Universal Audio 175B & 176 Tube Compressor Collection

The UA 175B & 176 Tube Compressor Collection gives you the rich tube gain reduction character and sonic flexibility of UA founder Bill Putnam Sr.’s groundbreaking limiters.

Get the Rich Tube Compression that Changed Recording

Often cited among the crowning achievements of audio pioneer and UA founder Bill Putnam Sr., the 175B and 176 compressors are prized for their rich tube gain reduction character and sonic flexibility.

Now you can get the same legendary sounds as the rare hardware with the only authentic plug-in emulation of the original UA 175B and 176 compressors.

Included Versions

• UAD Native – Runs on your Mac or PC without UA hardware (AAX, AU, VST3)
• Apollo Realtime & UAD-2 – Runs accelerated on Apollo interfaces and UAD‑2 hardware (AAX, AU, VST2)

Add a Legendary Limiter to your Studio

Introduced in the early 1960s and used on thousands of seminal records – the UA 175B and 176 were the first compressors purpose-built for studio recording and mixing music, giving engineers groundbreaking fast attack time and independently variable Attack and Release controls.

Experience Deep Tube Sonics

Based on a pair of UA’s 1960s golden units, the UA 175B and 176 Tube Compressor Collection gives you all the ultra-musical harmonics and colorful saturation of these original units, down to their magical feedback compression circuit – giving you softer compression at lower input levels and harder, nearly brickwall limiting at higher levels.

Get the Rich Sound of an All-Around Champ

Perfect for vocals, drums, guitars, and more, the UA 175B and 176 plug-ins give you all the character and juice of the originals, indistinguishable from the target hardware in blind listening tests.

Easily add depth to room mics or a drum bus, give your guitars definition, park a bass in a mix, and inject vocals with energy.

You can even turn off the compression and use the 175B/176 plug-ins as a “tone box,” lending rich tube textures galore.

Features

• Add vintage compression and detail to vocals, drums, guitars, and more with one of Bill Putnam Sr.’s most coveted designs
• Spice up synths with harmonically rich tube amplifier and transformer saturation
• Creatively enhance the dynamics of your most important sources with 2:1, 4:1, 8:1 and 12:1 ratio controls
• Harness plug-in-only features like Dry/Wet Mix parallel processing and Headroom for user‑customizable operating level
• Use with any audio interface, no UA hardware required