Blue Cat Protector -

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A brick wall for your master bus.

Blue Cat’s Protector is a 0 dB stereo brickwall limiter with adjustable dynamics response. It is designed to protect your audio output from overshoot, limit the general volume, and improve the perceived loudness, thanks to a very transparent frequency response.

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 meters and it’s custom dynamics histogram provide premium visual feedback. In addition, it the perfect tool to monitor and control the dynamics on your master bus. 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 a powerful side chain capability. This is 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, indeed, 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

Main Features:

0 dB brickwall peak limiter and waveshaper.
Continuous control of the dynamics response from transparent limiting to colorful distortion.
Stereo link control.
DC Filter to get rid of DC offset.
Large zoomable peak and RMS audio levels and gain reduction meters for optimal monitoring.
Loudness boost monitoring.
Fully configurable dynamics response histogram.
Sidechaining capability: a unique way to perform side chain compression and much more.
No latency.

Blue Cat Audio Standards:

Available as: Mac-AAX, Mac-AU, Mac-RTAS, Mac-VST, Mac-VST3, Win-AAX, Win-DX, Win-RTAS, Win-VST, Win-VST3, Win x64-AAX, Win x64-DX, Win x64-VST, Win x64-VST3.
Native DSP code for optimal performance.
Full MIDI control and automation support with silent, zipper-free parameters update, advanced response control, and MIDI Learn.
No CPU load on idle: when the plug-in is fed with silence, the processing smoothly shuts down, to optimize the CPU usage of your Digital Audio Workstation.
Skinnable and customizable user interface with transparency management.
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: activate/deactivate the plug-in with absolutely no noise.
Undo/Redo.
Full-featured integrated presets manager.
Copy/paste the plug-in’s state between instances using the system clipboard.
Any sample rate supported.

Windows

An SSE2-enabled processor (Pentium 4 or newer).
Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7, 8 or 10.
Any VST / AAX compatible host software (32 or 64 bit).

Mac OS X

An Intel or Apple Silicon processor.
Mac OS 10.9 or newer.
Any VST / Audio Unit (32/64-bit) / RTAS / AAX compatible application.

For more information about supported platforms, see our FAQ.

Warning: because of a bug of the initial VST3 release, this new version may not work with existing sessions that used the VST3 format. See this blog post for more details and how to fix it: bluecataudio.com/Blog/tip-of-the-day/vst3-plugin-id-changes-on-mac

V2.31 (2022/12/12)

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.

V2.3 (2021/10/19)

Single Installer on Mac (all plug-ins formats).
Apple Silicon (M1 processor) support.
Dropped 32-bit support on Mac.
Now requires MacOS 10.9 and newer.
Arrow keys can now be used to navigate presets.
Added MIDI control support (MIDI CC messages) for Next and Previous Preset commands, with MIDI learn.
Improved MIDI & automation control settings with lock, reset and “save as global setting” capabilities.
Improved smooth plug-in bypass (faster and smoother transition).
Unicode support.
Windows: improved GUI loading performance.
VST3: fixed random crash in Ableton Live 11 upon load.
Mac Audio Unit: fixed plug-in listing in some host applications (Plogue Bidule).
Mac: fixed GUI performance issues on native P3 displays and improved performance on other displays.
Mac: fixed mouse wheel that required large movements to change parameter values.
Mac: fixed mouse cursor flickering issues.
Mac: fixed Esc key not closing fine edit parameter dialog.

V2.21 (2020/07/07)

New high resolution graphics for knobs.
Reduced disk footprint.
MIDI Program Change preference is now saved into session instead of global preferences, so each instance can now use different MIDI channels. It is also saved in the user default preset.
VST3: added program change support for VST3 plug-in format.
VST3: added MIDI output support for VST3 plug-in format for MIDI side chain effects.
Fixed meters layout not properly saved and restored in sessions.
VST: the user interface is now properly resized in Cubase on Windows.
Mac: faster GUI rendering on recent Mac OS systems (up to 8x faster).
Mac: fixed user interface not properly shown on retina displays in some applications built with the 10.14 Mac OS SDK, such as Logic 10.5.
Mac: fixed settings panel rendering issues in dark mode on Mac OS Mojave and newer.
Mac: Fixed keyboard not responding in registration panel in some host applications (LUNA, Garage Band…).
Mac: Fixed demo version that could hang Logic when reloading projects using the plug-in.
Mac Audio Unit: fixed plug-in listing in some host applications (Plogue Bidule).

New in Blue Cat’s Protector 2.2:

Brand new GUI design, with improved usability and touchscreen support.
The GUI can now be zoomed from 70% to 200%.
Lock the GUI state to prevent changes when loading presets.
New lookahead function to reduce distortion when used as a loudness booster.
Mono tracks support: the plug-in now also works in mono.
Lock GUI state to prevent changes when loading presets.
Last loaded preset is now remembered in session and displayed in the presets menu.
Plug-in state can now be reverted to the last loaded preset.
Now supports retina displays on Mac (text and graphs using high resolution).
Mac: new installer.
Mac: fixed minor compatibility issues with Mac OS High Sierra and Mojave.
Changed demo limitations: up to 5 instances allowed, bypass time changed to half a second, and bypass parameter is not affected anymore.
Dropped support for Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.6 and earlier.
Dropped support for legacy RTAS and DirectX plug-ins formats.
Fully compatible with previous versions of the plug-in (except for VST3 on Mac, as explained below).

v2.x Blue Cat Protector

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Blue Cat Protector

You may download a free Demo after logging in.