The team at Universal Audio are very pleased to announce version 9.10.0 of their UAD software featuring the new 175B and 176 Tube Limiter Collection. As ever, UA have worked hard to bring us faithful recreations of vintage studio gear to add some of that old school vibe into our tracking and mixing workflows.
175B & 176 Tube Compressor Collection
Version 9.10.0 of the UAD software features the 175B & 176 Tube Compressor Collection, which is a detailed plug-in emulation of UA founder, Bill Putnam Sr.’s iconic, ultra-rare tube limiters.
History: The original hardware (as seen below) was introduced in the early 1960s. Universal Audio's 175B and 176 Tube Limiters were the first purpose-built studio compressors as most “studio” equipment before that had been repurposed from radio station hardware. The 175B and 176, as the name may suggest, are the predecessors of the 1176LN and are prized for their rich tube gain reduction character, fast attack, and sonic flexibility, making them enduringly popular for adding richness and detail to vocals, drums, guitars, and pretty much everything that passes through them.
UA originally made only 1,000 units and mint condition 175B and 176s easily command well over $5,000 on the vintage market today. These compressors have been heard on thousands of seminal recordings from artists like the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Van Halen to Aretha Franklin and Miles Davis. Now, UA Apollo and Arrow users can track and mix with the only authentic plug-in emulations of the original UA 175B and 176 compressors. While UAD-2 Satellite and PCi card users can load up their mix sessions with rich 175B and 176 tube (valve) compression loveliness.
Features
Painstaking emulation of the entire original circuit path and control set of Bill Putnam Sr.’s rare and iconic 175B and 176 tube compressors
UA 175B features a fixed 12:1 Ratio, while 176 features four selectable Ratios: 2:1, 4:1, 8:1 and 12:1
Exclusive plug-in features include Sidechain Link, Dry/Wet Mix parallel processing, and Headroom for user-customizable operating level
Artist presets from Jacquire King, Carl Glanville, Joe Chiccarelli, and more
In the short video below you can see and hear the new UA 175B and 176 tube compressors being used on a vocal excerpt.
The 175B and 176 Tube Compressor Collection is available now from the UA web store priced at $299 USD.