VST freebies & cheapies, what do you like?

I started messing around with Haptic Perc, it's an odd duck. There's no wet/dry control, so it's mostly adding tonal info to the attack of your source recording, which will always be audible. So it sounds kinda lame if you use a drumkit loop and try to make it sound like a hand drum, but works pretty well if you're tapping your fingers on the desk (also had some interesting results using brushes on a snare or sticks on a practice pad). The tuning slider also has zero labels, so you're purely going by ear (and it's a little hard to even get back to a previous setting).

Still pretty unique & cool though. I had a track with some hand drum samples that were too short/overly truncated and I was able to use it to generate a more natural sounding decay, it sounds nice blended with the original track.

Hmm. There seems to have been not much interest in it so far. On YouTube I'm still seeing only Sampleson's own promotional videos, which aren't that revealing of what it can do. I'd certainly try out a trial version, but they haven't provided one. I don't think I'm going to spend $29 on it without trying it.

But I'm now quite interested in Sampleson's Metapiano ($89). Sounds really nice, and as I mentioned before, I just refuse to use huge multisampled instruments. This is only 60 MB (and also claimed to be light on CPU). Only thing is, I don't really use piano much, if at all, but it's tempting all the same.

Gonna have to get this I think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79EZpULr6J0

Heh I've always done this by individually pitch shifting or time stretching each hit (as audio, not midi). Looks fun though.

I bought it but haven't used it yet.

that looks cool. Logic added "Beat Breaker" to a recent update, which can chop things up really quickly, but isn't as retro as this one. I haven't messed with BB too much but it is quick! I remember learning about chopping breaks in a 1995 (?) issue of Future Music. It was written before most samplers had graphic displays! so it was all, take the total number of samples for a loop, divide by 8/16, those are your chops. ha. Not sure today's producers (definitely including me!) would have that kind of patience!