Linux native instrument plugins/effects

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Samplers

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• DecentSampler is one of the few samplers that supports Linux natively and has a pretty sizeable library of instruments to choose from, free or paid. Pair this with the vast library of sounds from Pianobook and you have a lot to write music with.

• I don’t really use soundfonts, but Sforzando has a beta version for Linux now.

• Speedrum2 has been a great find to replace Cubase’s Groove Agent SE for me, I’ve used the Lite version of it and It’s worked nicely.

Synthesizers

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• Vital which can probably do any sound ever (if I knew how to sound design that is 😅)

• Surge XT this one is really fun to use, and comes with a large stock preset collection that has a lot of great sounds designed by contributors.

• Dexed DX7 clone, with full support for dx7 roms/presets, which means that you have access to a lot of great sounds from old DX7 rom cartridges if you can find them online.

• JC-303 a TB-303 clone that I’ve found to work great.

• nakst’s Synthesizers Only tried out Integrate from these, but that has a really good looking UI and was easy to make sounds in, the others seem to have similar UI’s so probably the same on those, it also comes with 2 banks of good factory presets. ONLY HAS A CLAP VERSION, SO IF YOUR DAW DOES NOT SUPPORT THE .CLAP FORMAT YOU CANT USE THESE!

Instruments/Romplers

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• setBfree - Tonewheel Organ this is a nice sounding Hammond B3 emulation, I’ve never played an actually hammond but I’ve really liked the sound and playability + the sustain pedal controls the leslie speed switch by default, which i really like and wish that it would be possible to have it like that in the Arturia B3V that I’ve previously always used, since that makes playing stuff in a lot easier.

• AVL Drumkits is a collection of a few sampled acoustic drumkits from Glen MacArthur, the creator and maintainer of the AV Linux distribution.

• OneTrick Instruments They have some drum synthesizer and other stuff. I’ve only tried the SIMIAN Simmons drum inspired one, but the other are probably as nice too.

• Nil’s K1V I love old school rompler sounds for the not so realistic quality they have and the Kawai K1 that this emulates has a great lo-fi crunchy quality to it.

• VirtualJV this one is an in depth emulation of the JV-880 rompler which is great too.

Effects

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• Aether Reverb nice sounding reverb.

• Dragonfly Reverb Bread and butter reverb collection, with separate Room, Hall. Plate and Early Reflections versions.

• QDelay Nice delay effect with a lot of options.

• Linux Studio Plugins Project collection contains pretty much all the usual effects plugins you would need and more.

• If you use REAPER then Saike’s JSFX Plugins are worth takeing a look at. They’ve made a lot of great Reverbs, synths and other effects, I’ve used the Dusk Verb a lot for atmospheric sounds and the SEQS - Effects Sequencer and Final Boss are fun to mangle sounds with as well.