Focusrite offers the Midnight Plugin Suite and Scarlett Plugin Suite bundles for free download on its website. The plugins are now discontinued and considered legacy software.
Focusrite plugins have been around for quite some time. They were originally available exclusively for Focusrite hardware owners. However, the company has discontinued its legacy plugins and now offers them for free on its website.
Let’s take a closer look at the two Focusrite plugin bundles, and then we’ll review the download and activation details.
Midnight Plugin Suite
Midnight Plugin Suite includes two plugins: Midnight Compressor and Midnight EQ. The plugins emulate Focusrite’s hardware EQs and compressors, namely the ISA110 EQ and ISA130 Compressor.
Midnight Compressor is a straightforward compressor plugin with standard Threshold, Ratio, Attack, Release, Gain, and Blend controls. It’s easy to operate, sounds decent, and is a great tool for quickly handling most compression tasks while mixing.
Midnight EQ looks a bit dated, but it’s still a capable equalizer.
Midnight EQ is a parametric equalizer with a low-pass filter, a high-pass filter, a pair of shelving filters, and two parametric bands. It’s a bit dated by today’s standards, but it’s worth checking out for nostalgic reasons, if not much else.
Scarlett Plugin Suite
Scarlett Plugin Suite includes a parametric EQ, a compressor, a gate, and a reverb. The equalizer, comp, and gate are all quite simple, but the reverb is an interesting one.
Focusrite Reverb is based on various hardware units and aims to bring the sound of classic algorithmic reverbs to the DAW. What I like about it is the simplicity. The plugin is packed with useful presets that sound quite good, and it’s easy to operate.
If you’re looking for a simple reverb plugin to speed up your workflow, check out Focusrite Reverb.
Free Download And Activation
After installing and launching the plugins, you will be asked if you want to run them in demo mode or activate the software. But here’s the catch: clicking the Activate button will automatically download the unlock key (cape-unlock-key.fnlf) that you can use to activate the plugins.
Please note that these plugins are now discontinued, and Focusrite offers them as legacy software. This means that no further updates are planned, but you can keep using them as long as they’re supported by your operating system and DAW.
Midnight Plugin Suite and Scarlett Plugin Suite are available in VST, AU, and RTAS plugin formats for Windows and macOS. Both 32-bit and 64-bit plugin hosts are supported.
Download: Focusrite (legacy software)
More:
20 Comments
alex
onWell, Midnight Plugin Suite is nice and I actually wanted to have it years ago but I guess everybody has the Brainworx bx_console Focusrite SC which is a much better plugin.
Numanoid
onThe Sound Collective freebies seem to have ended, or taken a break ?
Satyabrata
onIt has ended
Georg
onYes, the free Plugin Collective sadly has been discontinued. The plugins they offered were always a welcome addition to my collection.
Carlo
onTested the Scarlett suite on a MacBook Air M1 running Ventura, the plugins are validated by GarageBand but when loaded the UI fails to load correctly and the plugin is unusable!
Too bad, the Scarlett Reverb was a good one for 80s style reverbs!
D
onHow did you “open” the unlock key (cape-unlock-key.fnlf), after clicking the “Activate button” (to activate the plugins) on your Mac? Thank you
Mihai Sorohan
onThanks for sharing the info.
Akola Ako
onWindows version activated but mac version only midnight activated scarlett suite giving activation error(monterey intel) Thx for sharing
Bob
onFor anyone getting an activation error, the unlock key that is downloaded is not generic. It is tied to the system the plugin is launched from.
Also, Novation have freed their B-Station, V-Station and Novation FX Suite plugins in a similar way.
Just click the Novation downloads link at the bottom of the Focusrite Legacy page and go to the legacy section.
chris
onThey are practically unusable in Ableton Live 11. They are all VST 1 and they show up with black boxes (text isn’t rendered) presumably asking for a license key or something. I clicked a blank box within that it went away, but all of the dials are wonky and impossible to see what settings you’re on (and no preset menus work). Overall a waste of time, the built-in compressors/reverbs are so much better and easier to use, not to mention all of the other free plugins out there.
ben
onworking fine to me, live 11 suite here
ben
onmidnight eq shines above all plugins here, very smooth curves and sound
Rohit
onMidnight plugin Installed but not showing Abelton live how can solve this problem
Olaf Tryggvasson
onthe plugin collective, for me, was always sort of a compensation for how bad the scarlett interfaces sounded. when they released gen 2 i thought they should have given it for free, as a replacement for gen 1 – in terms of the instrument pres, at least. gen 2 was significantly better, but not up to par with some other similar price interfaces.
now that’s gone. don’t want scarlett anymore. haven’t tested gen 3, but from what i hear in comparative tests, i’m not tempted.
the midnight plugins sound great, though. the compressor is a somewhat more rounded ssl channel compressor, with more adjustments, and the eq is very melodic – even though somewhat limited..
Gersounds
onEl Midnight eq es un gran ecualizador, lo suave de las frecuencias altas es su fuerte, en comparación con el eq de la consola de plugin alliance me gusta más el eq de Midnight, lo percibo más cristalino
D
onMy MacBook doesn’t know how to open the downloaded key. Any ideas!?
Dirk
ondrag ‘n drop into plug-window
Arthur
onWell, what can I say? Tomislav, thank you very much for this bundle – the sound and workflow are very cool for me! There is some nice tone which made them, especially Scarlett, my go-to devices))
Hal
onUnfortunately I can’t get the Scarlett plugin suite to work in Logic Pro X 10.5.1 (the Midnight suite does however work properly). Has anyone had success with the Scarlett plugins within the same (or higher) version of Logic?
Strangely the Scarlett suite works fine on another Mac running Logic 10.4.8.
Jeffery W Wright
onFault bucket 1358418483487157857, type 4
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0
Problem signature:
P1: Cubase LE AI Elements 12.exe
P2: 12.0.52.393
P3: 637f6b3e
P4: Midnight Compressor 64.dll
P5: 0.0.0.0
P6: 57fca787
P7: c000041d
P8: 0000000000012618