MixBox also offers a Dry/Wet slider on every single module, so you can adjust the level of signal cascading through your FX chain, helping you easily manage gain staging. Click, scroll, open, close, click, open, scroll, ad infinitum. With MixBox (as with similar rack concept software), everything can be housed in one convenient place. EQ in one, compression in another, the reverb on a send to a bus which is stuck at the far end of your virtual mixing desk. If you need to tweak a few parameters, everything is in MixBox instead of being scattered across multiple plug-in windows - e.g. The primary advantage of this 500-series concept is that it becomes the control centre for all of your plug-in work. During our real-world tests, installed on a 2015 Apple MacBook Pro with 8Gb RAM, MixBox didn't notably trouble our host computer's CPUs. IK has also included 600 presets across all 70 modules, which make great starting points for your own exploration. No more routing chores, every time you want to play or record. With the ability to save multi-FX chains, you can create favourite channel strips for specific tasks, instruments, vocalists, situations etc for easy recall at any time. Naturally, MixBox is very much at home used in a digital audio workstation, but it can also be used as standalone - great for live performance and mixing use. You can also quickly drag and drop them around to change the order ("Hey, what if we flange the reverb, instead of reverbing the flanger?") or swap out modules to see how, for example, one compressor changes the overall tone compared to another. From these 70, you are free to pick and choose and rack them however you like, in any order you like, with up to eight modules possible in a single rack. The colours, fonts and design elements of most of the plug-ins tip the wink to those in the know, so for those occasions where IK can't call, say, a Neve a Neve, the obvious visual clues are there for the well-informed to deduce the intentions of the emulated sound.Īll 70 modules are available to you: there is (at present) no MixBox Plus or MixBox Stupendous aspirational path upwards. There are plenty of studio hardware legends emulated here. There's everything you could need when recording, mixing or mastering, with multiple iterations for any creative task, be it EQ-ing, compressing, sweetening, distorting, amp-ing, filtering, modulating, reverberating, saturating, or any other kind of sonic mangle you care to pass your audio through. With MixBox, IK has pulled together 70 separate mixing processors and creative effects derived from its existing award-winning T-RackS, AmpliTube and SampleTank products into a single product environment, as well as adding a few new algorithms, notably in the reverb section. Inevitably, what is popular in hardware circles soon filters through to the software domain. Other plug-in companies have taken similar inspiration from the 500 series concept for their own twist on the matter, such as PSP Audioware's InfiniStrip, Waves' StudioRack or Apogee's FX Rack. Now, IK has brought its decades of analysing, modelling and hardware-emulation skills to bear on the 500 rack concept, replicating the experience with this all-in-one effects behemoth, MixBox. However, you can still find yourself frustrated, bogged down with juggling multiple individual plug-ins and all the attendant inserting, comparing, routing and bussing hassles this approach can throw up. No matter how many plug-ins you own, your burden doesn't get any heavier. Naturally, if you're working entirely 'in the box', all the hardware you need is your laptop and an audio interface. The 'portable power' modus operandi of a 500 series rack has enabled musicians and producers to easily ferry their favourite hardware hither and, when necessary, thither, instead of relying on whatever equipment a fellow collaborator or recording studio might already have installed. The 500 series 'lunchbox' hardware has proved very popular over the last decade, with the diminutive proportions of each module making a full 500 rack much more portable, but in no way less powerful, than a traditional 19"-wide multi-unit FX rack. MixBox is IK's virtual 500 series-style FX rack.
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