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Size 74.2 MB / 74.5 MB / 81.1 MB / 81.1 MB Sean Pandy Drums is a acousticdrum rompler with Kick, Snare, 4 Toms and a Sub Blower. Free VST plugins are great. That's why we scoured the internet for the best free VST instruments & put them in a neat list that's searchable.

The marimba is a pitched keyboard percussion instrument(similar to a xylophone) that resides in symphonies, percussion ensembles, orchestras, commercial music, and more.

Finding an excellent-sounding marimba VST isn’t a walk in the park — many sound cheap. Not to worry, as I have discovered five exceptional libraries that I will share with you today.

Table of Contents

• Things to Consider When Looking for Marimba VSTs

1) Vital Series: Mallets (Paid)

I’ve already mentioned Mallets in a previous post (xylophone VSTs), but it happens to fit perfectly with marimba VSTs.

Vital Series: Mallets is an excellent pitched-percussion plugin from Big Fish Audio, the creators of Electri6ity, Mojo 2, and Apollo: Cinematic Guitars.

The plugin includes patches for marimba, xylophone, bells, chimes, vibraphone, and others.

The sample quality is incredible — when I listened back to my studio monitors, I felt like I was listening to real performers.

Vital Series: Mallets comes with multiple mallet types allowing for more flexibility and better dynamic emulation.

Mallet types included are as follows:

• Soft
• Medium Soft
• Medium Hard
• Hard
• Rods
• Bow

Vital Series: Mallets is available at Plugin Boutique.

2) Marimbaphonic (Free)

For all the composers and producers looking for a free option — rejoice. Marimbaphone is a surprisingly decent-sounding free marimba plugin.

The instrument contains 122 samples from the University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios public domain library.

The most disappointing flaw in this marimba VST is the limiting two velocity layers(hey, what can you expect, it’s free?).

Here are Marimbaphone’s main features:

• 122 mono 24-bit samples
• Two velocity layers
• Release time control
• Amplitude dynamic range control
• Basic reverb

3) Short Marimba VST/AU from Flintpope (Free)

Here’s an interesting (and free) marimba VST from a website called Flintpope.net.

The Short Marimba is a cool-sounding free instrument that won’t stand up to significant orchestral recordings but does work for many styles like pop and hip hop.

Have a listen below:

4) Soniccouture Grand Marimba (Paid)

I have a hard time distinguishing between Grand Marimba and Vital Series: Mallets’ marimba. They both sound so unbelievably realistic.

Grand Marimba is a fantastic marimba VST that features a 5-octave Yamaha 6100, designed with the legendary Keiko Abe.

The 6100 is a flagship instrument with precision tuning, Honduran Rosewood bars, and welded resonators (rattle-free).

Grand Marimba is a Kontakt Player instrument, meaning you do not need the full version of Kontakt to use it in your DAW.

5) Marimba by Frontline Producer (Paid)

Marimba by Frontline Producer is a great-sounding, and very affordable, marimba VST from Producer Loops.

The significant difference from the others on the list: it includes loops. Frontline Producer includes 343 marimba loops at tempos between 100 and 127 (which can be warped to your liking).

In addition to loops is a software sampler patch, which you can use to create your parts and melodies.

Marimba by Frontline Producer is available at Plugin Boutique.

6) Fine Mallets Bundle from Cinematique Instruments (Paid)

Fine Mallets is an armory of seven mallet percussion instruments including marimba, vibraphone, metallophone, glockenspiel, kalimba, and more.

The marimba patch sounds much dryer than others I have previously listed in this article.

There is also much less sustain, but I think it still sounds excellent and has commercial production potential.

The articulations included for the marimba patch include hard mallet, felt mallet, and big-soft mallet.

Note: the full version of Kontakt is required to use Fine Mallets.

Fine Mallets is available at Plugin Boutique.

Things to Consider When Looking for Marimba VSTs

Depending on your production, you may pick a different plugin. Some digital audio workstations even have marimbas and other percussion instruments included with the software.

Using Marimba VSTs in Pop and Hip Hop Music

Because you’re working in pop or hip hop music, you may not need the highest quality samples. A free option may work just fine.

I use Cubase, and it comes standard with Halion Sonic SE 3 — a VST sampler and sound creation system.

Halion Sonic SE 3 isn’t the full version of Halion, but it does come with some decent marimba patches. The included presets work fine for pop and hip hop music.

Free tape stop vst effect. Check if your DAW includes some free virtual instruments and see if they’re any good!

Using Marimba VSTs For Orchestral and TV/Film Composition

Composition for film, TV, and video games requires next-level libraries — your competition will be using them.

Blowing away music supervisors right from the get-go is imperative, as you may only get one chance.

Using high-quality instrument samples is, unfortunately, a must when working in the TV and film industry.

For orchestral music, quality is also crucial. Unless you plan to hire out an entire orchestra to play your piece and record it, you may want to save up for the best virtual libraries you can afford.

Compatibility of Marimba Virtual Instrument Plugins

Most digital audio workstations today support VST (virtual studio technology) — VST is the most common format today.

However, if you use a DAW like Pro Tools, you may have to use a format known as AAX or RTAS. There are workarounds, but they are obnoxious, requiring you to use Reaper inside Pro Tools to host VST plugins — a total headache.

Fortunately, most plugins today come in different formats.

• VST (Virtual Studio Technology)
• AU (AudioUnits)
• AAX (Avid Audio eXtension)
• RTAS (Real-Time Audio Suite)
• TDM (Time-division Multiplexing)

Read your DAWs manual to see which format it supports.

Conclusion

Vital Series: Mallets remains to be my favorite mallet VST plugin bundle, though I have to say, Grand Marimba is coming in at a close second.

