Pulsar Audio Pulsar 1178

The most versatile FET Compressor 

A compressor that eats transients for breakfast, the 1178 is a rare and expensive legend of the recording studio, cleaner and more versatile than its older brother, the 1176. The 1178 has been used by great producers including Chris Lord-Alge (My Chemical Romance), Bob Clearmountain (Rolling Stones, Christina Aguilera), Yvan Bing (Phil Collins) and Nigel Godrich (Radiohead).

Pulsar's 1178 software (VST/VST3/AU/AAX) meticulously recreates the original 1178 hardware in its tonal color and compression character.

Pulsar have taken the 1178 further than the original unit, adding all the features you would expect from a modern, versatile plug-in, including a full sidechain EQ for added control, an optional saturation stage for warmth and character, and precise metering.

FET compressors take their name from an electronic component called a Field Effect Transistor (FET), which is at the heart of the gain reduction system. These compressors generally offer a much faster action than other compression technologies (vari-mu, for example), and have a rather warm and rich sound character.

FET compressors do not usually have a threshold control, as the threshold is fixed. The compression level is adjusted by playing with the input gain of the compressor.

Note that, as on the 1176, it integrates the famous "All-buttons" mode or "British" mode, which makes to possible a compression ratio close to a limiter, and most importantly, the characteristic musical distortion of this mode.

Features

• Topology Preservation Technology: guarantees a perfect emulation of the original device’s behavior.
• Mid-Side processing: built-in optional M/S encoding and decoding, enabling a signal’s mono and stereo information to be processed separately with different settings.
• Powerful sidechain EQ: high passing the sidechain possibility, 5 filter types, band solo and sidechain audition.
• Look ahead, look behind: bring forward or delay the signal path up to 10ms to help transients pop through ; Look-ahead or look-behind up to 20ms for former or up to 10ms for latter.
• External sidechain: wide range of applications (ducking, de-essing, filtering the sidechain signal with your favourite EQ, or even applying dynamic processing).

Please, note that MU require an Ilok Dongle or an Ilok Cloud (Ilok Cloud is FREE, for more details visit ilok.com)

Compatibility

 MAC OSX    WINDOWS

 Windows Requirements

• Host application compatible with:
  
  • AAX Native plugins
  • VST plugins
  • VST3 plugins

• CPU:Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 / i9 / Xeon or AMD Quad-Core minimum
• Memory: 4 GB RAM and 1 GB free disk space
• Operating System: Windows 7 with SP1 64 bit, Windows 8.1 64 bit, Windows 10 64 bit?
• GPU: OpengGL 2.0 compatible GPU
• Monitor: Resolution: minimum 1024×768, recommended 1920×1080 ; Refresh rate: 60 Hz
• AAX Native (Windows: 32/64 bit), Audio Unit (64 bits only), VST 2.4 (Windows: 32/64 bit), VST 3 (Windows: 32/64 bit) compatible host DAW.

 Mac Requirements

• Host application compatible with:
  
  • AAX Native plugins
  • Audio-Unit plugins
  • VST plugins
  • VST3 plugins

• CPU: Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 / Xeon / Apple Silicon (M1)
• Memory: 4 GB RAM and 1 GB free disk space
• Operating System: MacOS 10.8 – 10.15
• GPU: OpengGL 2.0 compatible GPU
• Monitor: Resolution: minimum 1024×768, recommended 1920×1080 ; Refresh rate: 60 Hz
• AAX Native (64 bits only), Audio Unit (64 bits only), VST 2.4 and VST 3 compatible host DAW (64-bit only supported)