Blue Cat Audio Blue Cat Protector

Blue Cat's Protector is a 0 dB stereo brickwall limiter with an adjustable dynamics response. It will typically find its place on the master bus of your DAW to protect your audio output from overshoot, limit the general volume and improve the perceived loudness, thanks to very transparent frequency response and its lookahead capabilities.

Despite its very simple set of controls, it offers a wide range of sounds and it is also suitable as a track limiter for more creative effects such as distortion, pumping, or heavy limiting.

Its large colorful peak and RMS meters and its custom dynamics histogram provide premium visual feedback and make it the perfect tool to monitor and control the dynamics on your master buss. You can also check in real-time the loudness boost obtained with the limiter.

Beyond its powerful dynamics processing features, and like most of our plug-ins, Blue Cat's Protector also offers an original side chain capability thanks to its MIDI CC output. This unique technique not only lets you do side chain limiting but also parameters modulation: control any parameter of any plugin to create powerful side chain effects in real-time.

If you are looking for a complete dynamics processing solution, you might be interested in the Blue Cat's Dynamics plugin. For multi-band limiting and more, check out Blue Cat's MB-5 Dynamix

Blue Cat Audio Standards:

• Available in most plug-in formats for Mac and Windows.
• Full MIDI control and automation support, MIDI Learn.
• No CPU load on idle: processing shuts down when fed with silence (optimal CPU usage).
• Customizable user interface with transparency & zoom.
• Automation and MIDI output: record output parameters as automation curves or send MIDI CC messages to other plug-ins for powerful side chain effects.
• Smooth Bypass: noiseless plug-in activation / deactivation.
• Undo/Redo.
• Full featured integrated presets manager.
• Copy/paste the state of the plug-in between instances.
• Any sample rate supported.

Version 2.31

• Added Apple Silicon support for AAX Plug-in Format.
• Fixed VST3 version not always loading properly in Ableton Live 11.
• Improved VST parameter value display in some host applications.
• Added an option in global & preset input settings to send MIDI events when MIDI-enabled parameters are modified in the plug-in (to update control surfaces accordingly).
• Improved undo management and automation when using the mouse wheel to move knobs.
• Fixed VST & VST3 automation not recording properly in some hosts for output parameters (Cubase 11, Ableton Live).
• AAX: Fixed erratic mouse behavior in Pro Tools on Mac.
• Mac: installers and plug-ins have been notarized to avoid security warnings on Mac OS Catalina and newer.

Features:

1. 0 dB brickwall peak limiter and waveshaper.
2. Optional lookahead.
3. Continuous control of the dynamics response from transparent limiting to colorful distortion.
4. Stereo link control.
5. DC Filter to get rid of DC offset.
6. Large zoomable peak and RMS audio levels and gain reduction meters for optimal monitoring.
7. Loudness boost monitoring.
8. Fully configurable dynamics response histogram.
9. Side chaining capability: a unique way to perform side chain compression and much more.
10. No latency (except with lookahead).

Requirements:

• mac
  • cpu: An Intel or Apple Silicon processor.
  • ram:0
  • disk:0
  • version:Mac OS 10.9 or newer.
  • support:
    • 32_bit
    • 64_bit
  • plugins:
    • VST-2
    • VST-3
    • AU
    • AAX
• windows
  • cpu: An SSE2-enabled processor (Pentium 4 or newer).
  • ram:0
  • disk:0
  • version:Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7, 8 or 10.
  • support:
    • 32_bit
    • 64_bit
  • plugins:
    • VST-2
    • VST-3
    • AAX

Videos: