github
"A lookahead compressor/limiter that's soft as a lamb."

Fire
Github
Multiband distortion.

Argotlunar
Website
Granulator.

Wolf Shaper
Website
Wave-shaping distortion plugin.

PaulXStretch
Website
World-famous audio stretcher and atmosphere maker. Unfortunately, no pre-built binaries for Linux are avaiable.

AIDA-X
Github
Amp modelling plugin.

ZL Audio plugins
Website
At the time of writing, available plugins are: a (very capable) EQ, a compressor, and a splitter.

Delay Intervals
Github
"An audio plugin that can create fully customizable delay patterns, with adjustable volume, panning, and interval between repeats".

Rubber Band
Website
The best Free pitch shifting plugin(s) you can get your hands on. You can most likely get the LV2 version from your distro's repository by searching for "lv2-rubberband-plugins".

GATE-12, TIME-12, FILT-R, REEV-R
Github
A series of plugins made by TiagoLr, similar to Cableguys' Shaperbox.

# Samples

The Libre Sample Pack
Github
"A free sample and preset pack made by FOSS enthusiasts, for anyone!"

Open Source Drumkit
Github
What it says on the tin.

TK's free sound FX
Website
A collection of sound effects including abstract sounds and realistic foley.

MT Power Drumkit
Website
A drumkit sample collection that's actually a virtual instrument. It's not actually Linux native, the Linux download will tell you to run it via Wine, but it might still be useful to some people so I'm leaving it.

x42 AVL Drumkits
Website
This one is only available in LV2, so you can't use it on just any DAW.

DrumGizmo
Website
"DrumGizmo is an open source, multichannel, multilayered, cross-platform drum plugin and stand-alone application. It enables you to compose drums in midi and mix them with a multichannel approach. It is comparable to that of mixing a real drumkit that has been recorded with a multimic setup." A few sampled drumkits are available to use.

FreePats
Website
"FreePats is a project for the creation of a free and open collection of digital instruments for music production. We enjoy building sounds banks, meeting people with similar interests, recording and processing sound samples and making them available for everyone." Includes SFZ and SF2 banks.

SFZ Instruments
Website
A catalogue of free and paid SFZ instrument banks.

# Miscellaneous

Uhhyou plugins
Website
Uhh... yeah. These are some weird plugins. I don't really consider them usable outside of experimental music.

ysfx
Github
You know JSFX plugins for Reaper? What if you could use them in any DAW? Well, now you can.

MXTune
Github
An autotune plugin.

master_me
Github
"Automatic mastering plugin for live streaming, podcasts and internet radio." Name's kind of kinky though.

sfizz
Github
Basically, a sampler for .sfz files, like sforzando but FOSS.

Socalabs
Website
A variety of effects and instruments including synthesizers and utility plugins. Some of them don't work very well and are prone to crashing.

Stochas
Website
A sequencer plugin with probability options, and a really ugly website.

Drops
Github
A straightforward keyboard-tracking-pitch-shifting sampler. It has a few quirks, like the fact that it internally lowers the gain of samples by like 10db, and also you can't turn off the filter section. If you want a clean sound, go for LSP Sampler (that one doesn't have keyboard tracking though, different usecases). It's no longer developed but it still works fine.

Ninjas2
Github
A simple sample slicer for all your breaks (think FL Studio's Slicex).

Ripchord
Website
"Ripchord is a free MIDI plugin for creating and remixing chord progressions."

LibreArp
Website
MIDI chord arpeggiator.

LinuxDAW
Website
If all of this isn't enough, feel free to check out this site to find more cool stuff.