Focusrite

With a vintage, red aluminum-like user interface and realistic-looking VU meters, the Focusrite Scarlett plugin suite is like a glamorous, red-carpet addition for DAWs.  

Perhaps you're not satisfied with the latest virtual drum instruments out there so you still resort to recording acoustic drums. The trouble with them is that they require a lot of mics. An instant upgrade option to accommodate that is the Focusrite OctoPre MkII.  

Instant coffee, instant noodles, etc. have always been viewed as inferior versions of the real stuff like brewed coffee and a meticulously prepared bowl of Vietnamese beef noodle soup. Could the same be true with regard to pro audio? Focusrite Saffire 6 USB begs to differ.  

The Saffire PRO 24 is impressive enough, right? Getting it featured last month was enough to make most readers get their jaws dropping and their mouths drooling. You better be prepared to pick up your jaw off the floor as Focusrite adds something new to this amazing interface.  

Ben Davis from Focusrite is a little giggly with excitement over the new Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56. Can you blame him? The thing has two channels of Liquid Pre technology right on the front, and revised software that's so simple even a video editor could use it. Maybe.  

If you're a Pro Tools user or just a fan of that mid-80s big-budget sound. . . and you love the pristine clean of the Focusrite ISA preamp design, this is the opportunity you're looking for. Focusrite is now giving away copies of Forte Suite for free. Find out how.  

The compact Focusrite Saffire PRO 24 may look fairly unassuming, but this petite firewire interface packs an impressive punch. A variety of analog and digital inputs provides up to 16 simultaneous channels of recording and 8 outs, and the Saffire PRO 24 ships with powerful mixing software and a hefty plugin bundle. Don't say the British never did nothin' for ya (that would be bastardizing the English language).  

Fluid and dynamic, the Focusrite Liquid Mix has offered impressive solutions for those who wanted classic and vintage sounding mixes, without having to lug loads of rack gear around. Liquid Mix will take a step further in line with the classics and towards Abbey Road with 21 new Compression and EQ Emulations at no cost for Liquid Mix users.  

Spend 11:11 with Owen O'Malley and learn about the Focusrite VoiceMaster Pro vocal processor. There's a lot to take in, so if you'd rather take some psychoactives and see if this video matches up with Tool's 11:11 "Rosetta Stoned," feel free -- but allow me to make it easy for you. It doesn't.  

Part of Focusrite's "affordable" Platinum Series (air quotes provided by Owen O'Malley), the VoiceMaster Pro has so many ins, outs and controls that you could spend the better part of a weekend just getting set up with the thing. Owen restrains himself for the most part in this brief but thorough Part One of a series of two.  

Back at Horse-Drawn Productions in Chicago, our man Jackson gets real with us about the Focusrite ISA115 HD preamp. The 115 certainly gets some play at Horse-Drawn, but only some. Find out why.  

If two collections officially qualifies as a collection of collections, then Focusrite is officially collecting plugin suites with the release of Guitar FX Suite. With a little (or seemingly quite a bit of) help from Overloud, it won't be long before Focusrite is releasing collections of their best collections.  

Featuring EQ, Compression, Gating and Reverb, Focusrite's first plugin bundle, Plug-in Suite, is a straightforward set of plugins that will benefit your tracking and mixing process. At bundle pricing, home studio engineers and parents with kids named things like "Skylar" or "Dakota" should take note.  

The reason I switched from gold to platinum is because I like to flaunt my incredible wealth, but paradoxically, Focusrite's Platinum Series is their attempt to bring their high-bandwidth mic pres and compression to an affordable price point for product studios. Get a %#@^*!& platinum grill, man.  

The eight Focusrite mic pre's on the Saffire PRO 40 are only the beginning with this understated beast. 20 channels of I/O, including ADAT and S/PDIF, paired with a remarkably flexible, software controlled routing topology make for one powerful piece of British audio artillery.  

While the flagship Focusrite Red Range may be priced out of the reach of most of the proletariat -- about $4,600 for the Red 3 Dual Channel Compressor, for example -- the line has been used in one way or another on countless popular tracks by artists like Madonna, Jay-Z and Duran Duran, to name but a few. That makes it populist, right?  

We get the breakdown on some of the most delicious features in Focusrite Liquid Mix HD. Among them are the build your own burger style EQ with a side chain of expanded controls on classic emulations and a medium ability to to track in Pro Tools through Liquid Mix HD. If that made little sense, it's because I'm really just tossing around buzzwords here.  

Feast your eyes on the Focusrite Forte Suite and gather round for the tale of how Focusrite fit a million dollar console from the 1980s into a box, small enough to be held with relative ease by one man.  

Focusrite focuses right on Digidesign Pro Tools, first with Liquid Mix HD and now with Forte Suite. This Pro Tools plugin brings back the classic sound of the Forte analog console . . . only it's digital now, and it doesn't cost $1.5 million dollars. That would be foolish given the economic crisis.  

The Focusrite Liquid series isn't really all that modest about all the awards it's won. It even built it's own trophy case, making sure to leave space for anything lauded to the new Liquid Mix HD software for Pro Tools.  

The Focusrite Saffire PRO 40 features eight Focusrite preamps and a host of other features. These include a suite of Focusrite plug-ins.  

Lending a hi-fi sheen to his recordings that one can only describe as "Neve-ian," the Focusrite ISA428 sits at the top of Dave Chale's signal-chain food-chain. Dave plays drums for Cabin in addition to having engineered their album Govern the Good Life.  

Electronic dance producers Aquasky have been making music since the early 90s. One third of the group, Brent Newitt, chatted a bit about making music with Gearwire.  

In Episode 41 of Crosstalk, Bill almost strangles Britton for excessive use of a vocoder, Musikmesse proves once again to be the greatest show on Earth and the guys finally get to talk about custom analog synths.  

A while ago, I stepped up and took the Focusrite Liquid Mix Challenge, and to date, nobody has claimed a higher score. I've been waiting for months for the 4PRE to arrive, but since it hasn't Focusrite can make it up to me with one of their new Liquid Mix 16's instead.  

Ableton Live can do pretty much anything short of splicing, dicing, and pureeing an eggplant. When Gearwire's Bill Holland decided to integrate it into a full band, it proved challenging. In the end, however, the results proved to be both educational and rewarding.  

Crosstalk comes back from NAMM in audio format where Bill Holland, Owen O'Malley, and special guest Liz McLean Knight share their thoughts on Winter NAMM 2008.  

OK, I admit that the accompanying picture is just a rendering of what the ISA One will look like, but that thing looks like a prop from the original Stark Trek. . . strike that. . . the original Battlestar Galactica! Yeah, I went there. Regardless, it probably sounds awesome.  

Focusrite's Liquid Mix Challenge pits Focusrite's own Liquid technology against the classic hardware it attempts to emulate. Challenge your ears with this test of audio detail.  

Now that we've run through all of the hardware controls on the Focusrite Saffire PRO 26 IO, Drew Krag takes a look at the supplementary software controls. The two are linkable for absolute control, and Drew shows how that's...