Cobalt Clipper Neo
Version 0.9.0

Overview
Cobalt Clipper Neo is a saturation and clipping plugin for club and electronic music production.
It is designed for drums, 808s, bass, synths, mix buses, pre-master clipping, and parallel saturation.

System Requirements
- Windows 11
- VST3 / CLAP
- No macOS build is currently available.

Main Features
- Five types: Steel Clip, Cobalt Lift, Club Heat, Bass Forge, and Tape Alloy
- Input / Type / Drive / Character / Tone / Ceiling / Mix / Output
- Bias / Dynamics / Low Guard
- Oversampling: Off / 2x / 4x
- Input / Output meters, Transfer Curve, and preset browser
- Factory Bank / User Bank
- .neop preset files and .neob bank files
- Output-focused factory preset level matching
- Editor-owned Browser display to avoid stealing DAW mouse focus

Sound Design Tips
1. Choose a Type for the saturation direction.
2. Set Drive for the main amount of saturation.
3. Use Character for the mode-specific tone and behavior.
4. Lower Ceiling to push the signal harder into the clipper. This often creates more density and impact than Drive alone.
5. Do not leave Mix at 100% by habit. Try 70-95% to keep transient punch while adding saturated weight.
6. Use Output for final level matching. Auto Gain is disabled in v0.9.0.

Type Overview
- Steel Clip: clean, punchy basic clipping.
- Cobalt Lift: density, forward motion, and perceived loudness.
- Club Heat: warm asymmetric saturation with musical dirt.
- Bass Forge: for 808s and sub bass. Protects the low end while adding harmonics.
- Tape Alloy: rounded bus glue with light compression-like behavior.

Demo Build
- The demo version can be used for 30 minutes from launch, and Save is available. After 30 minutes, audio becomes silent; reload the plugin to use it again.
- Import Bank is enabled.
- Export Bank is disabled.
- The distribution ZIP includes the Windows VST3 build, CLAP build, Japanese/English readmes, and Japanese/English PDF manuals.

Files
- Japanese manual: output/pdf/Cobalt_Clipper_Neo_Manual_JA.pdf
- English manual: output/pdf/Cobalt_Clipper_Neo_Manual_EN.pdf

Known Limitations
- Full Dry/Wet latency compensation during oversampling is planned for a future update.
- Transfer Curve is a static approximation.

Third-Party Licenses
Cobalt Clipper Neo is built with the JUCE framework. This product uses JUCE under a commercial JUCE licence held by the developer. JUCE is provided AS IS without warranty. JUCE and the JUCE logo are trademarks of Raw Material Software Limited. JUCE licence information: https://juce.com/legal/juce-8-licence/ and https://juce.com/get-juce/
