Reviews

“Whoever sings the digital-summing-sucks-blues should give NastyVSD a run. It’s an attempt to add that kind of analog summing color/smearing/limiting and thus would like to be inserted in your groups or master effects chain. It enhances your signal by some subtle coloring according to the setting, has a little bit of that density mojo going on while not offering its controls and does a fairly good job of limiting within a certain range.I guess i’d also do okay as per-track limiter then again there are more sophisticated ones in the nasty series for that. [...]

Once again, the entire series of Nasty effects is free and a seriously essential bundle of effects for your virtual rig! If you can’t afford a UAD or the latter, this is the stuff you’re looking for. And even if you own a UAD-1 like, Waves or other bundles in the same regard – what Bootsy’s got cooking here is so well considered, it’s a blast!” – Ronnie Pries

“Obviously Density2 don`t wants to be a Fairchild, looking at great differences in attack and release times from p3 to p6 and diferences in the GUI and sound. But this is not nessesary too, because it was meant as a descendant of Density, which was focused on only one thing – DENSITY in a highly sophisticated way! I`m shure the reasons for making it more fairchildlike was the fact, that its inner structure was similar to this “holy grail” anyway.

But this doesnt mean that there are no similarities. One of the Faichild talents, that Density2 definitely has is the very fast peak taming, that can round up harsh transients making them sound more pleasant. The most fairchildlike sound i found with 100% wet 100% relax with filter on and in comp mode p1. The way all signals seem to hover on an equal level here is very FClike. Of course there is a lot of nice room informations coming up with this low release setting, so i`m shure its very useful as a hall effect and overhead compressor too.

What Density2 seems to be completely unable to is pumping. And as you can hear and see on the uaudio website, the Faichild can pump very musical on Acoustic Guitar if you want him to do so. So when ever you want to point out those intimate breathing and noise artifacts for Jazz issues, a good track compressor (for e.g. “BF”) should be a better choice.

However, Density2 is unique in its class. In the face of its numerous features and the dense and hoving sound, it is rightly the best buss and mastering compressor on the freeware market, and can be a good alternative to the fairchild in some special cases. So if it is density, what you want to have in your mix, you should choose nothing else than this as well.” – Bob

“The usual culprit with most software reverbs is that they sound great at certain areas and horribly fail at others. I kinda expected something with a solid quality from Bootsy, since he prooved to know what good sound is all about. Epicverb doesn’t make any difference here. It’s just very convincing at any setting you could try from short drumrooms to looooong tailed ambiences.

So, how come that this one guy hands down gives away all this bloody amazing gear for free? I have no idea, but you better grab it before he’s changing his mind.” – Ronnie Pries

“The ability to run this as Mid/Side with individual range limit controls make it unique in the plug-in world. The sound is fantastic too, very gluey and it’s difficult to get unpleasant results. The limit mode is killer.
There is some interesting color added while the unit is in gain reduction and the gain riding is very very smooth. The frequency response is ruler flat, at least when not compressing, so it’s not too colored when you want something clean and unobtrusive.

Bootsy wants it to be clear that this isn’t modeled on any particular analog device, but the similarities to the Fairchild 670 design are hard to ignore. I wouldn’t say the sound is that similar, but the smoothness, timing, and some of the pumping can be reminiscent. It’s really a beautiful piece of work, and the GUI is perfect. The overall capabilities and layout are flawless balance of simplicity and flexibility.

Now that I’ve put this through the paces, I like it even more. Having individual compression range controls for mid/side processing is awesome. Getting a good sound is effortless with this thing, whether you’re trying to help make a mix smoother and more cohesive, highlight the ambience around a subgroup, add density to vocals or lead instruments, or lightly punctuate the attack on percussive signals. It doesn’t delivery the brutality or snap the 1176, VU, or Fatso can, but it’s not designed to and compliments these well.

Some people are reporting that it’s hard to make it pump, but I’m able to get some very pleasant sounding smooth pumping in limit mode. It’s easiest with the sidechain filter off, and an EQ driving the bottom end and mids going into it. I can get some Fairchild-esque leveling using time constants 2 or 3 and tweaking the strict/relaxed knob (to be more relaxed on 2 or more strict on 3). Relaxing the timing on the fastest limiting setting sounds great too, it’s easy to dial in the amount of transient you want to let through or emphasize.

