One of the most satisfying parts of music production is the mix.

Being able to take your raw recordings or production and add new and creative effects, polish elements so they sound good with one another, and throw in additional touches to give your song that professional shine, is key.

Luckily, we have thousands of available plugins that make mixing possible.

Unfortunately, the sheer amount of plugins can be overwhelming, which is why we want to give you a list of our favorite FREE plugins to get you started.

1. Softube – Saturation Knob

If you’re looking for a simple saturation plugin to give your mixes warmth and depth, look no further than Saturation Knob by Softube.

The interface gives you a single large knob to increase or decrease the amount of saturation on your signal, as well as a few controls to preserve the highs, lows, or saturate the entire signal.

The harmonics this plugin can add to your sound are great. Plus, saturation offers a natural form of compression, helping to control the overall dynamics of your elements ever so slightly.

It’s the perfect plugin for fattening up vocals, bass, drums, and more, and can be especially useful for giving digital synths the bite they need to stick out of a mix.

Do note that the Saturation Knob will make things louder. Crank it too far, and it can get fuzzy. Of course, that might be exactly what you’re going for, so have no fear taking this plugin to its limits!

2. Tokyo Dawn Records – Kotelnikov

If there’s one thing to note as a professional mixer, it is that not all compressors are made equal. Great mixing engineers use certain compressors for certain things, and when it comes to bus processing and mastering, one of the best free compressors is the Kotelnikov from Tokyo Dawn Records.

In fact, the developers made it  to sit atop entire mixes, adding sheen and glue to bring multiple elements together.

You get an interface filled to the brim with high-quality controls, providing you with everything you might need. There is also a massive batch of great presets, helping to give you a start so you don’t need to search elsewhere for “how to’s.’

One of our favorite controls on the Kotelnikov plugin is the ‘Delta’ button, which allows you to solo the signals that are being affected by the compressor. Many new engineers aren’t quite used to hearing compression, so this tool can be veryr helpful in that regard.

Beyond that, you’ll find wet/dry mix controls, attack/release controls, and a number of other great features that one might not expect to find on a free compressor.

3. Cableguys – PanCake 2

When most mix engineers think of mixing tools, creative spatial tools aren’t often the first that come to mind. However, these underrated creative tools are very special, especially when you consider how few of them are actually out there.

Luckily, we have PanCake 2 from Cableguys, which might just be one of the best panning plugins on the market (free or paid). You get a number of unique LFO shapes to play around with, perfect for helping your synths boomerang around the stereo field or your hi-hats fly from one side to the other.

Uniquely enough, PanCake 2 can also receive MIDI information, meaning you can input your own panning information via your MIDI keyboard.

If you want to make your panning more precise, you can even sync it up with your DAW at as fast as 1/128th note modulation.

The interface is sleek and easy to navigate, giving you helpful information regarding left and right-channel volume.

4. Xfer Records – OTT

Xfer Records is huge in the electronic music community, and the company is probably best known for making its one-of-a-kind wavetable synth, Serum.

If you’ve ever messed with Serum, you probably have used the multi-band compressor that is built into it. Over the years, the multi-band compressor became so incredibly popular that it gave birth to one of the most prolific, free standalone compression plugins on the market.

This plugin is the OTT compressor, which stands for ‘Over The Top.’

The beauty of OTT lies in its ability to absolutely obliterate source signals. It is certainly not the compressor you should be using if you are looking for something transparent. In fact, this little compressor squeezes every possible inkling out of a signal’s high-end if it can, giving you an over-the-top, in-your-face sound, perfect for hard-hitting EDM.

There’s no doubt you’ve heard it used on some of your favorite EDM tracks over the past decade, as it has come to define the sound of many artists.

5. Camel Audio – CamelCrusher

Go to just about any list of free mixing plugins (especially for electronic music) and you’ll no doubt find CamelCrusher by Camel Audio. You can use this plugin on just about anything, especially if you need a bit of extra grime and dirt for your mix.

I often find myself using it on drums to give them a bit more edge in my mixes, as well as on my guitars when I want their distortion to feel a bit more aggressive and in-your-face.

One of the coolest features of the Camel Crusher plugin is the Randomize button, which you can hit if you’re not sure what kind of bite you are looking for.

This classic, free distortion plugin comes with a compressor and filter as well, so you can mix in the perfect mangled signal with your original to get the best of both worlds.

