Patch Bays are Passé
I thought Solid State Logic showed a great product—I’m going to buy one of these so this might be a biased report.
It’s the X-Patch, a software controlled patchbay contained within a single rack space. X-Patch is a 16 x 16 SuperAnalogue routing matrix borrowed from SSL’s Matrix console.
Once you connect the inputs and outputs of all your outboard analog gear (four rear panel 25-pin D-Subs) and the I/O paths (+4 dB and -10 dB) to and from your DAW (PC or MAC), you can boot up SSL’s Logictivity Remote Studio Browser application to set-up, configure, and store presets of processing chains comprised of up to six analog processors.
X-Patch and your DAW computer communicate by way of Ethernet and up to six X-Patch units can be controlled in parallel. An awesome device indeed! More about the X-Patch here.
Musicians Just Want To Record
Maybe not specifically a pro audio product but none-the-less a new direction for live recording is called MyMix.
From Movek, MyMix mounts on a standard mic stand and is a networked personal headphone mixer with a built-in multi-track recording system.
Up to eight MyMix units can be connected to a standard Ethernet switch with each MyMix station capable of recording audio using its two, combo mic/line XLR inputs. You could record a vocal mic and your instrument on separate tracks at each MyMix station.
If there are eight (or less) musicians/singers each with a MyMix station connected, each has a display showing who’s connected and the ability to adjust mix levels and panning of all the other station’s audio contribution.
In addition, there is mute, solo and effects send (reverb and delays) and a master four-band EQ for each channel also independent of the other players.
The kicker is that all audio is recorded on an optional SD card in each of the stations and up to 18 tracks of recording (including a stereo mix) can be held.
The audio is recorded as time-stamped 48-kHz, 24-bit .wav files that can be imported into any DAW for further work, editing and final mixing. At about $495 per MyMix station, I predict a big success for this product.