There’s a lot of brands in the pro audio space, some have been around for a long time and some are new to the game. At the Experts we were discussing brands that are impressing us right now. There’s a few on the list that may surprise you. There’s both large and small, hardware and software. We’ll explain why in each section.
Flock Audio
Flock Audio make a range of devices that allow digital control of the analogue path previously the work of a patchbay in a studio, simply called Patch.
Founded by Darren Nakonechny in 2017, the first device offered a digital patchbay app connected to a hardware device. None of the audio is ever converted and remains 100% analogue at all times, the digital part is the control of the switches.
Since the first Flock Audio units shipped there’s been a steady stream of products, and the range now has several varations to suit different technical needs and budgets. There’s an excellent app for desktop of Mac, Windows and iOS.
Flock is a small company, but when it comes to hardware innovation, it is punching above its weight. One to watch!
Acon Digital
Acon Digital is the brainchild of Stian Aagedal, based in Oslo, Norway.
In the world of audio restoration often the name on everyone’s lips is iZotope RX, however over the last couple of years Acon Digital has been showing itself to be a worthy alternative to the RX juggernaut. In blind tests on this site, Acon’s tools have been regularly winning.
Acon offers both individual audio restoration tools and also their powerful audio editor Acoustica. Given it’s powerful feature set, Acoustica’s pricing is remarkable.
With innovations such as ARA2 integration as well as a Transfer plug-in in the AAX format, Acon continue to innovate, harnessing the power of AI to drive development forward.
They also have fair pricing and a great licencing model. It’s no suprise they are starting to gain traction in a competitive space. One to watch!
Cranborne Audio
British company Cranborne Audio have made in-roads into the high-end audio world with several innovative products. It’s a tough job to make a dent in a world where often people are looking for Neve, SSL or API hardware or clones, only to plough a different furrow.
If one word can be used for Cranborne it is ‘originality.’ There’s plenty of companies making clones of classic gear, but Cranborne are making some genuinely original and interesting products. It take a lot to turn the heads of our team, but Cranborne have done it several times in their short history.
There’s the Camden series of front end pre-amps, all of which are very good and feature a ton of cool features, not found on other pre-amps. There’s also their 500 series of audio racks, again with novel features. Most recently there’s the new Carnaby 500, the world’s first harmonic EQ. We also need to mention CAST, their way of moving audio around studios, it’s worth checking out.
Not only is Cranborne Audio gear ingenious, it’s high quality and reasonably priced.
Definitely one to watch!
LiquidSonics
The story of LiquidSonics reads like a script for a TV show you may not believe. Founder Matt Hill wanted a high end hardware reverb, but being broke couldn’t afford one. So he decided to learn how to code and wrote one as a plugin, he now makes some of the best reverbs in pro audio. Really… that’s the story of how one guy, who still works from his bedroom, became one of the most respected brands in reverb in modern audio production. A private person, you won’t find him posting pictures of himself on social media, that’s not his style. Matt is smart, humble, and is motivated by doing the very best he can with his products and for his customers.
When you know this, then you understand why products like Seventh Heaven and Cinematic Rooms have become industry standard reverbs, found in the mix templates of everyone from bedroom producers to the top Hollywood stages, and iconic studios like Abbey Road and Capitol.
Matt is a perfectionist, relentless in his persuit of doing things right. It’s no wonder that in a short time LiquidSonics has not one, two, or even three Atmos reverbs, but five! He never sees a product as completely finished and surprises his customers with free feature updates unexpectedly.
Again, like many small developers, his pricing is fair and given his commitment to ongoing support of the products, are well worth the price of entry. We suspect, even though LiquidSonics seems to be on every machine in pro audio, Matt isn’t done yet. Well worth watching.
HUSH
Unlike many AI noise reduction applications, Hush is machine based. The brainchild of developer Ian Sampson, HUSH is a one-off purchase, machine based, noise reduction application.
It’s proved to be very capable in some recent tests, holding its own against some offerings from the bigger players in the space.
As with many small developers Ian is keen to use the feedback to improve the products, already working on better algorithms and to make it more useful for those working in professional studios he is now working on an AAX version for Pro Tools users.
Given the contraints in larger studios working on commercially sensitive content, the need for high quality noise cleaners that are machine based is imperative. This give HUSH the edge over cloud based applications.
Watch this space!
Audient
Audient were, for a long time, known for making high end mixing consoles. However, in the last few years they have taken that heritage and used it to inform what is now a comprehensive range of audio interfaces, mic preamps and monitor controllers to meet varying budgets.
Not only has Audient put the technology and sound of their British consoles into their smaller audio interfaces and pre-amps, they’ve also made some innovative additions to them, giving them the edge in a pretty crowded market. For example their Smart Gain feature and Motion UI displays.
One would think Audient now only have time for their newer products, but they continue to be a tour-de-force in the large format console world.
Audient is still a relatively small company, but it’s turning heads in the pro audio industry, and their interfaces are turning up in more and more studios.
Watch this space.
