Focusrite RedNet 4
Eight channels of remote-controlled mic preamp designed to live on a Cat 6 cable, not in your rack.
Overview
The RedNet 4 is the microphone preamp node of Focusrite's RedNet system, an Ethernet-networked audio family built around Audinate's Dante audio-over-IP protocol. Most Focusrite mic pres get patched into a console. The RedNet 4 sits at the end of a network run. It's a rack unit that puts eight remote-controlled mic inputs onto a Dante network and lets you steer them from a laptop. Pro Audio Review (October 2013, p.39) described the RedNet 4 as an "eight-channel, remote" component within the broader RedNet line. It called the system as a whole a modular network scalable to fit specific needs, one that takes advantage of a computer's networking strengths to build a flexible, portable, high-fidelity digital audio setup.
The RedNet 4 was never sold as a standalone preamp in the conventional sense. It was one node in a system that also included converter boxes (RedNet 1 and RedNet 2), an all-digital interface (RedNet 3), a PCIe card, and the Dante Controller and RedNet Control software. Its job in that system was neutral, transparent capture of acoustic sources - the kind of uncolored mic pre you want on drums, acoustic instruments, and classical recording.
The preamp itself drew mixed but respectful notices. Pro Audio Review (October 2013, p.39) found the RedNet 4 mic pre "rather neutral" - too neutral, in the reviewer's opinion, for male vocals, but "wonderfully neutral on acoustic guitar, and nicely transparent on electric guitar." It does not flatter and it does not color. Whether that's a virtue depends on what you point it at. The same review noted that when gain was slammed into the converters, they distorted with "a reasonable fuzz, not a scratchy rasp."
The RedNet 4's converters share the same Cirrus Logic chips as the RedNet 1 and RedNet 2, and reviewers treated the conversion as reference-grade and uncolored. In listening tests at different sample rates, Pro Audio Review (October 2013, p.39) found the RedNet 4 at 192 kHz slightly dark and thick in the high end. At 44.1 kHz it was "blurry and cloudy" and grainy in the high frequencies. At 96 kHz it was "just right," with a clean top end, linear mids, and what the reviewer called probably the most accurate bottom end he had heard, with realistic dynamics and seemingly no phase shift.
The system-level numbers are good. Pro Audio Review (October 2013, p.39) measured roundtrip latency of only 15 samples at 96 kHz - roughly a ten-thousandth of a second - and reported that the fidelity of the roundtrip was so good the reviewer could not tell source from copy. The same review put a typical 24-channel RedNet system at around $10,000. That covers a RedNet 1 and RedNet 2 for A-D and D-A, a RedNet 3 for digital I/O, at least one RedNet 4 for neutral capture, and a PCIe card. That is not budget pricing, but the review placed it in the high end of genuinely professional gear rather than the boutique tier.
Real-world users backed up the neutrality claim. Pro Audio Review (October 2013, p.39) visited Soundwell, a sound design shop in Los Angeles, where a RedNet 4 sat alongside five RedNet 2 units handling mic inputs and occasional additional line ins. Owner Dean Martin Hovey reported the converters were free of harshness or shrillness and that clarity held even with all 64 channels recording at once. In a separate Electronic Musician profile, a vocal chain of a Brauner Velvet microphone into a RedNet 4 preamp was described as natural-sounding, adding just a little brightness and strengthening the signal without getting in the way.
Pro Audio Review (October 2013, p.39) also flagged the operational quirks honestly: an occasional peak indicator that would not clear, and the need to reboot when changing sample rates, both said to be addressable with software updates. The review further argued that the RedNet line could use more hardware options — two- or four-channel converters, a mic pre or two, a headphone output with selectable source — which is a fair critique of a system whose smallest building block was an eight-channel rack unit. For a project studio, the RedNet 4 was more capacity than most needed; for a multi-room facility, a broadcast plant, a theater, a house of worship, or a campus wired end-to-end with Cat 6, it was exactly the right shape.
The RedNet 4 is not a vintage piece in the sense of a 1970s transformer preamp. It is an early-2010s networked-audio device, and its value depends on the software around it - Dante Controller, RedNet Control, and a working Dante network. Its appeal today is to engineers who want transparent remote-controlled mic inputs on a network without running analog snakes, and to anyone building out a RedNet system who needs the mic-pre node. The neutrality that made it divisive for vocals in 2013 is the same quality that makes it useful for acoustic capture now.
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