Following this up with a Nebula tube program is pure class. Don’t sleep on this one.” – Brian

From the net

“TesslaSE: This is one of those rare digital processors that manages to sound “good” just by being in the signal path, just like good analog hardware: tighter bass, sweeter dynamics, more focused overall response… That in itself would be amazing, but I cannot forget the actual purpose of the plugin: one of the creamiest, more musical saturation algorithms I’ve ever heard, freeware or otherwise, period. Use it liberally whenever you need some warming up, from too-clean drum loops to bland synths, from individual tracks to whole mixes, from subtle to nasty. It just sounds good, without fuss, always.” – Juanjo

“epicVerb: Since its release, it has automatically become both the best sounding AND the most flexible free reverb available, and only a handful of payware options play on the same league. Not much else to say really: like most (if not all) Bootsie plugins it just sounds good no matter what you run through it. You could easily produce whole albums in any musical style using epicVerb as your only reverb: it’s that good, it’s that flexible.” – Juanjo

“Since epicVerb release, it has quickly became both the best sounding and the most flexible free reverb available (the other one is SIR1 Impulse Response Reverb). If your DAW lacks some good reverb plugin or you just need a change, then you should try epicVerb. It sounds as good as some commercial plugins.” – vstcafe.com

“epicVerb: It’s fantastic! It uses very little cpu and sounds great.” – umd

“After having used this baby for a while now, I gotta say that this is by far the best freeware algo reverb around (and believe, I’ve tried them all). It even puts some commercial verbs I’ve used to shame. While very versatile, it excels at lush halls, and as I do mainly orchestral work that is what I’m after.” – West

“epicVerb: In my opinion it’s the best free algo-reverb-plugin. It really has a certain kind of noble sound quality and it’s suitable for most situations.” – Nokuneko

“epicVerb: It’s very effective in bringing subtle room “realism” to any source. It’s also surprisingly non-muddy, even when I feed it complex melodic pads and turn up the reverb time into ridiculous amounts, it still lets the notes clearly through. Pretty amazing job if you ask me! I also love the pseudo echo things you can get from it.” – bManic

“epicVerb: Nice and unique sound! really, best free reverb!” -  Sasha Kulagin

“epicVerb sounds just great to my ears, finally the warm, lush ballad reverb (among many other cool things) I’ve been wishing for ITB.
So I’m afraid CSR and UAD reverbs will see a lot less use here in the future.
An extremely cool M/S application I found is to put two near identical eVs on sends, one set mainly to M and the other to S. Then use the M send for lead vocals and the S send for background as a starting point in the chorus, mix and match to taste for a big, coherent vocal sound while still retaining separation.
Of course you’ll want a different mix of the sends during the verse when the lead singer is more in focus.
I’m just starting to scratch the surface here.
Another thing that’s perfect for me is the UI concept, totally intuitive and fast to get the results I’m going for, no need for external filtering or EQ anymore.
And like already mentioned, it never gets metallic or obtrusive to my ears, on the contrary, I have to control myself not to overdo the reverb aspect most of the time, an effect I only know from the big Lexicons (300 up) and the Roland 880.
What a wonderful creative tool !” – susiwong

“epicVerb: A M A Z I N G !!!” – KleVeR

“epicVerb: This is quite impressive…and I’m very picky about reverb.” – vespers75

“epicVerb: I am really liking the plate algorithm particularly. The plate and stage presets which use this algorithm are very smooth and can be tuned to work with all kinds of things. Horn solos work really well with the plate model – there is nothing metallic or unpleasant about the sound and you can easily dial in the decay and frequency response to suit the musical context with the eq controls.” – egbert

“epicVerb: … Epic Verb may well be as good if not better than any other commercial reverb.” – Hitchcock Bell

“epicVerb: Wow… just wow… this is a really nice reverb!!!” – afreshcupofjoe

“epicVerb: … this gotta be one of the best general purpose plugin reverbs (one of the approximately three plugin reverbs that I actually like; and I’ve tried practically every plugin reverb that has a demo available, and most of the stuff people keep hyping sounds more or less awful), and the funniest thing it doesn’t sound special at all… in the sense that it just drops some nice reverb behind the track without sounding much like an effect (like most other reverbs).” – mystran

