Home / Plugins / Compressors / Sidechain Compressor VST Plugins
by Unknown
Let’s look at some of the best free sidechain compressor plugins you can add to your favorite digital audio workstation. Before we list our favorite free sidechain VSTs, here’s a quick introduction to sidechain compression. Sidechain compression is a common audio mixing technique where the level of one audio signal (the sidechain) controls the amount of compression applied to another track. You will commonly recognize it as a “pumping” or “breathing” effect in modern mixes.
This “pumping” effect can be used deliberately to add a sense of groove to a track. Daft Punk famously pioneered this tec
Links to bedroomproducersblog.com — the article includes the official download links.
Compressors
Rough Rider Pro by Audio Damage used to live near the top of every free compressor list, and on Windows, it still earns the spot. It is a high-ratio, program-dependent compressor purpose-built for…
Compressors
TDR Nova is a free dynamic equalizer plugin by Tokyo Dawn Labs. By bypassing the EQ functionality, you can use TDR Nova as a regular multiband compressor.
Compressors
by Audio Damage
Evil Otto is the newest plugin on this list, released in March 2026. Audio Damage built it from the ground up rather than cloning the Xfer version, and it works much more like a mixing tool than a…
Compressors
ToneBoosters FIX4 is a free dynamic equalizer that can be downloaded as part of the developer’s collection of discontinued v3 plugins. Although it’s no longer officially supported, I tested it on…
Compressors
by Press Play (VST/VST3/AU)
I’ve been using Wave Breaker by Press Play quite a lot lately. It has become a crucial limiting tool for me due to its user-friendly interface and transparent sound.
Compressors
TDR Kotelnikov by Tokyo Dawn Labs is the free compressor I’d download first if I had to start over with an empty plugin folder. Tokyo Dawn built it as a wideband dynamics processor that controls the…