6. Voxengo – Span

Span is one of the simplest metering plugins on the market, allowing you to view your entire mix with more clarity than ever before.

Don’t underestimate it because of its simplicity, however, as it is a very powerful metering plugin. You’ll find real-time frequency levels, as well as the ability to compare your mix with other audio sources to see if you’re in the right ballpark. This can be especially useful if you’re mixing with references.

One of the neat features found in Span that we really love is the correlation meter, which helps you to see if there are any phase issues in your mix. You’ll also find a True Peak Detector for further analyzing.

Surprisingly enough, Span does not have much competition, so if you’re looking for a free metering, it’s pretty much the best one around.

6. Valhalla – Supermassive

Valhalla makes some of the best spatial effect plugins on the market today, and the Supermassive plugin from Valhalla offers a wide range of unique flavors that makes it far more interesting than your average stock delay.

Supermassive certainly wasn’t designed for anything less than standard either. In fact, it was made to be a creative plugin to help you make everything from cave-like echoes to far-out sounding reflections.

You can certainly dial it back to make simple delays, though we feel like it’s best for a go-to creative effect.

There are 16 wild delay modes to take advantage of, many of which go into space-like reverb territory.

Plus, every Valhalla plugin is self-documenting, meaning you can hover over each of the controls to see how to use it.

You’ll soon find that it is one of your go-to free mixing plugins.

7. iZotope – Vinyl

If you want to get that old-school sound in your mixes, then iZotope Vinyl is one of the best tools on the market. Lo-fi producers everywhere use it to give their mixes that crispy, crunchy vinyl sound, whether you need spin-downs, hums, crackle, or any other flavor that you find on your great grandma’s old record player.

There are plenty of unique modes to choose from, depending on what decade you want to make your mix sound like it was from. You’ll also find a few other parameters for dialing in the exact aesthetic that you have in your head.

iZotope Vinyl sounds absolutely fantastic on just about anything that you decide to run through it, whether it’s your drum bus, vocals, solo instruments, or your entire bus. If you need a plugin to get moody with, we can’t think of a better one.

8. Slate Digital – Fresh Air

If you have a circle of producers or mix engineers that you hang out with, there is no doubt that one of them has already mentioned this Fresh Air plugin before. It’s one of the best plugins in the Slate Digital lineup, delivering two large “air” bands to give you that gorgeous high-end sound that you can only get from quality exciter plugins.

And it is truly an exciter through and through, not an EQ or saturation plugin.

It delivers some of the smoothest high-end in the game with its dynamic high-frequency processing that you can control with ease. The plugin allows you to add just the perfect amount of brilliance to your sound, whether on individual tracks or on your mix bus.

9. Kilohearts -Delay

Kilohertz offers some of the best effect plugins on the market today, using the Snaphead design method to craft modular effects that you can craft into a DAW rack.

However, even with this modular rack design, we truly enjoy each of these plugin on their own, and the Delay plugin is one to truly love. You’ll find a few controls on this plugin that you won’t find on many other free Delay plugins.

For starters, you’ll find the Ping-Pong box, which you can use to send the information from your delayed signal to the right and left. Secondly, you’ll find a Duck knob, which you can use to lower the volume of the delay whenever the source signal is playing to make cleaning up messy mixes even easier.

Having all of these controls in a small and simple plugin makes things so much easier.

10. Cymatics – Space Lite

In the last decade, Cymatics has done more for producers than most software developers. Of course, most people know Cymatics for the tremendous impact they made over the years releasing top-notch presets and sample packs.

The developer started making plugins a few years ago, many of which were designed to fill in the plugin voids that many producers were finding themselves in.

Space Lite is the free iteration of the paid reverb plugin, Space. However, Space Lite still delivers plenty of flexible and functional controls.

You’ll find a major bundle of parameters and filters, FX, and distortion knobs to modify your sounds in any way you deem fit.

Even if you’re simply looking for a reverb plugin to give you a unique sound based on your other reverbs, this is a great option.

Final Thoughts

The best thing about all of these plugins is that they are available for free without any restrictions. You can use them for as long as you want to manipulate the audio in any way you deem fit!

Some of the plugin developers have available upgrades if you want go get more out of your free mixing plugins too.

Most of these tools are ultra-versatile, allowing you to get the most out of your mixes.

Of course, without understanding the fundamentals of mixing and why we use these tools, having direction can be difficult.

Check out our Mixing Start to Finish course to get started!