My best piece of advise when working with any plugins and instruments is to keep amassing them until you have an extensive library — like a painter’s color palette.

The “best-sounding” marimba VST may not always be the best application for a given style of music, like hip-hop, lo-fi, or pop.

If you’re interested in recording and production, specifically relating to drums and percussion, check out some of my other roundups:

Have you tried out any of the marimba VST plugins I’ve listed here? What do you think? I’d love to hear from you in the comments down below.

Please share this article with your producer friends if you found it helpful.

Thanks for reading.

Virtual instruments are software emulations of traditional instruments or hardware electronic musical instruments.

There is a staggering range of virtual instruments available nowadays, covering multi-timbral rompler modules to dedicated emulations of guitars, basses, drums, keyboards, and more.

Some of these VSTi plugins (as they’re also called) are free. So in this article we’ll take a look at some of the best free virtual instruments you can download today. Many of which are pro worthy.

Find more great gear here:

Intro: About Virtual Instruments

The benefits of virtual instruments are fairly obvious. They take up much less space than their hardware equivalents, they don’t overheat, and many of them have virtually unlimited polyphony. They are also much easier to edit and they almost never break down.

Here we run down some of the most intriguing virtual instruments currently available. Although some purists may scoff at the idea of these replacing their well-loved guitars or keyboards, there is no denying that they provide a surprising range of great sounds at a price that even professional musicians will appreciate.

Best Free VSTi Plugins

The List

The Roundup

Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player is arguably the Don of all free virtual instrument plug-ins. Based on the company’s own hugely successful Kontakt sampler, Kontakt Player effectively hosts all sample-based instruments developed for its more fully-featured big brother.

Vibraphone Vst Plugin Free

The compatibility goes the other way as well. All free instruments developed specifically for Kontakt Player will load up and play in the full version of Kontakt. Between the two, there is a staggering assortment of free and paid instruments, all boasting of the trademark Native Instrument quality.

To get budget-savvy musicians and producers started, NI offers a free Kontakt Factory Selection consisting of 50 premium instruments. Some of these are slightly cut-down versions of the instruments developed for Kontakt, while some are full versions developed specifically for Kontakt Player.

While Kontakt Player focuses mainly on standard instrument libraries, Native Instruments’ Reaktor Player is geared more towards the synthesis side of things.

Demonstration

Reaktor is of course the full-blown modular synthesis environment that gives users unparalleled and unlimited opportunity to design virtually any type of synthesizer, sequencer, or signal processor they could think of from scratch. With Reaktor Player, users are able to play back a wide variety of instruments and effects developed in and for Reaktor, with a more modest set of editing capabilities.

As with Kontakt Player, there is a huge range of ready-made instruments available for use in Reaktor Player. NI even offers two free devices to get you started: the Blocks Wired pre-patched modular synth and the Mikro Prism synthesizer.

Reaktor Player obviously doesn’t come close to providing the depth of power and customizability offered by the full version of Reaktor. Nevertheless, it is a good introduction to modular synthesis. Furthermore, the availability of hundreds of Reaktor instruments cover a board range of sound-crafting options.

Ample Guitar M Lite is the free version of Ample Sounds’ popular AGM guitar simulator. Emulating the warm, rich tones of the Martin D-41 acoustic guitar, Ample Guitar M Lite is now on its second version.

For the price of a free download, you get an enhanced set of features that now match the capabilities of the full version. The note range now spans E1 – C5, and the plug-in now works as a standalone instrument. Even if you do opt to use the instrument in your DAW, multiple instances will take up much less resources than before, and they will load up faster as well.

Demonstration

As you may have guessed from the name, Ample Bass P Lite is Ample Sound’s free bass guitar sample player plug-in. A cut-down version of the full Ample Bass P II component of the company’s Bass Series product line, this plug-in has fewer samples and fewer round robin variations than the full version. It also has a smaller note range than the paid product, covering D1 to F4. Nevertheless, the Ample Bass P Lite does a good job of cranking out the distinctive tones of the Fender Precision Bass, which it models.

Manda Audio’s MT Power Drum Kit is a free drum sampler that has a fairly wide selection of acoustic drum kit sounds. Great care has been taken to record and process the original samples, giving users a range of high-quality drum sounds perfectly suited for pop, rock, and even metal.

Vibraphone Plugin Vst

Those who wish to process their drum sounds with their own plug-ins might not appreciate the fact that the MT Power Drum’s sounds are already processed. Nevertheless, EQ and compression were applied quite tastefully, and the sounds should fit in well in most mixes.

Demonstration

Togu Audio Line has garnered quite a bit of acclaim for its excellent line of synthesizers and effects processors, a number of which are free. NoiseMaker is one of these, and it compares favorably to the company’s own paid emulation of the Roland Juno 106 analog synth, the TAL-U-NO-LX.

The NoiseMaker incorporates some of TAL’s more popular effects processors on board. There is the Juno-derived chorus with two modes for starters, along with a reverb, a delay, and a bitcrusher, all of which exist as free standalone plug-ins.

DistroCore’s DC Bazz::Murda is a bass and kick synthesizer that is capable of a surprisingly wide array of sounds. Although aggressive and distorted industrial sounds are its forte, it can be dialed back for more subdued tones as well. Even so, this is one plug-in that was obviously designed to get as loud and nasty as possible. For some users, that could be a good thing!

Top Pick

Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player and Reaktor Player are a couple of the best free virtual instruments that you can get, without a doubt. They provide a superb one-two punch that simply can’t be beat.

Between the two, you pretty much have all your bases covered, whether you need bread-and-butter rompler sounds, exotic World Music libraries, or synthetic sounds ranging from vintage to cutting-edge.

Given the wide range of sounds they cover and the trademark NI quality, these two are neck-and-neck as our top picks for best virtual instrument plug-ins.