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The Liquid Mix hardware is desktop-friendly.

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In the ongoing development race between plug-ins and computers, it's always the hardware that blinks first. The faster computers get, the more complex the plug-ins become and the more of them we run on our machines.

This goes on until we start to be hindered by slowdowns, crashes and so many frozen tracks that it becomes almost impossible to turn a beloved eight-bar loop into a complete song.

It's hardly surprising, then, that DSP cards such as the Universal Audio UAD-1 and TC Electronic PowerCore have become so popular. These offer additional processing power, and their plug-ins arguably sound better than native equivalents.

It's this DSP card market that Focusrite's Liquid Mix is coming into, but it's doing so with a twist. Unlike the aforementioned systems, this new Mac-only offering (PC support is on the way) doubles as a controller and a DSP box.

What's more, it 'only' offers compression and EQ, but when you consider that these are 60 convolution-based recreations of some of the finest outboard units in recording history, this is clearly more of a feature than a limitation.

Channels

Installation is a breeze - you simply install the software and plug the Liquid Mix into a spare FireWire port. To use it on a track, you just have to select it from your plug-ins folder.

Liquid Mix supports up to 32 mono channels (16 stereo channels) and enables you to use one compressor and one EQ per channel, so the maximum plug-in count is 64. It should be pointed out that this is at 44.1/48kHz - as you push the resolution up, track counts drop (you can use eight mono at 96kHz and two mono at 192kHz).

A forthcoming expansion card will increase the plug-in count at higher resolutions, though it won't increase the maximum number of addressable channels.

Just to ensure that Focusrite aren't trying to kid users with their specifications we loaded up some of the compressors and placed them over a few tracks - and the Liquid Mix really can handle as many channels as it's supposed to and you can indeed apply compression and EQ to them all.

One of the major problems with the UAD-1 and PowerCore products has always been their latency - this can make live playing of synth patches impossible if you have one of their plug-ins inserted into the same track.

Liquid Mix does have some latency (with some presets adding a little more than others), but it isn't as noticeable as on some similar devices, and you can happily play patterns and riffs over your project with it engaged.

Display

Of course, another limitation of the PowerCore and the UAD-1 - and also of SSL's Duende, in fact - is that none of them offers any knobs to play with. You can tweak their plug-ins using your favourite hardware controller, but with Liquid Mix, you have all the controls you need right out of the box.