Hi I'm Chris from Future Music Magazine and we're here on the Softube stand with Nicholas
who's going to show us the Console 1 hardware controller.
>>Yeah. >>So tell us about it.
>>It's an integrated hardware, software mixing system. Softube is known for the analogue
sound, we've done the analogue emulations for a long long time and what we wanted to
do with the Console 1 is to have to analogue sound and the analogue workflow. So it should
be the same workflow as working on a big large console. To achieve that we have this channel
strip with an equaliser, compressor, shape section, input section, output sections with
volume, pan, drive, solo, mute. Then on top of this you have track selectors, so instead
of grabbing a tamborine track over there and the guitars over there you can select them
with the track selectors and then you start working on the EQ or whatever you want to do.
>>So, this side of it, is it a seperate software,
is this a plug in, a channel strip plug in and then it's just integrated with that plugin?
>>It's, what you see here on the screen is,
the on screen display is a seperate app that communicates with the hardware and also communicates
with the different inserts here in, now, right now it's in Cubase but it can be produced
Logic or anything. >>So maybe take us through how you put this,
I'm a Cubase user, put this onto one of my tracks so I can start working.
>>Basically, make sure that you have the Console 1 plugin on all the different tracks, on all
your tracks and it doesn't do anything it doesn't, doesn't take up an CBU if the software
is turned off. And then the only thing the Console 1 plugin, that you can do from it
is; give it a name, give it a number, unless the door supports that, to the host. As soon
as you select a track, for instance put the bass drum on track 20, it appears in track
20 or you can put it on track 1. To set these plugins up in Cubase and then voila, they
appear down here. >>And these are the actual names of my channels
in Cubase as well, so if it's called DrumOH on my channel strip it'll pull it from there.
>>For the softwares that support that, it will be the name of your track but not..
>>Which support it right now? >>Right now I think Sonar supports it, Cubase
doesn't but Cubase will they say and I hope they will because it's a really good feature,
but otherwise you just have to type it in yourself.
>>So what else is it, it's a midi controller, in terms of volume is that the actual fader
volume or is that you input volume? >>That's, the volume is the output volume
of the plugin, but everything is done within the Console 1 plugin, so all the faders here
are set on zero, all the mixing is done pre-fader so I can do all my pan, volume, solo, mute,
within the plug in. >>So it's kind of, it's a way to bypass mixing
within your door, in a way, if you don't like the sound of the mixer in the door, we've
created our own virtual version. >>Exactly and this way you have dedicated
knobs, you can do stuff, which I've been missing, when I work with the mouse, for instance gaining
with the EQ while simultaneously lowering the output which is something you always do
when you work with the real console. So with this one you can work an entire mix without
even touching the mouse, which is very nice. >>And the actual elements within the channel
strips, are they based on any existing plugins? >>Yeah, when you buy it, it will come with
what we call the UK4k strip which consists of the equaliser and compressor and instead
of a traditional gate, we added a gate but also a sustain and a punch circuit.
>>I like that, kind of like a transient designer kind of
>>Yeah and then the normal elements, and we plan to emulate the other consoles, so you
can for instance have the 4k on your drums and then you can have some other console one
your vocals, you can have the EQ from that one or compressor from
>>So you can have like a Harrison or what? >>Yeah. It's also possible to load up different
Softube plugins if you want to have the Trident A-Range EQ as the EQ.
>>Oh so you can custom build your console as such.
>>Yeah. So it's an extremely powerful way to work with it and since you have this global
view where you can see all the tracks decide on all the tracks you can do stuff like track
grouping and you can copy tracks, so I can have a nice setting on the hand clap track
I can copy that to the other 2 hand claps, I can copy just the EQ, the compressor. Everything
is done from this control surface, works with any host.
>>And there a reason why it's so massive? >>It's scalable, I mean you could have it
that big if you wanted, but it looks better if it's massive. The thing is it's an on screen
display, you can set it on auto mode, so that it disappears when you don't do anything with
it but as soon as you touch a knob, it appears on top of everything, so you can have your
edit window and protools. >>Yeah, especially in Cubase you have to move
windows around such. >>You always move a lot of windows around
in Cubase! So this one just appears on top of everything.
>>So how much is it and when can we get it? >>After summer and 800 euros I think will
be the price >>And the adult consoles that are potentially
coming are they going to be seperate purchases, so they'll be like in app purchases as such.
>>Yeah. >>Excellent, well thanks a lot.
>>Welcome.