Digidesign Debuts Eleven Rack
On Wednesday, September 23, 2009 Digidesign introduced Eleven Rack™, which is, according to the Digidesign website, “a revolutionary new guitar recording and effects processing solution designed to eliminate the challenges that guitarists have faced in the studio and on stage.”
Let me first clarify before you read any further that I HAVE NOT ACTUALLY TRIED THIS UNIT, but, from what I’ve seen and heard and read about it from the Digidesign website, it is really amazing.
I am a Pro Tools guy. More specifically, I am a guitar-as-a-first-instrument, Pro Tools LE using guy. I am also a real purist when it comes to producing music and tones on a guitar, so I am not easily impressed when it comes to amp simulation. However, as of late, I have really had a lot of fun playing around with the free amp simulation plug-ins that have come with ProTools: Amplitube LE, SansAmp and Eleven Free.
After watching all the promo videos and listening to the demo clips on the Digidesign website, I am blown away and impressed by this new product. Once you check out the site, I’m sure you’ll be convinced that you need one too. It really is the first of it’s kind and I think it has a tremendous amount of potential. If you are 1) a guitar player, 2) use Pro Tools and 3) have $900 burning a hole in your pocket, I would say this is a no-brainer. Get one!
A couple of things that really impressed me upon first look is 1) that you can actually use it live as an amp head – with or without cabinet simulation – and run the output through a real cabinet and 2) in one of the video demonstrations they were actually able to get feedback while playing through a real cabinet – a feature I’ve never been able to get inside my computer. There are a ton of cool features that can better be described by the website, so check it out! The only thing it’s missing is tubes!
Another thing I appreciate about this product is the innovation that went in to developing it. To me, that’s what creativity is all about – pushing the envelope.
One cool possibility I can see coming from this, provided every studio is eventually equipped with an Eleven Rack (and Pro Tools), is that a guitarist could work on tracks in his or her home studio with an Eleven Rack, get all the settings saved in a Pro Tools session, email the session over to the other studio, and then go record in another studio, getting the exact same sounds, without having to bring another piece of equipment along. Just show up with a guitar! Eleven Racks for everyone!
Imagine – maybe there will be an iPhone app where you can download the Eleven Rack settings of your favorite guitar hero – say at a gig – and, provided there is a way for your iPhone or iPod touch to interface with the Eleven Rack, then you could be playing with some new settings that were created by your favorite artist!
What is this going to mean for the competition? I just received an email that IK Multimedia is running a promotion where, if enough people take advantage, you’ll be able to buy one product and get 2 free. Are they shaking in their boots? Obviously you can get their plug-ins for a lot less than $900, so they got that goin’ for ‘em.
Before making a purchase, however, there are a few things to consider, especially considering the fact that this would be a costly investment (and that’s just for the rack unit.) Let’s take a look at the entire investment. If you don’t already own a cabinet, you’ll definitely want one for playing live – or even for recording for that matter. You can get a decent 4×12 cabinet starting around $300. Of course you’re not going to want to have your rack just laying around on the floor, so you’ll need either a rack case or a stand for the Eleven Rack – or both. I dunno, maybe tack on another $100 each for those. In addition, you’ll need to pick up a suitable MIDI floor board controller to have volume, wah and preset accessibility. Now, you gotta start lugging all this gear around to all your shows. Who you going to pay to do that for you?
In any case, go out and try one!