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Looking through a few HDs just now...man I've got a lot of GBs of free soundbanks and samples, free VSTs and free refills. Ok...maybe I'll get around to checking out the refills sometime when I'm a pensioner but the free VSTs??? There's a lot of good ones of course which I use regularly...you probably already know what the good ones are. Somehow though I have amassed hundreds of free VSTs which I will probably never, ever look at..."just in case". Same with sample banks. Soooo many. I am now in the process of ruthlessly deleting folder upon folder with absolutely no remorse.
Anybody else in the same boat?

I don't have any free VST's at all! I have Arturia V collection, A couple of PSP fx, Retrologue and Padshop - stock Cubase instruments and I just bought Arturia FX collection last night.

I collect the stuff I''ll never use again on my NAS drive in a closet in the other room. It still got 2-3 TB of free space, so I'm not thinking about it.

I very rarely use free stuff. I have NI’s Raum reverb, Cakewalk by Bandlab, and a free tuner plugin for the DAWs that don’t have them built in, like Reason does (amazing how handy that little feature is).

probably have a couple others installed, but nothing I’d remember enough to use regularly. I won’t install free plugins unless it’s something I really need, but also something I’m not willing to pay for—the overlap between the two is very small—something I might need for a single song, but don’t see a need for past that one time use.

Some of the best VSTs are free:
PG-8X, SQ-8L (really wish this would be ported to 64bit), Xhip, Dexed for synths... these are better than many ones you have to buy...

There are a few golden eggs in the free VST basket. But yes, after the VST support in Reason, the search for free plugins was quite extensive. Some are still good gems but many went into the shade, especially those modulation effects, EQ:s and compressors, not to mention stereo panning devices etc, that you do not need every item out there if having a bunch of REs and VST.

OTT

OTT, of course, and Klanghelm, and the TDR plugins are brilliant (and the TDR manuals and blog posts are an education).

But the free VST that I use the most is the little Juno chorus emulation by TAL. It's just great.

I have loads of drum samples that I'm never gonna use. But you never know! And they're only little, individually...

I used you have lots and lots of free stuff but have deleted most a long time ago now the free RE's or even paid once I don't use are not on my hard drive but can be downloaded at anytime.

Well I cleared about 15 Gigs of VSTs and sample banks which I have absolutely no chance of ever using. Got about 120GB of refills sitting in a folder still...because you just never know.
The free VSTs I kept are the TAL ones (all of them), Distorque Effects, Guitar Gadgets, Stone Voices Ambient Reverb and U-he's TyrellN6. The effects all work for me on guitar and Tyrell...well you know

Think the only free anything I run is Audacity so's I can use Paulstretch on it cause the UI on the stand alone is so dire.
I always wonder if I'm missing out on shit but really, if I collect things they just sit there. I'm quite specific in what I use i guess.

I'd say maybe 5% of my stuff is free stuff.