Circuit-modelled · Copenhagen
A broadcast compressor-limiter pair, a cutting-room mastering equaliser, and the two together in one rack with a peak programme meter. Modelled stage by stage from the schematics and finished by ear. VST3, AU and standalone, native on Apple Silicon.
FRED LEGEND
Regular price $79 each from 1 January 2027. Until then the launch price is half, and the Black Friday and Christmas offer takes another $20 off. Buy once, own it, every update included.
The rack
One purchase, three installers. The rack runs the 79 and the 95 in series with a peak programme meter and one master output. You also get LEGEND 79 and LEGEND 95 as separate plugins for the sessions that only need one.
Method
One designer in Copenhagen, a measurement suite for every product, and four rules that decide what ships.
A LEGEND model begins with the service documentation and reproduces the circuit stage by stage: nonlinear gain elements, reactive networks, transformer saturation, detector time constants. It is complete when its measured transfer functions match the published figures. Listening refines that process, never replaces it.
Any control at its neutral position is bit-identical to bypass and costs no CPU. Inactive stages sleep. Power a unit off and its engine stops.
Factory presets reproduce settings that were published in manuals, interviews and sessions, with the source named in the README. Every preset is loudness-matched to bypass so that comparisons happen at equal level.
Once a release is approved, its output is frozen as a bit-exact reference. Every later build, including CPU optimisations, must reproduce it sample for sample before it ships. Every control on the panel does something; nothing is decorative.
Questions
The regular price from 1 January 2027 is $79 per plugin and $119 for the rack. Until then the launch price is half of that, and the Black Friday and Christmas offer takes a further $20 off the plugins and $30 off the rack. What you pay now is a full perpetual licence with every update included; nothing expires and nothing is billed again.
Three installers: LEGEND RACK 79 95, LEGEND 79 and LEGEND 95. The rack is the two units in series with a peak programme meter and a master output; the separate plugins are for the sessions that only need one of them. The engines are byte-identical across the three.
VST3 and AU, plus a standalone application. macOS 12 or later on Apple Silicon (M1 and newer). Sample rates from 44.1 to 192 kHz. Installers, plugins and apps are signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple. No Intel or Windows version at present.
Not yet. Instead there is a 30-day refund: buy it, use it on real work, and if it is not for you, write to us within 30 days and we refund you in full.
No iLok, no dongle and no account. Your order page gives you a licence file; keep it with your receipt. The plugins currently run without activation. A later update adds a one-time activation for up to three of your own computers, offline afterwards, using the same file.
No. Shiitake Audio is not affiliated with any hardware manufacturer. The plugins are built from published service manuals and schematics, our own measurements and our own choices where the documentation stops, and no manufacturer names or logos appear on the panels.
LEGEND 79 and LEGEND 95 oversample their output stages and report a fixed latency of 72 samples to the host; the rack reports 144. All three idle at a fraction of a core, and a unit that is powered off costs nothing.
Within 30 days, for any reason, in full. Write to hello@shiitakeaudio.com with your order number.
