
There are plenty of studio hardware legends emulated here. There's everything you could need when recording, mixing or mastering, with multiple iterations for any creative task, be it EQ-ing, compressing, sweetening, distorting, amp-ing, filtering, modulating, reverberating, saturating, or any other kind of sonic mangle you care to pass your audio through. With MixBox, IK has pulled together 70 separate mixing processors and creative effects derived from its existing award-winning T-RackS, AmpliTube and SampleTank products into a single product environment, as well as adding a few new algorithms, notably in the reverb section. Inevitably, what is popular in hardware circles soon filters through to the software domain. Other plug-in companies have taken similar inspiration from the 500 series concept for their own twist on the matter, such as PSP Audioware's InfiniStrip, Waves' StudioRack or Apogee's FX Rack. Now, IK has brought its decades of analysing, modelling and hardware-emulation skills to bear on the 500 rack concept, replicating the experience with this all-in-one effects behemoth, MixBox.

However, you can still find yourself frustrated, bogged down with juggling multiple individual plug-ins and all the attendant inserting, comparing, routing and bussing hassles this approach can throw up. No matter how many plug-ins you own, your burden doesn't get any heavier. Naturally, if you're working entirely 'in the box', all the hardware you need is your laptop and an audio interface. The 'portable power' modus operandi of a 500 series rack has enabled musicians and producers to easily ferry their favourite hardware hither and, when necessary, thither, instead of relying on whatever equipment a fellow collaborator or recording studio might already have installed.

The 500 series 'lunchbox' hardware has proved very popular over the last decade, with the diminutive proportions of each module making a full 500 rack much more portable, but in no way less powerful, than a traditional 19"-wide multi-unit FX rack.

MixBox is IK's virtual 500 series-style FX rack.
