The Best Free Plugin For Drums? (Try it Once)

There is a free noise gate plugin that does more to your sound than just adding a noise gate.

With only two knobs, Nembrini’s Noise Gate plugin makes it perfect for pillar drums like kick, snare, clap, and even shakers, tambourines, rides, and hats.

The best thing about this is that the minimum of features make you realize how much it affects the sound without doing crazy things and changes.

It adds warm saturation that very nicely handles the “paper-sounding” / thin highs and saturates the high end. It’s like – you can feel that there is a need to add another layer of sound, and then you add this plugin, and it literally fills the gap without adding anything.

It would be because three drum sounds (kick, snare, and hats) would be saturated enough already, but one layer could still be on that weak side” because of its thin sound.

This plugin will fix that thing for you very fast and also shorten the sound (which gate plugins used to do) in a simple way so you cannot break anything. Kinda like – you either love it or hate it situation.

What it does for kick – adds nice punch, so you can make your kicks pretty big without making it sound too artificial / too forced. Yeah, you can add millions of saturation types and even 3 bands with Saturn 2, but you can also bring simplicity and some pace to your workflow without overthinking it.

Here are 2 versions of the kick. First is dry, and second is with it where you can actually hear the huge kick.

Dry:

 

Wet:

It just works great for a darker type of tracks or tracks where you want to add some grit to the drums / low end and reduce that cheap high-end sound that nobody likes.

Why do I think it’s the best free plugin for drums?

• You either make it or break it. If you hate it, you hate the sound, notice it immediately, making it a great choice for fast decisions
• Minimum features but significant results 
• Natural/genuine saturated sound 
• No need for complex noise gate options. Just want to make the short kick or snare? Make two tweaks and get some extra saturation with it

I recommend adding it at the end of your bus to consolidate the sound. 

If you used to add Kramer Master Tape from Waves in the mix , this would potentially replace it, of course, it depends on the situation but definitely it’s something that adds tone and color.

As the title says, try it once to see what it does!