Blue Cat's Protector is a 0 dB stereo brickwall limiter with 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 a 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 multiband limiting and more, check out Blue Cat's MB-5 Dynamix
Main Features:
- 0 dB brickwall peak limiter and waveshaper.
- Optional lookahead.
- 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.
- Side chaining capability: a unique way to perform side chain compression and much more.
- No latency (except with lookahead).
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.
Typical applications: master output protection, master buss limiting, loudness maximizing, peak overshoot monitoring, distortion, clipping.
User Comments & Reviews
After trying Protector, I dare say this is one of the most transparent limiters I've tried to date! This limiter is a perfect addition to the Blue Cat Audio lineup - great work!
-I tried out the demo and after just a few minutes I went back and bought it!
The Blue Cat Audio stuff is always quality, and the prices are more than reasonable - especially with the discount for being a previous customer!
-Bought it. Very nice! Does the job perfectly! It's very transparent, even at lower threshold settings. And the lovely level meter is the big bonus! Great plug! I used it to raise the RMS volume of a couple of my field recordings in OS X recently.
-To add your own comment about this product, please contact us.
Demo Limitations:
- One single instance of the plug-in per session.
- The effect is bypassed for 4 seconds every 45 seconds.
System Requirements
MacOS
- An Intel or Apple Silicon processor.
- Mac OS 10.9 or newer.
- Any VST / Audio Unit / AAX compatible application (64-bit) .
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).
For more information about supported platforms, see our Knowledge Base.
Versions History 
V2.32 (2024/09/09) |
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Used on the master bus, it catches loud incidental peaks and transparently softens them, preventing nasty digital clipping without the need to turn the volume of your entire project down.[...] But Protector has many other tricks up its sleeve [...]. As a mix effect, Protector has just as many creative uses as it does purely practical ones [...], offering anything from brickwall-style peak limiting to violent waveshaping when used with very fast times. [...]
The Stereo Link control facilitates both linked and unlinked operation, as well as any point in between.[...] The plug-in doesn't introduce latency, and requires an insignificant amount of processor power, so stacking multiple instances is no problem.
All of which means that it's a thumbs up from us.
"Verdict: More than a mere limiter, Protector has quite a range of applications. What's more, it sounds great and is very keenly-priced." - 9/10 rating and performance and value awards granted by Computer Music Magazine (CM), October 2008
- www.computermusic.co.uk - [read review on musicradar]