There are also some native plug-ins. One of them is the already known Assimilator, which allows you to “copy” the EQ of a mix or a soundfile then “apply” it to another audio file (see the Konnekt24D review). The first new thing is the ResFilter, a very nice multimode, multislope resonant filter, with Drive. Sound-wise, we have here a filter worthy of the previous TC filters, from the FX Machine and Mercury to Filtroid. It may not be obvious, but once more, TC has innovated: when you use several instances of ResFilter, one of them can be set as Master, the others as Slaves (each of them independently), and one of the Master parameters being the remote for up to five Slave parameters! And to refine settings, the plug-in offers several Send/Receive Curves (with inversion) and a Range parameter. The plug-in doesn’t offer a MIDI Learn mode, however I’ve been able to use Logic’s Learn function, and control two parameters via the remote.

Another plug is the Integrator, which allows you to route external racks and effects inside the software host. You begin by selecting the output pair in the pull-down menu which is connected to the external processor. What are the advantages over Logic’s own I/O plug-in? With Integrator, you can at first check if the connection is OK, then calculate the global latency, so you can manually move the affected audio or MIDI regions. And if your host has plug-in delay compensation, it will “read” the correct latency then automatically compensates for it. Hats off to TC...

Now let’s have a look at TCNear. There are several pages, accessible by key shortcuts. “About” lets you change the interface’s name, update the firmware and reset to factory default settings. “Remote” offers dedicated settings for the remote. “Tuner” displays a large tuner (very handy when on stage) with choices between various scales, modes and instruments (6, 7 strings guitars, etc.), strobe mode, a reference tone and eight different pitches (from 438 to 445Hz).

The Fabrik C and R Studio tabs open the edit pages of the respective plug-ins. The Mixer page handles all the I/O, effect, Aux and direct monitoring (zero latency) settings, for 30 channels (24 inputs plus effects). The SK48 uses a 56 bit mixer with 48 bit summing busses. Each input can be used independently or linked to provide a pair, you can toggle between +4 and -10 dB input sensitivity and there’s a nice AutoShrink function: an input becomes visible as soon as something is plugged into it, jack or XLR (with automatic detection on the Combos). The Send can be Pre or Post fader, the Direct Monitoring can be deactivated, you can put one of the two Fabrik Cs on each input, it’s absolutely clear and functional, you even have three Total Recall memories in fast access and saving/loading of user presets, bravo.

However the Setup page is even more interesting.