“epicVerb:  sounds better than most of the other, expensive reverbs.” – Arsov

“epicVerb: I didn’t expect a freeware reverb plug to be this damned excellent. ” – operandx

“epicVerb: This thing ROCKS !  It must be the best sounding freeware reverb available! And only 3% CPU on my simple d(ual 2Ghz PC)” – WOK

“epicVerb: Amazing work” – dimitar

“epicVerb: very impressive work!” – Xenakios

“epicVerb: I was a little bit tired of new reverbs for the last years, but this…
Big thanks for a great work !” – PeterL

“epicVerb: This plug does everything i need on the reverb side. It sounds really classy to my set of ears!” – Detritus

“epicVerb: thanks for the wonderful reverb, the quality is amazing, up there with the best convolution reverbs, but different and more flexible.” – bklnlks

“epicVerb: excellent reverb unit! can really comapre it to many hardware commercial ones” -TripACT

“Reverbs are always such a personal choice, but epicverb is generally very well regarded around here. Personally, I think it’s one of the best, free or otherwise.” – pedrorf

“epicVerb: very smooth and very nice pro reverb. Best free reverb.” – Pule

“epicVerb: Definitely at or near the top.” – bduffy

“epicVerb:  is currently the best free reverb” – vespers75

“I Also think its pretty top notch reverb. Great design and easy control can give promising results. Sometimes it reminds me an Eventide-like reverbration especially when modulation dials in.” – TripACT

“epicVerb is great on Solo Instruments – my Dobro loves it” – vanielik

“epicVerb makes everything sound so much better. I can’t describe how much I love it and yes, I think you won’t find a better freeware reverb.” – TristezaOrange

“Personally I’d even say it’s among the best reverbs ITB, commercial or free.” – susiwong

“Ich verwende den Tessla immer, wenn ich ohne Band- oder Röhrenfärbung
Sättigungseffekte haben möchte.
Man kann natürlich auch das Nichtröhren-Analoggerät seiner Wahl
verwenden (wenn man sowas hat), beispielsweise bin ich oft durch meine
MCI JH24 Bandmaschine im Stopmodus gegangen, um ähnliche Effekte zu
erzielen.
Aber Plugins sind eben schon praktischer…
Tessla hat mir schon bei Jazz, aber auch bei Punkrockplatten gute
Dienste erwiesen und wenn er mal nicht passt, merkt man das
praktischerweise recht schnell.” – Christoph Beyerlein, Separate Sound Studio

“Man, I’m a fan of Rescue, just used it last week again while mastering 2 CDs. Looking forward to all your upcoming cool stuff. Love the GUIs, as usual!
Thanx a lot for your great plugins.” – shogger

“Great Programmer! Great Engineer!… Great Plugs….” – Mercado_Negro

“I discovered Rescue a few weeks ago, and I started greedily gobbling up the others just today. Thanks so much for producing this awesome freeware, …” – icelizard

“NastyLF:  Sounds fantastic! Instant bass-mixing ease; could replace some of my more complex bass chains.” – bduffy

“I tried the NastyLF, holy sh*t if! The thing sounds killer! Way better than the (sometimes pricey) direct competitors!
Defined, tight bass. Really good piece. Impatient to try the rest of the bundle”- Retinal

“Incredible stuff. Unbelievable this is free.” – MelodyMan

“NastyHF: Really creates some remarkably pleasant, delicate upper-end enhancement. How often can you say that about a plugin??? The appreciable quality of any plugin with your name on it is getting scarily predictable.” – SongMonkey

“Nasty Series: I have no idea how these work, but they work amazingly well on so many things.” – Shy

“NastyVSD is sounding really excellent. Nice, subtle enhancement, and great potential for abuse.” – bduffy

“NastyCS is the highpoint of them all, a real keeper and “go-to” plugin, i’m sure i’ll be using this all over the place.” – Polybius

“NastyCS is indeed a damn fine plugin, simple and efficient with a great GUI.” – sinkmusic

“NastyVSD it da bomb ! Honestly, this things kicks ass.
Really great on full mixes, but also very useful for fattening drums.” – K-Slash

“As someone who owns a lot of expensive toys including hardware and UAD plugs I am happy to say that I’m very impressed with: NastyVSD and Rescue – Outstanding work!” – AndrewSimon

“FANTASTIC PLUGINS!!!” – thermal

“Nasty Series: Been working with these…just get more impressed as time goes on.” – SongMonkey

