Trash Lite

Trash Lite is a free distortion plugin based on iZotope’s legendary commercial plugin, Trash (€109). The freeware Trash Lite offers a simplified feature set but still provides powerful distortion capabilities with 60 different modes. It includes essential distortion controls like gain, tone, and mix and additional parameters for each distortion mode. The interface is clean and intuitive, making navigating and customizing the available distortion types easy.

The only thing I don’t like is the large Upgrade button, which constantly reminds me that I’m using the freeware version of a paid tool. Trash Lite also features a randomization tool (which is very handy for quick sound design experiments) and a limiter with auto-gain to prevent distortion from getting too loud. iZotope’s freeware distortion effect is available in VST, AU, and AAX formats for Windows and macOS, as well as a free iOS app for iPad.