Focusrite Saffire Octopre Dynamic

weirdly rare but actually very good bit of kit from focusrite.

8 JFET pres, loads of gain and headroom - pretty clean, but saturate surprisingly well for a pre on this kind of product. They’ll do the job on pretty much any source material but where this really shines is the built in compressors.

these things sound great and for a one knob compressor they are super versatile. The ”more” button essentially give you two ranges of compression.

the manual describes them as soft-knee VCAs but to my ears they also have a sort of opto characteristic when you tickle something with them. low great for vocals and bass, then in the sort of mid range you get that classic dbx/ssl smack on drums and then beyond that you can really smash something for an all buttons in feel by diming it.

loads of connections options and really great converters mean though it’s starting to borderline on vintage it’s never really become outdated.

writing this description has almost talked me into keeping it but it’s time to move on to pastures new.