Whether you’re hanging up your surfboard for Autumn or just about to dust it down for the start of the summer, the list of things for studio-dwellers grew in August with new gear and software offerings abound… Here are our favourites.

1 - Avid Pro Tools Sketch

Although DAWs’ functions and MO’s continue to converge, the userbase itself can still be divided into distinct camps of recording engineers, producing beatmakers, recording musicians, and post production mixers to name a few. With developers always keen to widen the net to grab new customers, the hope is that the perception of different DAWs for different jobs will continue to fade. While some might still think of Pro Tools as the ‘engineers’ DAW’, the list of features historically missing for composers and musicians has been shrinking rapidly.

Taking on the non-linear clip-based workflows of other platforms such as Live and Bitwig, the technology preview of the soon to be released Sketch is Pro Tools’ alternative to the classic DAW linear timeline. This sees a matrix of up to 16 track ‘columns’ of audio or MIDI, each with access to a virtually unlimited number of horizontal Scenes. Once the composer is happy with their scenes, they can be dropped into the Arrangement bar to commit to a sequence. Sketch can run in sync with conventional Pro Tools playback or produce standalone Wavs as the output. Julian recently identified Sketch as the biggest addition in years to the way composers can create in Pro Tools. The best way to understand its potential is to see it in action… Watch below as he takes Sketch for a spin…

2 - Focusrite Scarlett 4th Gen Interfaces

It’s no exaggeration to suggest that Focusrite’s little red boxes have been at the forefront of the home studio revolution, with the number of total users now in the millions according to Focusrite. Taking their studio heritage and channelling it into small chocolate-box sized packages has certainly made it possible for anyone to make studio-quality recordings at home, with a range of Scarlett interfaces that are all more than up to the job, and painted (you guessed it) red.

While at first glance, the recently “remastered” fourth generation of Scarlett interfaces appear largely the same as their predecessors, there is a raft of new features and technical improvements that has just made the world’s favourite better than before. Affordable interfaces used to struggle with ‘deaf’ dynamic mics; Scarlett 4th Gen’s juicy mic amps have 69dB of gain on tap to deal with that, and while you’re setting levels, you can step off the gas there as well thanks to Auto Gain and Clip Safe which take care of levels for you. With improvements to the audio performance and AIR mode, as well as top flight conversion, Scarlett 4th Gen packs a punch to be reckoned with.

3 - UJAM UFX Reverb

Although reverb can be the most ethereal and involving effect in the engineer’s toolkit, its availability makes it the closest thing we have to a ‘standard’ effect in the studio. Although the reverbs engineers have at their fingertips are anything but run-of-the-mill under the hood, their success has made them easy to take for granted. Any ‘verb that grabs you by the ears is going to stand out, and this month UJAM delivered it.

UFX Reverb is the company’s half-insert, half parallel effect take on creative reverb which has been developed to sound great and be fun to use. We thought it scored pretty well on those fronts when we took it for a spin in August.

It can be used parallel in the traditional way, but some of its Filter and Finisher effects are good enough to be used 100% for various transducer and assorted wobbulations that you won’t hear anywhere else. Although primarily an algorithmic reverb, its extra effects can deliver pro-sounding ear candy for any engineer willing to use multiple instances.

4 - Allen & Heath CQ Series Mixers

Mixers. Many engineers love the idea of having the practicalities that proper mixers can bring to the studio, such as hands-on control of inputs, cue mixes, and monitoring, not to mention the all-important knob-twiddle factor that lets clients know they’re in a studio. With the large battleship console being either just a memory or an aspiration for most, up until very recently the serious small mixer alternatives with studio potential were few and far between.

Allen & Heath have a long heritage in live sound consoles, now boasting a range of road-ready digital boards that can be carried without the aid of three crew and a doctor’s note for backache. The new CQ Series is the latest miniature marvel that comes in three different frame sizes, driven by touchscreen or a handful of buttons and encoders for focussed channels. While the CQ Series wears its live sound intentions on its sleeve, studios now potentially have a tactile centrepiece for the studio thanks to its multichannel USB interface, and its faster-than-air latency for cue mixes.

5 - Sonnox Voca

With all the din around AI, engineers could be forgiven for thinking that the tech is poised to take over their livelihoods and their home, before taking its spot in their favourite recliner to decide what goes on the TV. Despite this, for the time being there can only be one decision maker at the end of the mix and that person or thing is human. With this, the future for tools that concentrate on sound and leave the decision making to people seems assured for now. Sonnox certainly seem to think so with the release of their Voca audio plugin.

This one-window vocal toolbox fundamentally provides levelling and ‘a sound’ for the vocal. Gone are gimmicks that claim AI supremacy, or the cursory reverbs, delays, and froth doomed to languish in Bypass. This thing gives those who know what they want the tools to get there and nothing else. Its leveller into compression and saturation with circular X-Y style controls also hit a Soften stage to end the esses. We’re looking forward to getting our hands on it to take a detailed look at Voca for ourselves…

How About You?

These were just some of our favourite things to keep us in the studio in August; what were yours? Let us know in the comments…