New Music Gear Monday: KIT Plugins BB N54 Compressor-Limiter

When it comes to revered audio gear, just about everything that came out of the original Neve factory in the 1960s and 70s fell into that category. While most of the most popular Neve gear has been emulated in plugins, there’s one console module that’s be sorely overlooked – the Neve 2254 compressor/limiter. Finally a version of the this great unit comes to life thanks to KIT Plugins and the great ears of engineer John McBride in the BB N54, a unit based on the best of John’s units at Blackbird Studios in Nashville.

The BB N54 has the same basic layout and military grey look of the original 2254. It’s a stereo plugin (there’s a mono version as part o the package as well) that emulates the famous Neve diode-bridge compressor and original Marinair transformers, which were both so responsible for the analog version’s great sound.

The Compressor

Even though the layout of the plugin has the limiter first on the left, it’s actually after the compressor in the signal path, so that’s where we’ll start. Both the Limiter and Compressor have a three way attack time switch that goes from Off to either Fast or Slow. Then there’s a Compress Ratio switch with 5 positions from 1.5:1 to 6:1, that also as an orange V in a circle on the bottom right. That stands for Vintage mode where the internal ratios of the compressor replicate the hardware’s ratios rather than the ones chosen by the KIT team.

Below that is the Threshold control, and below that the Compress Recovery (Release) control, which has 4 selections from 400ms to Auto. Just like with the Compress Ratio control there’s an orange ⅛ in a circle that provides further flexibility to control the release times selections at 50ms, 100ms, 187.5ms, and a shortened Auto value.

The Limiter

The Limit In control is enabled when the Limiter is turned on (Slow or Fast), and is a gain stage feed to the Limiter circuitry post-compression. Limit Level is actually the Limiter’s threshold control, while the Limit Recovery switch features 4 selections that go from 100ms to Auto.

Of course there are In and Out controls with associated vintage-style vertical meters, while each side of the plugin features a gain reduction meter that’s coupled for both compression and limiting. At the bottom of the plugin there’s a Sidechain Filter control, a Mix control, and buttons for Linked or Unlinked operation, Mid-Side, Mid Solo and Side Solo.

The KIT BB N54 comes with 130 curated presets and features a 14 day free trial. It’s available for all plugin formats and comes with 2 iLok activations. Best of all, it’s now available at a 50% off introductory special of only $75, or you can access it through the company’s new NOIZ subscription service of only $9.99 per month.

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