A connection is made
There are two main ways of bringing analogue hardware into your DAW-based workflow and one is a bit more straightforward than the other.
If you turn to vintage preamps, such as the Neve 1073, or a hardware recording channel, such as the Manley Voxbox or Universal Audio 610, you’ll be doing so in order to use their classic topology (or, if you prefer, hardware architecture) as a front-end for your recordings. As a result, engineers will plug instruments and microphones directly into this hardware and then connect the output signals from it directly into one or more inputs of their audio interfaces. Accordingly, the recorded sound will ‘feature’ the sound of the hardware with no way to remove it at a later stage. Indeed, the idea of ‘removing’ or ‘replacing’ the sound of the technology through which recordings are made is a relatively new concept; it’s only since software allowed us to make latency-free recordings by ‘monitoring through’ plugins without printing their sound that such a thing might even be possible. So, using hardware as a front-end of the recording process commits the sound of those boxes to your recording but, of course, this isn’t in any way a disadvantage if you have access to high quality hardware.
The other way to integrate outboard hardware into your workflow is slightly more involved. Let’s suppose you want to process a signal through a hardware compressor, as we have in our ‘Distressor’ walkthrough. Again, you’ll be reliant on connections via your audio interface but this time, rather than simply setting up an input channel to receive a signal (as you would for a channel strip recording input), you’ll also need an output from your interface. This is because, to route the signal to your hardware, you’ll need to send it out of your computer, via your chosen output, into the connected hardware and then back in to your computer via an input channel. This is called a ‘send and return’ path.
Say you use outputs 1 and 2 from your audio interface to route the signal from your mix to your monitors. You won’t want to disconnect these just to make a send and return path, so instead, you can temporarily route the signal you want to process to a spare output instead. Then, connect this output to the input signal of your hardware, connect the output of that hardware back into a free input channel on your audio interface and you’re almost ready. All that remains is to set up a new audio channel, with the input matched to the physical input you’ve used on your audio interface and the signal will come back into your computer having passed through your external hardware.
Like all input signals you might want to monitor, remember that this ‘live’ audio input might be subject to latency; it’ll run in real time, just as any other input signal would be, so take the usual precautions to ensure the audio appearing at this input doesn’t run ‘late’. Decreasing buffer size, using a ‘low latency’ input monitoring mode and avoiding ‘lookahead’ plugins all help. Once you’ve tweaked your hardware settings to make the desired sound, record the input signal onto that new audio track so you don’t have to monitor it ‘live’ all the way through to the mix stage.
You can also use your hardware again on another sound. Ever wondered why DAW-based producers love even single-channel compressors? Because that same compressor could be used to process multiple sounds in the same mix, provided each one is ‘printed’ separately. Also note that if you’re working with stereo outboard processing, you’ll need two spare inputs/outputs to and from your audio interface.