Access Analog Review: The Joy and Frustration of Remote Analogue Hardware

I’ve been using Access Analog for about six months now.

If you haven’t come across it before, Access Analog lets you send audio out of your DAW, through real analogue hardware over the internet and back into your project.

It works much like a hardware insert, except the equipment is somewhere else.

It’s an amazing idea.

It also has its quirks.

The Quirks

The main plugin is okay, although I do find it buggy.

Sometimes I open the window and the hardware units don’t appear, even though they’re still there processing the audio.

There can also be booking conflicts.

If somebody has booked a piece of equipment while you’re using it, that unit can disappear from your chain and remain unavailable until their booking has finished.

Not ideal when you’re halfway through a mix.

Then there’s the latency.

In my experience, the round-trip delay is usually between one and three seconds, and often closer to three.

I make adjustments while monitoring the return from the hardware, then bounce the processed audio when I’m finished.

For me, that makes it unsuitable for tracking.

But once I’m working in a mixing mindset, the delay becomes less disruptive than I expected. Eventually, I stop thinking about it.

But this isn’t really about the plugin.

It’s about what the plugin gives you access to.

Hearing the Real Thing

The biggest advantage is being able to try loads of hardware in your own time, using your own sounds.

That last part is important.

You’re not listening to somebody else’s demonstration or trying to remember how something sounded in a studio.

You can put your own mix through it and hear how it works with your music.

Some of this is hardware I’ve read about for decades but never had the opportunity to try.

To finally hear a real Bricasti M7 reverb on my own mix is something else.

There’s a depth and sense of space that’s difficult to understand from descriptions. You need to hear what it does around your own sounds.

The same goes for using the real versions of processors we see recreated as plugins every day.

You can switch between hardware recreations of SSL E-Series and G-Series compressors and hear the difference for yourself.

Try a Culture Vulture.

Put a mix through an SSL Fusion.

All of it is available by selecting a different piece of hardware from the plugin.

That’s a pretty amazing thing.

The Combination I Keep Returning To

One combination I particularly enjoy is the SSL G Bus Compressor through the Antelope Galaxy 64 converter.

At the time of writing, this particular combination is free to try.

It gives the mix a sense of glue and weight, but it also changes the way everything seems to sit together.

The mix feels more settled – more like a finished record and less like a collection of separate sounds.

It’s subtle.

But it makes me smile when I hear the mix come back.

The Awkward Truth About Analogue

The awkward truth is that analogue hardware still adds a certain sauce that I haven’t been able to match completely in software.

I use plugins every day. They’re fast, convenient and often sound brilliant.

But I can still hear something when the mix comes back through the real hardware.

That doesn’t mean hardware is the secret to mastering music production. It won’t fix a poor arrangement, choose the right sounds or balance a mix for you.

This is only one small part of making music.

But it’s a part I enjoy.

Is Access Analog Worth It?

I currently subscribe to Access Analog and use its hardware on every mix.

I’m not saying everyone needs to do that.

Even using the service for a short time, just to hear what these famous pieces of equipment actually do, could be worthwhile.

You get to learn them using your own music.

You get to compare them and decide whether the stories we tell ourselves about analogue hardware match what you can actually hear.

Access Analog can be tedious.

Then the hardware comes back, and I remember why I keep using it.