Your outboard gear shows up as a plug-in inside your DAW
Even if you’re not a Eurorack GUY, you’re familiar with patchbays. Well, freqport has updated that concept for today’s world of DAW production, turning the routing connections for outboard equipment into a plug-in.
Their FreqInOut FO1 is a very clever combination of a hardware box and software. The box simply plugs into a USB-C port on your computer, and it has four line ins and outs (that’s four mono, two stereo, etc.). It’s not a standard 1/2U rack unit, but it’s small – roughly 8.66″x 4.25″ x 1.75″ width/depth/height. Interestingly, it has a tiny OLED screen on the back that just displays the serial number, etc.
You can use an optional 12V power supply, but we used the USB bus from a powered hub and it just worked (the unit comes without the supply). This hub has individual switches for its ports, which is useful if you need to power-cycle devices for whatever reason.
The FO1’s four servo balanced 1/4″ TRS line I/Os – which are perfectly happy with +4 and -10, balanced or unbalanced equipment – are in addition to the ones in your audio interface. While FreqInOut isn’t installed the same way an audio interface is, in macOS it does still appear in the list as an available one – however its ins and outs aren’t like regular ones in your DAW; you access them through the plug-in.
You insert the FreqInOut plug-in in your DAW’s channel strip (or aux), set up the routing order if you want to chain outboard devices rather than using them as inserts, and the configuration is saved with your project.
If you want, you can put in a picture of the device with its settings for each project. For some very cool runaway professionalism, the plug-in even generates a QR code that takes you to the photo in an iPhone for uploading.
Device are accessed in the device’s Analog Hub software, which lives permanently in your computer’s menu bar. This software can control multiple units for more I/Os, but we worked with a single one.
Most importantly, FreqInOut’s audio quality is unimpeachable. That’s the sine qua non – this review would be finished right here if it didn’t sound good.
Using it
While the FO1 certainly has live performance applications, it’s probably designed more as a production tool. Its plug-in does handle delay compensation in the DAW automatically, but the laws of physics always apply: tracks that start in the computer (such as audio tracks and softsynths) and then get routed through outboard hardware will flam. That’s with regular audio interfaces too, because the audio has to make a round trip out and back into the computer.
The FreqInOut does have an analog matrix, though, so a device chain connected to the FO1 will have less latency than if you went in and out of the computer once for each hardware unit. And if the outboard device is a reverb unit, any latency is unlikely to matter (it just becomes predelay). But something like an effects pedal on a synth probably wants to be connected before the computer if you’re playing live.
It’s when you want to, oh, say, run softsynths through a magnificent Millennia Media STT-1 channel strip with its transformer and/or exotic Telefunken tube circuits switched in for a color story when you’re mixing that this device makes life a whole lot easier.
And the good news is that there’s nothing to report – the FreqInOut works as it should.
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The next test can’t really be called a test, since we’ve established that the FO1 works: reamping a synth – running it through an amp, then recording it back in through a mic. That’s another color, more noticeable than the tube/transformer preamp because it includes some ambience.
The FreqInOut will tell you if it doesn’t sense an input or output signal, i.e. if the outboard device you have connected is turned off. In this particular routing setup it had to sense the output going to the amp and the input from the Millennia mic preamp. No problem, and being able to switch between just the preamp and the whole setup without having to repatch is great.
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Advantages
Why use the FreqInOut rather than ins and outs on your audio interface? After all, using outboard gear is hardly new – in fact that’s why Freqport saw a need for the FO1. For example, Logic Pro even has an I/O plug-in to insert on a channel strip for just this purpose.
The first answer is… well, that it depends on your having extra ins and outs available to start with. Lots of musicians with synths don’t have mixers, we just connect them to our interfaces. So if you need more I/Os to use for outboard hardware, this is a great way to expand your studio with four very nice sounding ones, with features optimized for this exact application. You’re not spending money for mic preamps you don’t need, for example.
But the main advantage to the FO1 is its raison d’etre: sheer convenience. Setting up different configurations is ridiculously easy, and it begs you to use your outboard equipment rather than having it sit in your rack looking cool.