“BootEQ: WOW!!! Impressive EQ! Uses 1% of my CPU in Ableton Live 7.0.7 and sounds VERY musical” – adl

“BootEQ: Getting 1% in Reaper and it sounds AMAZING” – mandt

“I finally got a chance to try Tessla AND rescue as well. Oh my! These plugins are rather excellent! Unlike some certain “sonic maximizer”, which I will not mention by name, these actually kick ass, IMHO! I really REALLY like the subtle enhancement of Tessla especially. Looking forward to destroying a lot of mixes in the future by overusing/abusing this plugin!” – bmanic

“… that I finally checked out Rescue. Man, this is so cool. Lotsa tasty preset that shows what this plugin is capable of. Very good on various signals. Works on Master, Drum bus, a-guitar and vocals. Excellent. Did I say that I like it? – shogger

“I just wanted to tell you once more how much I like Tessla and Rescue. They are INCREDIBLE and have already migrated to the ‘Vintage Classic Freeware’ folder which rarely grows! It sits very nicely next to unforgettable classics like Pocket limiter, 2095, Blockfish and endorfin!” – bmanic

“Tessla is one of the best saturators.” – michat

“I love the UAD plate, and it was my first great epicVerb impression when I managed to closely approximate one of my favourite plate presets with epicVerb. It went downhill from there …  love that thing!” – susiwong

“I absolutely love the sound of BootEQ, it’s my go-to EQ for colour, …” – Dax Liniere

“BootEQmkII: Sounds really good and I like the subtile exciter-effect of the tube-stage! Rock on!” – Markus

“BootEQmkII: Now THIS is an EQ plugin! No other musical EQ can touch it, really! The Pultec was a plugin I was looking at getting for a long time …, but I think this plugin is way better, I mean, really way better than a Pultec. And that preamp section is soooo sweet.” – JWMMakerofMusic

“BootEQmkII: This plugin sounds sweet. The new preamp section really adds something to the sound, in a subtle way.” – Jay Key

“BootEQmkII: FANTASTIC! The pre-amp section in particular is amazing. It makes stuff fat and rounded in a really nice way, really high quality sound! best saturation plugin yet.” – david

“Hey what are awesome plugs, I could not believe my ears. It’s a labour of love. A truly amazing gift.” – Emeth

“BootEQmkII: Awesome EQ! I just did a comparison with my hardware stereo pultec clone with a Gyraf tube output stage, … it sounds better than any of them! Including hardware! (it’s subjective, I know…but for my taste I prefer the flavour of Boot) The low end boost is simply the fattest I’ve heard so far, the hi-shelf is sweet, mids are….well….very brown sounding if you know what I mean. Great stuff. Warm?

And the preamp section just takes everything to another level. The best saturation to be found in software to date. And I’ve tried a lot of plugs. No nasty, farting, spiky distortion. Just a fatter tone, smoother but more chunky highs, and a more 3d sound – especiali the mids.

I just cannot say enough good words about this plugin.” – ReMeDy

“BootEQmkII: assuming you’re on pc, that’s the one that i found most impressive for highest quality analog coloring eq, and it’s free [...] if not the best ever, when it comes to analog sound emulation … it’s not the most flexible one, but man, that thing sounds so damned good (even without the tube saturator turned on), i use it on everything …” - brok landers

“audible tube distortion is modelled good enough in the digital realm.
what’s missing, and that’s the cream on the cake when it comes to saturation in general, is, that a good tube driven amp in the analog realm is able to provide a saturation that is not audible as distortion, but as an integral part of the input. that’s what makes a signal “beefy, fat, juicy, upfront”, or whatever you call it due to the lack of a better word.
the only plugin that goes into that direction is indeed bootsies booteq, but i’ve yet to hear it modelled from any other plugin up to now.” – brok landers

“Your plugs are absolutely fantastic! I wish I had them years ago.” – Jay Thompson

“Bootsie did set the mark for reverbs fairly high recently. EpicVerb is the new reverb benchmark” – shogger

“Density mkII: Thank you both so much for another milestone, amazing how you managed to hit the sweet spot between plug’n’play and geeky options, many different kinds of people should find exactly their dream buscomp in Density Mk II, I sure did.
This one is among the best buscomps at any price imho, personally I like it even better than both UA PBC and SSL.” – susiwong

“Density mkII: Hats off Bootsy, you amazed me once with the ‘Epicverb’, which, by the way, always remains on my mastering chain now, and also on my drums for mixing purposes.” – Lovinab

“I don’t like it, I love it. Density MK II just sounds amazing, and it looks great too. It will be on all of my Tracks now.
I think I can’t live anymore without Density MK II and Tessla Pro.” – Bronto Scorpio

“Density mkII sounds fantastic. I only spent a little time with it and it produced the results I expected.

