STRATA

1. The idea: limiting in layers
2. Installation
3. Quick start
4. The window
5. The chain: stages and groups
6. Controls reference
7. Metering and the graph
8. Presets
9. Mouse and keyboard
10. MIDI learn
11. Trial and license
12. Specifications

1. The idea: limiting in layers

One limiter working hard sounds worse than several limiters working gently. Strata is built around that: you insert an instance wherever you like — early on the master, after your bus processing, at the very end — and every instance finds the others by itself and shows the whole chain in one window. Each stage shaves a few decibels; the sum reaches commercial loudness while each layer stays transparent.

You can put other plugins between the stages (tape, EQ, saturation: they get a consistently limited signal in, and their overshoots are caught by the next stage), reorder them freely, and drive the total gain of the chain with a single slider from any window.

It also works when your DAW puts every plugin in its own sandboxed process — the instances still find each other.

2. Installation

After installing, rescan plugins in your DAW. In Ableton Live enable VST3 folders under Options → Plug-Ins.

3. Quick start

1. Drop one instance at the end of your master chain. Raise Gain until the loudness meter reaches your target (pick the target in the bottom bar: Streaming −14 LUFS, CD −9, EBU −23…).
2. Hearing it work too hard? Add a second instance earlier in the chain. It appears automatically as another band in the same window. Share the decibels between them.
3. Click CHAIN (chain mode): the big slider now moves the chain total, spread across stages according to Spread (Even / Front / Back). Set the final Ceiling on the last stage (−1 dBTP for streaming) and, if you are rendering to 24 or 16 bit, enable Dither on the last stage only.

A single stage: gain slider, reduction graph, loudness meter and target line.

4. The window

From top to bottom:

• Top bar — the STRATA logo (click: About panel), A/B and Copy, Undo/Redo, the presets bar, MIDI learn, the group letters, and the Grid/Controls panel toggles.
• Stage strip — one chip per stage in processing order. Click focuses a stage, drag changes its gain, double-click sets it to 0 dB. The CHAIN button switches to chain mode.
• Main area — the gain slider and the moving graph: input level, output level, gain reduction from the top, and the yellow loudness line.
• Bottom bar — loudness readout (momentary / short-term / integrated), target selector, pause/reset, license state, and the resize grip (drag it; the size is remembered with the project).

Three stages seen from one window. Any stage can be edited from any window.

5. The chain: stages and groups

Order is automatic. Strata watches when the host runs each instance inside the processing cycle and infers the real chain order, with hysteresis so it never flickers. If you prefer to pin a position, set Stage manually (1–8); Auto returns it to inference.

Groups (A, B, C…) keep separate chains separate: one group = one chain. All instances start in group A; use the group letters in the top bar to, say, keep a drum-bus stack apart from the master stack. Click a letter to look at that chain; double-click (or Alt+click) to move the focused instance into it; the “+” letter opens a fresh group.

Editing across stages. Whatever window you have open, clicking a stage chip focuses that stage and every control edits that instance — including automation: the edited instance reports the gesture to its own host track, so automation lands where it belongs.

Grid shows all stages side by side (every parameter editable, like a mixer page); Controls opens the full parameter panel of the focused stage. Both states are saved with the project.

The grid: the whole chain, parameter by parameter.

6. Controls reference

7. Metering and the graph

• Graph: input and output curves, gain reduction hanging from the top, and the yellow loudness line. The input curve is drawn as driven — what the output would be without limiting — so both curves coincide while the limiter is idle, and any gap between them is exactly the reduction being applied. Muted or stopped passages are drawn as the silence they are; the loudness line drains away naturally (a 3-second window emptying) and resumes without seams.
• The solid red line is the Ceiling of the chain's last running stage — the level the chain's output actually obeys, which is why editing a middle stage's Ceiling does not move it. When the focused stage is not the last, its own Ceiling shows as a dimmer dashed red line. On a single instance both are one and the same.
• Loudness follows BS.1770-4: momentary (400 ms), short-term (3 s) and integrated with gating, switchable in the bottom bar. The target draws a reference line: CD −9, Streaming −14, EBU R128 −23, ATSC −24, or Custom (mouse-wheel over the button).
• Pause freezes the loudness numbers so you can note them — e.g. right before stopping playback; metering keeps running underneath and Resume catches up. Reset restarts the integrated measurement on every stage at once. The small INT number beside Reset is the integrated loudness — the gated average since the last Reset, kept in view whatever the big readout shows. Reset, play the song top to bottom, and INT is what a streaming platform would measure.
• To −14 LUFS (in the Controls panel header, label follows your target): one click moves the whole chain's gain so the loudness readout meets the target, shared out by the Spread setting — only a chain-aware limiter can do this. Limiting is nonlinear, so click again to refine; undo takes it back.
• Peak meters show input/output peak and true-peak per channel.
• Delta / Unity / Bypass live under the loudness buttons and act on the focused stage: listen to what limiting removes, monitor at input loudness, or bypass the stage cleanly (see the controls reference). None of them is stored in presets or A/B — they change how you listen, not the sound you are shaping.

8. Presets

Stage presets set up the focused stage (in chain mode, all of them); chain presets configure every position at once — e.g. Master: streaming (−1 dBTP, 24 bit) and Master: CD (−0.3 dB, 16 bit), which place dither on the last stage only, where it belongs. Factory presets also set style, dither and noise shaping.

Your own presets: Ctrl+S saves the focused stage, Ctrl+Shift+S saves the whole chain; a name box opens over the presets bar (Enter confirms, Esc cancels). User presets live in the AuraDev/Strata data folder as plain text — easy to back up or share.

9. Mouse and keyboard

10. MIDI learn

Click MIDI, then click the control you want to map, then move a knob on your controller — done. Click a mapped control (after pressing MIDI) to unmap it. Mappings work per instance and are picked up from the instance's MIDI input.

11. Trial and license

Strata is a 30-day full demo: everything works, nothing is silenced. After 30 days it keeps working but fades briefly to silence every 45 seconds (never noise, never a hard cut), and the bottom bar shows Demo over.

When you buy, you receive license.key by email. To activate, either:

• open any Strata window and press Ctrl+V with the license text in the clipboard, or
• copy license.key into the data folder (%APPDATA%\AuraDev\Strata on Windows, ~/.config/AuraDev/Strata on macOS and Linux) and click the license pill in the bottom bar.

The license is offline — no server, no calls home, no iLok. It is a signed text file with your name in it, valid on all your machines. Keep the email.

12. Specifications

The About panel: version, license state and credits.