Apogee Electronics has announced the release of a plugin emulation of the Soft Limit feature found on Apogee converters, allowing you to easily add the warmth and character of analog tape to your tracks.

The Soft Limit plugin features an adjustable threshold (down to -18 dBfs), auto makeup, drive and output controls that offers ± 18 dB of level trim, and up to 16x oversampling. The Input, Soft Limit and Output meters show you exactly how the plugin is shaping your sound, from subtle to super-charged.

Soft Limit has been an integral feature of Apogee converters since the AD-500, our first standalone A-D converter released in 1991. And now, for the very first time, this simple but highly effective analog tape emulation is available as a free audio plugin.

During development of the AD-500, we recognized that, while the new digital audio technology offered superior performance and lower distortion, the technical deficiencies of analog tape created a pleasing sound that engineers didn’t want to give up. And so Soft Limit was created, an analog circuit placed before the A-D conversion stage to gracefully round transients and add harmonic warmth.

Soft Limit has been a feature on pretty much every Apogee A-D converter since, from the AD-8000 to Symphony I/O to the latest Duet 3.

A $99 USD value, the plugin is now available to download free in VST/VST3, AU and AAX formats for Windows and Mac.

More information: Apogee Electronics