Fourier Audio are a UK-based software developer and manufacturer who are part of the Audiotonix family (DiGiCo, Allen & Heath, Calrec, KLANG, SSL). Their products have recently caught the attention of the industry and the team here at HHB. Their transform.engine and its new compact sibling, the transform.go allows live sound professionals and live broadcasters to harness the power and flexibility of studio-based audio plugins in their workflows. For HHB, introducing many of the software products we know and love to new audiences and seeing these technologies being used in new ways, is a very exciting prospect.
The transform.engine was Fouier Audio’s first product. It is a 2U hardware server that runs a wide range of third-party VST3 and CLAP plugins bringing the power of studio audio software plug-ins to live sound and broadcast professionals. The Fourier lineup consists of the full size rack unit which has 64 channels of I/O onboard (including a redundant PSU) and the new more portable transform.go, which can handle 16 channels in a half width 2U compact form factor, perfect for flypacks and mobile productions. Being able to run so many plugins reliably and being able to integrate the system into the workflows of industry standard mixing consoles such as DiGiCo and SSL has been a game changer for the industry. We have seen projects, in the West End for example, where the transform.engine has been used to provide a particular effect from a legacy hardware unit that had been specified on the show design but was no longer available.
For the team at HHB, what stands out about this product is its versatility. We have seen so many use cases across multiple sectors of the industry. In live sound, the unit has been used by a number of high-profile artists including, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Hans Zimmer, Pearl Jam and Linkin Park. In the theatre sector, the technology has been used on productions including Hamilton, Hercules, The Lion King and Paddington.
HHB’s network of major broadcasters and system integrators have also taken advantage of the technology and we have seen its use on major events such as the Olympics, Glastonbury, The Eurovision Song Contest and it is being used to provide software solutions for audio on a wide range of TV shows. One of the most popular use cases we have seen in recent months in the broadcast sector is the unit being used to host the Cedar DNS noise reduction software.
In the past, engineers would have needed to employ a single piece of hardware or create their own instance of a plugin on a separate computer which is less reliable, in many cases introduces significant latency and is less convenient. With the transform.engine, users can harness the power of the very best audio plugins from brands such as Universal Audio, Eventide, SSL, Plugin Alliance and many more. Fourier also have a carefully curated plugin suite consisting of 70 of the best plugins on the market from a range of manufacturers called the ‘transform.suite ’26.
Customers value the reliability of these units, for example, if a plugin crashes, other chains continue unaffected, and transform.engine restarts the affected plugin, and in many cases, before the engineer has realised it has failed. The low latency is another reason to choose Fourier, in a system connected to a DiGiCo console using the HYPERPORT protocol, the roundtrip latency can be as low as 1.2ms (depending on the plugin being used). In a system using Dante, latency can be as low as 3ms at 96KHz.
The transform.engine comes with native support for Dante, HYPERPORT*, gigaACE*, DX*, and AES67 (via Dante), which means it can talk directly to almost any modern digital console or audio network, no converters necessary. The unit is easily controlled by a remote client application and with a team of expert software engineers, Fourier are committed to providing updates to the platform, ensuring it can handle many of the industry’s most popular audio plugins and any future plugins that become available. As this product finds its way into more applications and more sectors of the industry, we expect to see it bringing new solutions and being used in new innovative ways.