Earlier this year, Blackbird Studios and KIT Plug-ins collaborated to release a software emulation of the legendary recording house's vintage Neve 8078. The resultant plug-in, the BB N105, has now been updated to Version 2, gaining a host of new features along the way.
A new Auto Gain mode automagically lowers the output fader as you increase the input gain, and vice versa, so that you can monitor the effect of any increases or decreases in saturation at a constant volume. The input gain knob now also has an optional continuous mode, rather than the stepped-only behaviour of the original.
Version 2 also introduces a numerical display, which shows you the values of input and EQ gain to the nearest 10th of a dB, and the GUI is now fully 3D, and completely resizable. It's also now possible to change the colour of the virtual fader cap, from a choice of black, silver, red, teal or blue (not a stand-out feature, perhaps, but very useful for keeping track of multiple BB N105 instances).
Finally, the amount of oversampling is now user-adjustable, between 4x and 16x, so you can set your own balance of CPU economy and processing accuracy.
The BB N105 v2 channel strip is available to buy now, for $69. We'll be bringing you a full review very soon!
