What is Soft Limit™?

An essential technology developed by Apogee, Soft Limit helps prevent digital clipping in a smooth and musical way.

Soft Limit™ is a superior analog design preventing the digital clipping that causes distortion by instantaneously rounding off transient peaks before they hit the analog-to-digital converter. This technology allows several more decibels of apparent level to be recorded while subtly providing an analog-like warmth to the sound.

An Apogee technology first introduced in 1992 on Apogee’s AD-500 converter, Soft Limit can be heard on countless platinum selling records around the world. Once a technology exclusively reserved for Apogee’s most advanced audio converters, Soft Limit is now available in most current Apogee products such as Duet 2, Duet for iPad & Mac, Quartet, Element, Ensemble, Symphony I/O, Symphony I/O mkII, Symphony Desktop, and Duet 3.

With most Apogee interfaces, Soft Limit has a single setting utilizing the default -2dB threshold:

With the 8x8 and 2x6 modules of the original Symphony I/O, there are 4 available settings: -2 dB. -4 dBfs, Soft Saturate and Soft Crush. Each setting possesses its own characteristics for a wide range of versatility in the analog-to-digital conversion process.

In 2022, Apogee introduced a plugin version of Soft Limit, providing a software-based emulation of the original analog circuit. This implementation offers a unique set of behaviors, differing from the hardware version. For further details, please refer to the Soft Limit User's Guide here:

Soft Limit Plugin User's Guide