I found it to be smooth, gentle and versatile but it can have a lot of character it you want it to. The options it has allowed me to do a lot of tweaking for different sounds. I ran through all the presets and they sounded sweet but I tweaked the parameters to my liking for the sound I wanted.

From another programmer and software engineer who is also heavy into music and audio engineering, I’d like to say, well done, good job and congratulations to Bootsy for his amazing plug-ins. Bootsy’s plug-ins are stellar and they sound wonderful.” – Major Edition

“Big fan of tesla pro, and boot eq, and now density MKII, this one is friggin great, really. Even compare with some of the expansive machines here. 2buss, vocals, strings, horns, it makes the bottom tight and clear, love the curve in comp mode, it’s just really good man.” – David

“Density mkII: I especially like the way you can enhance the initial transient by keeping that small knob at the “relaxed” position. It’s very effective. And in the multiband configuration I kept the bass compressor in the “Strict” position and with a fairly fast timing (I think it was P2). It had no distortion or other problems which probably means there is some kind of oversampling going on behind the scenes and some clever envelope following dsp.” – bManic

“Density mkII: It is completely unique sounding and thus can not be replaced by anything else. It’s also one of those compressors that takes less than 15 seconds to setup, unless you get stuck in the “damn! these settings sound good! … DAMN! These settings sound also good! DAAAmn! Now I found the magic settings!! …. DAAAAAAMN!” etc.
It. Is. Pure. Awesomeness. Period.” -  bManic

“Thank you so much for this wonderfull compressor plugin. Density mkII is totally my new #1 choice for ITB compression. In some tracks of mine I replaced the Waves SSL bus compressor with Density mkII and in all tracks it really improved the sound. Compared to the Waves SSL bus compressor, it sounded more detailed, more open, the stereo image whas better.. yeah, I love what it does on the mainbus! I also find use for it on instruments and vocals, it really is an amazing good sounding plugin, imho in the same league as the expensive alternatives.” – Marando1

“Density mkII:  Awesome compressor, I like it more than all my other comps. Sounds huge on everything.” – Elfen

“Density mkII:  Pretty much loving this. Probably the first bootsie plugin that i will use on a regular basis. This just feels right.” – loopdon

“Wow. I have always been very sceptical of plugins in general, ESPECIALLY eq & dynamics and have limited myself to a handful of the really good ones that I like the sound of and trust eq, algorithmix, waves, psp, uad & voxengo + various bits hardware. I downloaded booteq & density after a fellow GS on the mastering forum enlightened me to them. Well, I’m f*cking glad he did, thats for sure. Shame booteq is max 48k, so no mastering duties here, but for mixing its brilliant. I’m going to test density tomorrow and see how it goes, if booteq is anything to go by, its going to be a joy to use.” – lerone

“This stuff is great. Today I’ve talk to one of the engineer I trust the most and he was totally amazed by Bootsy plugs. (and he knows a lot of good plugs and hardware)
He particularly loves the Nasty, Rescue and Tessla stuff.” – ozmoz2008

“Using Density MkII more and more as the glue to hold a mix together instead of the commercial options available to me. Partly because all the commercial stuff I have are either vintage emulations (nice if I want a vintage sound, but I often don’t) or comps that don’t really aim for that “finishing touch” master bus thing. But also because I find that more and more I just want THAT sound on my master, it’s become my go-to.” – Agreed

“Density mkII is absolutely my new #1 ITB compressor plugin. I simply can’t understand that this compressor plugin is free. It totally smokes all the compressor plugins I have paid much money for!” – Marando

“Density mkII: Sounds kinda phat and punchy while beeing transparent.” – Alxi

“Density mkII: you really can push it without colouring the sound too much” – Jenre

“Density mkII: the M/S option is what made me really dig into density” – diogo_c

Testimonials

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