New Music Gear Monday: Proximity Audio Patchrat Documentation System

If you work with more than a few pieces of analog audio gear on a regular basis, you know how tedious the documentation can get. Trying to get the same sound back has been the bane of engineers for decades, and a variety of methods have been developed over that time period. Most of these are time consuming and clunky however, so a more modern digital approach is needed, and that’s exactly what Proximity Audio’s Patchrat iPad-based documentation system does.

Developed by Grammy and Dove-winner engineer Chris Henning and Doug Hearst, Patchrat is a cloud-based solution that allows you to manage essential project data within an all-digital mobile workspace. This includes its main functions of management of all files and recall sheets of analog gear of a song or session, and the routing and settings of the gear, but also includes some nice extras like studio inventory and access to gear manuals and product websites. All of this is backed up in the cloud so you never have to worry about losing it to a bad drive or corrupted file.

Patchrat has a gear inventory of over 325 products from more than 80 manufacturers and counting, with new gear added all the time. You also have the ability to create custom gear for your personal gear inventory. The representations of the gear looks great (as you can see below), so it’s easy to see the recall.

The program seems like a no brainer for every commercial studio in that it’s an easy way to document every tracking session down to the microphone used. It looks to be a great learning tool for students and neophyte engineers as well, since it’s a simple way to look back to see what worked and what didn’t.

Patchrat is available in three flavors. There’s a free version where the full feature set works, but it’s limited to only one song. The ability to document more songs requires a subscription fee of $34.99 per month or $299 per year. That said, for a short time there’s a 50% discount from the yearly fee and 25% discount for the month by using the discount codes ANNUAL50%OFF and MONTHLY25%OFF.

Check out more about Patchrat on its website or the video below.