Focusrite RedNet X2P
A Dante utility box with two of Focusrite's best preamps and a single Ethernet cable doing all the work — the RedNet X2P is the least glamorous and most useful thing in a networked studio.
Focusrite's period advertising pitched the X2P as accessible anywhere a Cat 6 cable can run, a Dante-enabled audio-over-IP utility box supplying two remote-controllable mic preamps, a headphone amp, and monitor outputs (Pro-Sound, July 2019, p.9).
Overview
The RedNet X2P is a 2x2 Dante audio interface built around two of Focusrite's Red Evolution microphone preamps, and the pitch is almost aggressively practical: it exists to put high-quality conversion and remote-controllable gain anywhere a Cat 6 cable can reach. Focusrite's own advertising described it as a Dante-enabled audio-over-IP utility box providing two remote-controllable mic preamps, a headphone amp, and monitor outputs — and told buyers to "embrace audio networking without restrictions" (Pro-Sound, July 2019, p.9). That's marketing copy, but it's an accurate description of what the box does.
The preamps are the reason to care. Focusrite billed them as "two of our best preamps," with ultra-clean gain, stereo linking, individual phantom power, a high-pass filter, phase reverse, and the company's Air mode (Pro-Sound, April 2018, p.9). Air is a voicing switch the period advertising names but doesn't detail the curve on, so what it does to a source is something owners judge by ear rather than by spec sheet. The conversion side was quoted at over 118 dB of dynamic range in the same advertisement (Pro-Sound, April 2018, p.9), a figure that puts the X2P in proper professional-converter territory rather than in the prosumer bracket.
Power over Ethernet is the detail that changes how the unit gets deployed. A single cable delivers audio, control, and power to the X2P — no wall wart, no separate PSU tether, nothing to find an outlet for at the far end of a run. For anyone who has spent a session crawling behind a rack looking for a free socket, that's not a bullet point, it's the whole argument. The X2P also carries a local input mix for "more-me" style monitoring, which gives a performer foldback control without asking the engineer to rebuild a cue mix mid-take.
There's a mic stand mount, and Focusrite made a point of noting it keeps the unit out of the way. That sounds trivial until you understand the intended placement: this is a box that lives at the microphone, not in the control room. Two preamps, a headphone amp, and monitor outputs at the far end of an Ethernet run means a vocalist in a hallway closet or an announcer in a remote booth gets quality gain staging and a headphone feed without a snake, a stage box, or a second engineer.
Focusrite positioned the X2P explicitly as an expander rather than a centerpiece. The April 2018 advertisement promised it "quickly adds I/O to your Focusrite Red interface or any Dante audio-over-IP system" (Pro-Sound, April 2018, p.9) — the wording makes clear it's meant to slot into an existing network, whether that network is anchored by a Red interface or built from other Dante gear. Later advertising in the same publication repeated the same framing across 2019, which suggests the positioning held: an AoIP utility box, not a flagship.
What the record doesn't give is just as worth stating. Production years for the X2P aren't documented in the material available here, and neither are owner-reported failure modes or service and spare-parts information; the original retail price was $899.99. Anyone shopping one should treat those as open questions rather than assume the silence means anything in particular. Collectors of Focusrite's Red range will recognize the family resemblance to the RedNet AM2 headphone/line output unit that Focusrite's own advertising pitched as the companion piece for headphone distribution over Dante (Pro-Sound, April 2019, p.5) — the X2P sits in that same problem-solving register, a small box that removes a specific logistical headache rather than a big box that does everything.
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