An emulation of the legendary electro-optical tube compressor, modelled on Chris Lord-Alge’s personal vintage unit.

For over half a century this studio mainstay has graced countless vocal, bass, guitar and other instrument tracks with its warm sound, and CLA-2A emulates the original’s response and sound perfectly. Operation stays simple: choose compression or limiting, dial in gain reduction with Peak Reduction and add makeup gain with Gain – attacks are sweetened while consonants keep their clarity, and the release decays smoothly. Extras include a Mix knob for parallel compression, Trim, a sidechain filter to compress only the high frequencies, optional hiss and hum, and presets by Chris Lord-Alge for vocals, guitar, bass, drums and more.

Features

• The legendary electro-optical tube compressor
• Natural-sounding even with heavy compression
• Tube emulation adds musical harmonic saturation
• Mix control for parallel compression, Trim for quick level adjustment
• Limiter mode increases instrument sustain
• Zero latency for studio and live mixing

Technical details

• Operating systems: Windows, macOS
• Plug-in formats: VST3, Audio Unit (macOS only), AAX
• Architecture: 64 bit
• Licensing: licence key, machine-bound or USB flash drive (via Waves Central)

System requirements

• macOS 14 Sonoma, 15 Sequoia, 26 Tahoe or 27 Golden Gate (Apple silicon or Intel)
• Windows 10 64-bit (version 22H2) or Windows 11 (Intel or AMD, x64)
• 16 GB RAM
• 30 GB free disk space on the system drive

The licence is registered with the manufacturer at https://www.waves.com/downloads/central. You will receive your serial number and the download link by e-mail immediately after purchase.