Description

Saturation and Dynamics Processing with Tons of Attitude

Founded in 2010 in Warsaw, Poland, Looptrotter Audio has since brought to market an arsenal of high-quality outboard gear for analog saturation and dynamics processing. Using top of the line FET transistors, vacuum tubes, and discrete class A circuitry, Looptrotter’s products endow audio with a vintage analog sound and lots of attitude. Looptrotter’s founder, Andrzej Starzyk, has been obsessively designing and building audio electronics since the age of 16, and his passion for high-quality audio shines through in his company’s designs.

Looptrotter Emperor Limiter in one take:

• Analog dynamics processor that can work as a limiter, compressor, and/or harmonics distortion generator
• Intuitive, easy to use controls
• Inspired by classic analog compressors from the 60s
• Two filter sidechain buttons with proprietary curves
• 3 speed presets
• Adds lots of analog character

Vintage Style Analog Processing

The Emperor Limiter is an analog dynamics processor which can work as a limiter, compressor, or harmonics distortion generator, depending on the settings. Inspired by the legendary limiters and compressors of the 1960s, the core of the Emperor Limiter is a FET transistor which handles gain reduction and introduces a small number of low order harmonics. Far from being transparent, the Emperor Limiter warms and brightens the audio signal, giving it a unique and powerful analog character.

Intuitive controls, endless possibilities

The control panel on the Emperor Limiter has intuitive, easy to use controls that can achieve a wide range of results. There are three speed presets available for attack/release, with “Fast” providing limiting and dense signal saturation, “Medium” for fast compression, and “Slow”, which makes the Emperor act more like a vintage analog compressor. In the sidechain section, there are 2 filter options which act on the control signal, Low Cut and High Boost, each with a button to engage them. The low cut makes the limiter more transparent by reducing pumping and distortion of low frequencies, while the high boost makes the unit act more like a vintage de-esser and can also be useful for very fast compression of bright dynamic instruments. The remainder of the controls are very straightforward; knobs for controlling the dry and wet signal outputs (for easy parallel compression), a “Drive” knob for adjusting input gain, and buttons for stereo linking and true bypass.