Update REAPER to 7.83, open the FX browser on any track, type "chmaha", and 39 brand new plugins show up. All free, all built in, nothing to install. They run on Windows, macOS and Linux, and the whole REAPER installer is still under 20 MB with all of them inside.
They come from chmaha, the same person behind ReaClassical. He took a pile of great open source plugins and rebuilt them as JSFX, which is REAPER's own plugin format. That is why they load fast and run anywhere REAPER runs. You will find them in two folders, chmaha-inst for the instruments and chmaha-fx for the effects. Side note: the same update moved a lot of older JSFX into a new Hidden FX folder, so your FX browser just got a lot cleaner.
Here are the ones worth your time first.
Lord of the Rinks
A tonewheel organ in the classic B3 style, and it sounds fantastic. Drawbars, percussion, vibrato and chorus, overdrive, reverb, and a rotary speaker built right in. Upper and lower keyboards plus pedals, each on its own MIDI channel, and 128 programs to start from. It is a port of setBfree, and it looks and feels like sitting at a real organ.
Dizzy
This is the rotary speaker from Lord of the Rinks broken out as its own effect, so you can put that spinning Leslie sound on anything: guitars, keys, vocals, a whole bus. Stop, Slow or Fast, with the speed ramping up and down like a real cabinet, plus cabinet size and mic placement if you want to nerd out. Gorgeous on clean guitar.
Dr. Nine Drum Synthesizer
A drum machine in the style of the Roland TR-909. Kick, snare, toms, rim and clap are synthesized, hats and cymbals are samples. Every drum gets its own drive with seven distortion types, plus reverb and delay sends and a glue compressor on the end. Run it in stereo or send every drum to its own output, just like the jacks on the back of a real 909.
Jexed FM Synth
A port of Dexed, the famous free Yamaha DX7 clone. That means 80s electric pianos and basses for days, with 33 cartridges of sounds, well over a thousand presets, and every parameter editable if you are brave. One catch: you cannot load your own DX7 .syx files yet. Chmaha says that is coming.
Synthy McSynthface
Yes, that is really the name. Four instruments in one: a piano, an electric piano, a JX10 style analog synth and a DX10 FM synth, each with its own presets. Ports of the classic mda plugins by Paul Kellett, and a fast way to grab a good sound without opening anything else.
Tolerable Tines Electric Piano
A simple, light electric piano ported from the one that ships with Ardour. The fun part: hit the ? button and you get six ear training games: Simon Plays, Name That Note, Higher or Lower, Chord Detective, Interval Spotter and Play It Back. Chmaha hid a couple more extras in there too, including a Mystery sound that changes a little every day.
JamSynth, Major General MIDI and Chamber Organ
JamSynth is a classic two oscillator subtractive synth, a port of amsynth, with all 28 of its preset banks. Major General MIDI is a General MIDI synth with 128 instruments plus a drum kit across 16 channels, perfect for sketching or opening an old MIDI file and hearing every part at once, and it has 80 historical tunings if you ever want to hear your song like it is the 1700s. Chamber Organ is a small pipe organ with five stops and its own reverb. Nice, but if you want an organ, Lord of the Rinks first.
The effects
The reverb is a port of Zita-Rev1, a reverb Linux users swear by, with two extra models added, MK VII and LEXIS, for more expensive sounding tails. JuKnow Chorus is the Roland Juno chorus with the same three modes, I, II and I+II. ChronoDupe is automatic double tracking: a few slightly delayed and detuned copies spread in stereo so one vocal sounds like you tracked it twice. Saturation gives you five console flavors: Burnley, Maryland, Oxford, Tokyo and Washington. Lumina is a whole channel strip in one plugin: filters, gate, analog style EQ, compressor, saturation and limiter with true peak metering at the end.
Then there is a full dynamics toolbox: a clean compressor, a three band multiband compressor, an intelligent spectral compressor that works on every frequency on its own, a gate that can also duck, a de-esser with Standard and Advanced modes, a transparent limiter, a maximizer, an inflator, and Dynamic Tilt, a tilt EQ that follows your signal, which chmaha built from scratch rather than porting. Plus a simple tempo synced delay, a broad musical Analog EQ, a precise parametric EQ with a spectrum view, and Final Touch for warmth, space and punch at the end of a chain.
And the meters. If you do any mastering, this is a treat: loudness in LUFS, true peak, K-meter, needle meter, bit meter, spectrum analyzer, stereo phase scopes, a phase/frequency wheel, a multiband correlation meter, a tuner, and a test signal generator. All ports of Robin Gareus' x42 meters.
Bonus: real drum kits
Chmaha also ported four sampled drum kits, but samples are heavy and the REAPER devs like to keep the installer tiny, so these live outside REAPER on ReaPack, free as well: Captain's Kit and Led Head (two 4-piece acoustic kits), Goldibops (a jazz kit you can play with sticks or Hot Rods), and Busk Stop (hand percussion: cajon, congas, shakers, tambourines, cowbell and more). They follow General MIDI drum notes, so your drum MIDI should just work, and you can click the drums on the kit photo to hear them.
To install them: in REAPER go to Extensions, ReaPack, Import repositories, paste https://github.com/chmaha/DSP-Ports-JSFX/raw/main/index.xml and click OK. Then Extensions, ReaPack, Browse packages, filter by "DSP to JSFX", right click the kits you want, Install, then Apply. They show up in the FX browser under JS.
If you are on an older REAPER, the same repository also has Synthy McSynthface, Jexed, ChronoDupe and JuKnow Chorus. For the rest, update to 7.83.
Give credit where it is due
This is a mountain of work, all free and open source. Chmaha has a donation link in the first post of his forum thread, and he is already teasing retro console synths next. One transparency note from the source article: the plugin files say AI may have helped generate parts of the ports. Worth knowing, and it does not change the fact that they sound great.
Grab REAPER 7.83 at reaper.fm if you have not already, type chmaha in the FX browser, and go play.
Hear some of the favorites in action:
Links:
- REAPER download: https://www.reaper.fm
- Full rundown that tipped me off: https://reapertips.com/post/reaper-7-83-chmaha-plugins
- Chmaha's ports on GitHub: https://github.com/chmaha/DSP-Ports-JSFX
- Chmaha's forum thread: https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=311569