Krotos
Founded in 2013 by Orfeas Boteas, Krotos Audio had humble beginnings, with their first product, Dehumaniser, starting life as a prototype which Orfeas developed while studying an MSc in Sound Design at the University of Edinburgh. Dehumaniser was created to make monster sound design easy and Orfeas released his creation as a free download and received much applause through online comments and requests via email from sound designers to develop the product further. Teaming up with Nick Konstantakopoulos, Krotos Ltd was formed and the commercial version of Dehumaniser was released in December 2013.
Since then the company have gone on to develop a whole range of performance based plug-ins, each of which aims to make the process of sound design quick and easy. It’s rare to find a company whose plug-ins can be described as truly innovative but Krotos Audio is one of them. Take Reformer Pro, for example. It’s essentially a sound design instrument which allows you to perform foley sounds in real-time via a microphone, MIDI controller or audio file. There’s nothing quite like it and, along with other Krotos products such as Weaponiser and Igniter, we’ve been given a very easy way to create very high quality sounds in sync with picture which would previously have taken much more time, effort and money to achieve.
We’ve spoken to Krotos’ Head of Product, Matthew Collings on the Production Expert podcast previously, and the innovation and drive to continually develop tools to aid in the sound design process in a way which is accessible and easy from a users perspective is something which is at the core of everything they do. With the addition to their product line of the all-in-one solution, Krotos Studio, they now offer products to cater for all levels of audio post from the hobbyist up to highly experienced sound designers. It’s no surprise their products have been used on some serious high profile movie and video game productions, including The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power, Halo, Doctor Strange, Cyberpunk 2077, Mad Max: Fury Road, Stranger Things, Terminator Dark Fate and Far Cry 4, to name a few. Definitely one to watch!
Blue Cat Audio
Blue Cat Audio are not new to plugins. Founded by French developer Guillaume Jeulin, Blue Cat Audio has been making plugins for over 20 years.
You’re not going to find the usual suspects of 1176 and Pultec EQs clones from Blue Cat Audio, instead Blue Cat make some truly innovative and useful plugins, all created because of Guillaume’s fanatical love of music and audio.
Plugins like PatchWork and Connector are two such plugins, but at the same time he has created a fantastic sounding guitar rig in Axiom.
Another small developer offering a great range of plugins at fair prices and again, with regular updates, purchasers really feel Guillaume is looking after them and their purchases. Blue Cat also offers a nice and useful free plugin bundle.
He’s not sitting on his hands, recently announcing Fader Hub, offering network audio mixing and streaming. Always one to watch.
Avid
Avid being on this list may surprise some. However, a little history to explain our decision. Avid went through a pretty bad patch, partly due to leadership. For several years the product leadership seemed to lack any clear strategy and would lunge from one segment to the other. They made misteps when they announced things like Avid Everywhere (remember that), as well as the poor roll out of subscriptions. There was also an attempt to create a free version of Pro Tools, Pro Tools First, due to restrictions, it wasn’t a good product.
There was period of about a year when Avid’s Facebook page was carnage, they couldn’t say or do anything right according to public opinion. It took a brave person to run their social media during that period!
At the same time other hardware and software brands were bringing out some really great products and were on the up. For example, quite a lot of Avid staff moved to Universal Audio and were working on products like Apollo. UA were the golden child and could do no wrong, conversely it seemed Avid could do nothing right. Brands like PreSonus and Apple were also putting pressure on Avid with relentless improvements to their Studio One and Logic Pro DAWs.
If anyone would have told you that Avid would come back from this, we bet you wouldn’t have put money on it. Under the leadership of Jeff Rosica, Avid has done exactly that.
With the new Hybrid Audio Engine, Avid has managed to breathe new life into their ageing HDX technology. The Hybrid workflow has put Avid back in the lead with others having to play catch up. The number one reason is the workflow, NOT the latency. Yes, Hybrid offers some of the lowest latency on the market, but that’s not the best thing about it - it’s the invisible workflow. Until one tries it they don’t get it.
Avid has also made some great hardware products, like MTRX, Carbon and Mbox Studio, and again, who would have thought Avid would have done that? Many including us thought they were done with hardware.
Then of course there is Pro Tools, written off by critics more times than one can remember. Now with a free version and pricing to accommodate most pockets, the segmentation makes sense. There’s also been a ton of features added to Pro Tools, which for some have come late, and for others are still not enough.
You might be reading this thinking we are suggesting Avid is perfect and has everything right, rarely is the world binary and we are not suggesting either of those assertions. What we are saying is that given where Avid has come from, under the leadership of Jeff Rosica, Avid has travelled from a pretty bad place and come back fighting. Now some of the companies who had Avid on the ropes are having to fight their own battles, in some cases similar ones of ageing technology and loss of vision. It’s for this reason that we think Avid are one to watch.
In Closing
We feel sure that an article like this will divide opinion, some you may agree with us on, and others not.
What brands do you think are ones to watch? Conversely, which brands do you think may have lost the plot, or don’t seem as ahead of the game as they once were?