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UA 175B & 176 Tube Compressor Collection

UA 175B & 176 Tube Compressor Collection

Get the rich tube compression that changed recording.

  • 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
  • Get perfect drum and vocal sounds easily with Dry/Wet Mix parallel processing and Headroom controls

Runs natively on your macOS or Windows computer, or accelerated on Apollo audio interfaces or UAD Accelerators. View full system requirements.

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Hear It In Action

Plug-In:

Hear It In Action

Hear It In Action

Plug-In:

Hear It In Action

Plug-In:

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.

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

What They Say

The UA 175B & 176 Tube Compressor Collection will thicken and warm up harsh vocals, and just like the hardware, the plug-in versions overdrive in a very pleasing way.

Peter Mokran

Christina Aguilera, The Flaming Lips

Once you load a preset in the UA 175B & 176 Tube Compressor Collection, you're instantly rewarded with a smooth sonic richness — the signature sound of these rare hardware units.

Steve Levine

Culture Club, Beach Boys, Ziggy Marley

The 175B and 176 compressors sit in a magical place in between the LA-2A and 1176, creating something unique while revealing new layers of sonic opportunity.

Carl Glanville

U2, Billy Joel, Counting Crows

Frequently Asked Questions

No. These plug-ins run natively on your computer. No UA hardware is required.

Yes, 14-day plug-in demos are available. Find eligible plug‑ins

We provide three activations per license. We support activation on your computer or on an iLok USB key.

For every UAD plug-in that supports native and Apollo/UAD-2 versions, you get a license for both upon purchase, or the option to get it through an upgrade.

Native plug-ins are supported on macOS and Windows systems. See our Native UAD System Requirements article for full system requirements. An iLok account is required for managing your native plug-in licenses. We support iLok USB keys for portability, but one is not required.

Check our Knowledge Base for additional questions

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