112dB has announced that Big Blue Compressor, a tube-modeling compressor, is now available in native RTAS, VST and AU formats for Windows and Mac OS X for the retail price of €149 / $149.

Big Blue Compressor is a modern compressor with vintage qualities. Although it can sound transparent whenever necessary, it was designed to give character and warmth to your sound. Some interesting features greatly expand the sonic arsenal of this plug-in. Not only more traditional goodies such as variable hard/soft knee, and dry/wet mix, but also novel additions such as stereo narrowing or widening, mid/side operation, adjustable latency, and a separate preamp section (for that extra oomph).

112dB says there's one unique feature they guarantee you won't find in any other plug-in: "the choke". This knob enables you to "choke" your sound the same way it's done in tube compressors. Without delving too much into the scientific details: analog compressors don't have the look-ahead function that is common in digital compressors, but they do have another way to smooth out transients that have become too loud. In tube compressors, this is done by saturating (choking) the sound during the attack time. And that's precisely what gives them their highly desirable sonic character. 112dB applied this principle to their choke function. In other words: instead of emulating a specific vintage tube compressor, they've tried to capture the essence of what makes tube compressors in general sound so great.

Features:

• Tube-compressor-style dynamic saturation.
• Separate preamp section for extra overdrive.
• Variable-knee limiting with proprietary tube modeling.
• Dry/wet control for parallel compression.
• Stereo imaging: stereo narrowing or widening, mid/side mode.
• Auto makeup gain, in addition to user-adjustable makeup gain.
• Adjustable look ahead from 0 to 5 ms.
• Peak/RMS compression mode.
• Sidechain monitor option.
• User-adjustable latency from 0.01 to 5 ms (6 to 440 samples @ 44.1kHz).
• Low- and high-pass filters on input and side chain with unique scaling, allowing for high-precision adjustments at critical frequencies.

Availability

Big Blue Compressor is available immediately in RTAS/AS/VST/AU format for Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), 10.5 (Leopard), 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and 10.7 (Lion).

The introductory price of €99 (Europe) / $99 (worldwide) is valid through August 15, 2012, after which the regular price becomes €149 / $149.

An unrestricted 60-day evaluation version is available from 112dB.com/ bigblue/compressor/?demo