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A small correction with no effect on the sound.
The plugin and the standalone app were reporting the wrong version number in Windows' file properties — they showed an early development number instead of the version you actually installed. Your DAW, the installer and the uninstaller all showed the correct version throughout, so this only affected what you saw if you right-clicked the file and looked at Details.
Nothing else changed.
The factory library has been rebuilt from scratch. Version 1.0.0 shipped with 128 presets; this version ships 32.
That is a deliberate cut, not a reduction in what you get. At 128, the categories were being filled out rather than designed — there were sixteen mastering presets, four variations on "full kit", and entries for reggae dub bass and 8-bit crush. Every one of those is something you have to load, listen to and reject. Each of the 32 that replaced them had to answer one question: what does this do that another preset does not?
Seven for vocals, seven for drums, four for bass, five for busses, three for mastering, three effects and three extremes.
They are separated by what they actually do, not by how hard they squeeze. The kick preset holds its attack back so the beater passes through untouched; the snare preset does the exact opposite and catches the stick. Same compressor, same ratio, opposite result — and the manual now points you at the pair so the reason is visible.
Three things the old library never showed you:
Each one was set by running real music through it and measuring the result, then adjusting until it hits the amount of gain reduction it was designed for — not by eye, and not once, but across two separate folders of reference material: male and female vocal takes, drum loops, pads, full mixes and bass. The output level of every preset was then matched, so moving through the library is a change of character rather than a change of volume, and nothing clips when you recall it.
The presets assume your track is running at ordinary levels, around −18 dBFS RMS. If yours is much hotter or much quieter, Input is the one knob to move — everything else in the preset still holds. The manual now says so, which it did not before.
Rewritten around the new library, with a written guide to all 32 presets and five of them shown with their exact settings so you can see what a properly calibrated one looks like and build your own from the same starting point.
The pictures are fixed too. Every illustration in the old manual was drawn by hand, and they were drawings of an older version of the interface — a round output meter that has not been in the plugin since before it was released. Every figure is now an actual capture of the plugin you are running: the full panel, the display sitting idle, the display driven hard, and the display with all four ratio buttons engaged.
One thing the old manual got wrong is now stated plainly: the display responds to how hard the compressor is working, not to the Iron control. Iron is set by ear.
The standalone version was being installed without its own digital signature. The installer was signed, but the application it placed on your computer was not, so Windows showed an "unknown publisher" warning every time you launched it. Both the standalone app and the plugin are now signed, in the paid version and the demo.
Nothing about the sound changed, and no control was added, removed or renamed. A project you saved with any 1.0.0 preset reopens with exactly the same settings and sounds identical — the settings are stored in the project, not looked up by name. Any presets you saved yourself are untouched.
Black Ion 76 is a FET limiting amplifier — the classic '76 sound, built around a modelled nonlinear FET gain stage, with the controls that class of hardware never had.
The main display shows what the plugin is actually doing to your sound rather than an illustration of it: your input, the gain reduction, the output, and a live curve showing how the two relate. Drive it harder and the waveform heats up from a dull ember to white-hot. You can collapse the display to a slim strip if you'd rather use your own metering.
Every control has a tooltip, and there's a clickable signal-path overlay that explains what each stage does.
A demo is available and works fully for 7 days from the first time you load it. No account needed. Buying installs the full version straight over the trial, so anything you made during it carries over.