On my research for the perfect budget studio I’ve come across many free plugins that I am currently testing but one that definitely is a must have in any home recording studio is the MinimogueVA. A bit of history first. The minimoog is legendary synthesizer and one of the first ones that were portable. Moog even recently created an update, the Minimoog Voyager. The problem is that most people can’t afford a Voyager or a second hand Minimoog.

Quite predictably, as soft synths became popular and computers more powerful there’ve been many attempts to emulate the sound of the Minimoog. Some better than others. The ones I had used before are the Arturia Minimoog V and the GForce Minimonsta. Both are excellent and sound great but what just I discovered is that the MinimogueVA is my favourite and it is free. Yes, completely free. I’ve never used a hardware Minimoog so I can’t really compare it to the original but since I have a soft spot for vintage synth emulations and I’ve played a lot with my hardware Korg MS-10 all I can say is that I love the MinimogueVA. It is lightweight in terms of space, requirements and processing power but is a monster in terms of sound. It even comes with 128 excellent preset sounds. I also want to thank its creators Richard Brooks, Glen Stegner and Gunnar Ekornås for their excellent work.

Note, if you feel like creating your own sounds or editing the existing presets the FAQ section of the MinimogueVA website is where the controls are explained. However, if you’re interested in learning about the original Minimoog you can download the original Minimoog manual and some sound charts from here.