Flock Audio's Patch moves signal through a digitally controlled analog matrix with no A-D or D-A conversion anywhere in the chain. Your compressor almost certainly doesn't work that way, and it holds a setting only as long as nobody touches it.
That's fine until a revision request lands three weeks later. In the box, it's a two-minute job. With hardware in the chain, you're rebuilding a room from a phone photo and whatever you scribbled on a sheet at two in the morning. The photo never shows the ratio switch clearly, and the sheet always stops one line short of the thing you actually need.
Sit that rack beside a mixing desk that remembers its own settings, and the difference gets awkward. The console reloads. The rack just sits there.
The second approach turns the box into hardware that takes its orders from a plug-in. WesAudio built a control protocol called GCon for exactly this, and its bus compressor talks back and forth with a plug-in that mirrors the front panel. Bettermaker's mastering EQ keeps a fully analog signal path while letting a plug-in automate it. McDSP's APB-16 goes further and drops the front panel altogether, running sixteen channels of analog compression and saturation over Thunderbolt with nothing but a plug-in window to look at. Cranborne's Carnaby HE2 works the same way, pairing its harmonic EQ circuit with a plug-in that reads and writes in both directions.
That's the version that actually fixes things, because the settings ride inside the session file. Open the project, and the hardware follows.
The third route is motors. Tegeler's Schwerkraftmaschine is a vari-mu compressor whose potentiometers physically turn to match whatever the plug-in says. AMS Neve's 8801 sits somewhere in between, showing you a picture of its own front panel with the out-of-sync controls flagged, so you know which three knobs to fix by hand. It's slower than full automation, but it turns a guessing game into a short checklist.
There are bigger and smaller versions, up to a 192-point unit. The obvious catch is money, because the cost climbs steeply as the point count grows, and replacing a serious bantam bay outright gets expensive fast. It also won't route digital audio or MIDI.
When it was reviewed, the missing piece was a plug-in version, so routing would save and recall with the session automatically. The company said that was coming.
WesAudio's Titan solves a smaller version of the same headache. It's a ten-slot 500-series frame that carries recall data for every module over one USB connection, instead of a separate cable running to each box. You can wire the modules up individually if you'd rather, but ten USB cables behind a rack is its own kind of misery.
Then there's the thing plug-ins do that hardware never will. Buy two channels of processing, and you get two channels at a time. Recall doesn't change that arithmetic.
Cost stacks up the same way. A Bettermaker mastering box runs close to four thousand dollars, the APB-16 sits higher again, and a mid-size Patch lands around three. You're paying a premium for memory, not for a better-sounding circuit. On the WesAudio boxes, that layer is described as an extension bolted onto the audio circuit rather than a change to it, which is the whole point and also the whole invoice.
And you've added a software dependency to a box that used to need nothing but power. The app has to keep working on next year's operating system, the driver has to survive the next update, and the stored data has to stay readable. Passive gear never asks you to think about any of that.
That's fine until a revision request lands three weeks later. In the box, it's a two-minute job. With hardware in the chain, you're rebuilding a room from a phone photo and whatever you scribbled on a sheet at two in the morning. The photo never shows the ratio switch clearly, and the sheet always stops one line short of the thing you actually need.
Sit that rack beside a mixing desk that remembers its own settings, and the difference gets awkward. The console reloads. The rack just sits there.
Three ways a box remembers where it was
The cheapest fix is onboard memory. Elysia's channex studio stores up to 23 presets inside the unit and returns to its last settings after you cut the power. Useful, but that memory lives in the box rather than in the session, so it doesn't scale past a handful of jobs.The second approach turns the box into hardware that takes its orders from a plug-in. WesAudio built a control protocol called GCon for exactly this, and its bus compressor talks back and forth with a plug-in that mirrors the front panel. Bettermaker's mastering EQ keeps a fully analog signal path while letting a plug-in automate it. McDSP's APB-16 goes further and drops the front panel altogether, running sixteen channels of analog compression and saturation over Thunderbolt with nothing but a plug-in window to look at. Cranborne's Carnaby HE2 works the same way, pairing its harmonic EQ circuit with a plug-in that reads and writes in both directions.
That's the version that actually fixes things, because the settings ride inside the session file. Open the project, and the hardware follows.
The third route is motors. Tegeler's Schwerkraftmaschine is a vari-mu compressor whose potentiometers physically turn to match whatever the plug-in says. AMS Neve's 8801 sits somewhere in between, showing you a picture of its own front panel with the out-of-sync controls flagged, so you know which three knobs to fix by hand. It's slower than full automation, but it turns a guessing game into a short checklist.
The patchbay was the quiet half of the problem
Recalling a compressor is useless if you can't remember what was plugged into it. Flock's Patch attacks that end, giving you 32 inputs and 32 outputs in a single rack space, routed by drag-and-drop on a Mac or a PC. The signal never leaves the analog domain, and the unit will carry mic, line, and instrument level without complaint.There are bigger and smaller versions, up to a 192-point unit. The obvious catch is money, because the cost climbs steeply as the point count grows, and replacing a serious bantam bay outright gets expensive fast. It also won't route digital audio or MIDI.
When it was reviewed, the missing piece was a plug-in version, so routing would save and recall with the session automatically. The company said that was coming.
WesAudio's Titan solves a smaller version of the same headache. It's a ten-slot 500-series frame that carries recall data for every module over one USB connection, instead of a separate cable running to each box. You can wire the modules up individually if you'd rather, but ten USB cables behind a rack is its own kind of misery.
What you trade away when software drives the knobs
Fit is the first thing that bites. The ng500 connector stands 9mm taller than a standard 500-series plug, so it won't seat in a Rupert Neve Designs R6 or R10, an Aphex frame, or certain BAE and Midas racks. Worth checking before you buy.Then there's the thing plug-ins do that hardware never will. Buy two channels of processing, and you get two channels at a time. Recall doesn't change that arithmetic.
Cost stacks up the same way. A Bettermaker mastering box runs close to four thousand dollars, the APB-16 sits higher again, and a mid-size Patch lands around three. You're paying a premium for memory, not for a better-sounding circuit. On the WesAudio boxes, that layer is described as an extension bolted onto the audio circuit rather than a change to it, which is the whole point and also the whole invoice.
And you've added a software dependency to a box that used to need nothing but power. The app has to keep working on next year's operating system, the driver has to survive the next update, and the stored data has to stay readable. Passive gear never asks you to think about any of that.
