Blue Cat Audio PatchWork 2.68— A Mix Product of the Week

Usually, this column is devoted to new products, but this week, the pickings were slim. Instead, I thought I’d cover an existing software product that you may not have heard of, but that’s extremely handy: Blue Cat Audio Patchwork.

Blue Cat defines PatchWork as a “Universal Plug-ins Patchbay.” It includes plug-in and standalone versions and lets you chain multiple plug-ins in series or parallel. Another of its key attributes is the ability to host plug-ins from all the major formats. For example, you can open VST, VST3 or AU plug-ins in Pro Tools. You can also open AAX plug-ins in a VST, VST3, or AU host. Within PatchWork, you can mix and match plug-in formats.

PatchWork can handle both virtual instrument and audio effect plug-ins and includes separate versions for each. In the effects version, you can create up to eight parallel chains of eight effects, each in a single plug-in instance. The instrument version can handle up to eight virtual instruments at a time.

In both the effects and instruments versions, you can insert up to eight Pre- effects before the Parallel Chains and four Post- effects after. The Pre and Post effects are configured in series. At the very beginning of the signal chain is an Input Gain knob and, at the very end, one for Output gain.

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You can freely rearrange the plug-in order in the Pre, Post, and Parallel Chains sections. All three sections feature individual activate/bypass buttons and a button that opens each plug-in’s GUI. The Parallel Chains section also offers controls for pre- and post-gain, Phase Flip, and Solo.

The output of the Parallel Chains gets summed and sent to the Post section, and you can choose one of two Summing Modes: Average is best for effects because it helps prevent gain increases that can come from stacking the plug-ins. Sum is better for instruments because it evenly sums the outputs of the instruments in the chain.

Not only can you open any plug-in installed on your computer inside PatchWork, but it also comes with 30 built-in effects. These include delays, reverb, dynamics, EQ, modulation effects, and utilities. You can insert these in the Pre and Post section of either the Effects or Instrument version of the plug-in and the Parallel Chains section of the Effects plug-in. You can easily mix and match effects from your collection with Blue Cat’s built-in ones.

Other key features include a side-chain input for the Audio Effect version, latency compensation, multicore processing support, MIDI Mapping, audio I/O routing, a CPU usage meter, control of plug-in parameters with external MIDI controllers, and a global Mix (wet/dry) control.

If you like to get creative with stacking or chaining effects or virtual instruments, PatchWork provides a powerful and flexible solution. PatchWork sells for $99. Get more information at the Blue Cat Audio website.