And to give a little foreshadowing, they've succeeded in creating very 'musical' software but perhaps not for the reasons you might expect.

Well, SSL's Duende is certainly authentic, and it really does seem that many design decisions were made to maximize 'musicality' - like Duende itself, a difficult work to define precisely. Incidentally, in case you wondered, duende is a Spanish word that relates to the arts, and connotes emotion and authenticity. (The links give a good idea of street prices.) In this review, I'll simply refer to 'Duende' so I don't have to type 'Mini' all the time. Furthermore, a PCIe card version called Duende PCIe retails for $1,495. The single rack space Duende lists for $1,875, while Duende Mini - the subject of this Pro Review - is functionally similar to Duende, but fits in a third-rack space and retails for $995. This is part of an interesting re-alignment of the company that has seen it extend its reach into lower-end markets, without forsaking the clientele that put it on the map.

Digidesign popularized this trend with their original Sound Accelerator board for the Mac, and since then, many other solutions have come along: Creamware's SCOPE system, TC Electronics' PowerCore, Universal Audio's UAD-1 (and now UAD-2), Focusrite's Liquid Mix, and others.īut now Solid State Logic (a/k/a 'the company that makes those really great mixers you'll never be able to afford') has thrown its hat into the outboard DSP ring with Duende and Duende Mini, two FireWire-based boxes that contain significant DSP and run SSL's custom plug-ins. There are various ways to get around these problems, but one of the most popular ones is to add hardware DSP assistance to your computer, either in the form of a card that plugs into a motherboard slot, or an external box that communicates with the computer via a high-speed port.

Native processing that's done inside the computer is certainly convenient and cost-effective, but eventually, you'll run into limitations: The computer might not be powerful enough to run as many plug-ins as you want, or you may find that really high-quality plug-ins require so much CPU power you settle for ones that are 'good enough.'

Ssl duende native x-eq