New Music Gear Monday: Freqport FreqInOut F01 Outboard Gear Interface

I’m sure there was a time or two when you thought, “I’d really love to use this lovely piece of outboard gear on my mix, but it’s such a pain to connect.” Depending on your computer interface, connecting analog outboard gear might be a tangle of connectors and adapters, or maybe not even possible. That’s what makes the new Freqport FreqInOut F01 interface so cool.

The FreqInOut is designed for one thing only, and that’s to get up to 4 pieces of analog outboard gear not only connected to your computer, but easily into your DAW as well.

What’s even better is that the outboard piece comes up as an insert plugin on your DAW. Yes, you still have to set it up manually (it’s analog, after all), but you don’t have to worry about assigning separate outputs and inputs or any unusual routing that normally goes along with an operation like this.

Plus, you don’t have to worry about latency, and you can even capture your hardware settings by scanning a QR Code to create a custom skin inside the plugin.

Simplicity

The box is dead simple. FreqInOut connects to the computer via a USB-C port. There are four ¼ inch input jacks, and four ¼ inch output jacks for connecting your outboard gear. The ADC and DACs are 32bit and have a sampling rate of up 192kHz that can handle levels up to +18dBu, so signal degradation shouldn’t be a concern.

This is one of those pieces where you think, “Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?” If it catches on, it would probably be a boon to analog gear manufacturers as creators will consider more analog gear to use during other phases of production besides recording.

The FreqInOut F01 interface retails for $599 and will work with both Macs and PCs on most of the popular workstations and plugin formats. You can find out more here.

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