Using outboard gear beyond audio interfaces

Report · Nov 21, 2018

What is the best way to use hardware / outboard gear with Audition?

Scenario: I have a UAD-2 Satellite and Focusrite Octopre feeding into a UA Apollo 8 (master interface & clock source) feeding into a Mac (Mojave 10.14.1). If I wanted to connect, say, an analog compressor or EQ, what's the best way to set that up in Audition?

Logic Pro has an I/O plug-in that allows for outboard gear in the scenario above to be applied like a digital plug-in: Logic Pro X - I/O Plug-in - Using External Hardware for Audio Processing and Mixing - YouTube

Does Audition have a similar tool?

Report · Nov 22, 2018

ecokeefe wrote

Does Audition have a similar tool?

No it doesn't, but you can still do this - it's just a little more awkward to set up. Any track can be outputted to anywhere you want, so if you select a spare output on your Apollo 8 to send it to, you can get it out like that. It's quite flexible, because you have some alternatives; you can send the signal via a bus, which gives you pre and post-fade options, as well as being able to send multiple sources to the same outboard effect - the bus has the same routing choices. But, you have to return it to a separate input and treat the return as a fresh source; there's no equivalent of a break-jack like you'd get on a hardware mixer, I'm afraid.

Report · Nov 26, 2018

Thanks for the response, Steve. I was afraid that something like that would be the answer.

Using a bus: Does the 'Rack Input' envelope just route all interface channels through that bus? What would a sample setup look like if I wanted to apply hardware effects to pre-recorded tracks using a bus?

Report · Nov 27, 2018

ecokeefe wrote
Does the 'Rack Input' envelope just route all interface channels through that bus?

You can either route a track to a bus, and then the bus to the outside world - in which case any other track routed to the same bus gets whatever treatment you put on it - or treat a track individually by outputting it direct to the outside world, so nothing else added to it. The default option is to route it to the Master output. What you can't do with this setup is parallel processing - but in practice this isn't really a limitation. The best thing to do is just try it and see if it suits you...