Pedals, tape machines, old effects units and such are constantly being used in mixing in the modern era via DAW interface Send/Returns. It's a vast and creative depth to explore but also comes with it's share of issues - weak unbalanced signal, impedance mismatching, noise on the way back in, etc.

Enter the "Round Trip." An analog solution for interfacing your unbalanced gear with your modern DAW equipment. 

Run balanced signal out from your interface into the INPUT, which unbalances and alters impedance for the SEND stage. Signal can then be sent out through any unbalanced gear you like with volume and impedance controls to dial things in. Finally, signal comes back in through the RETURN stage, which gives you +24dB of discrete gain on tap with a transformer balanced OUTPUT jack to run over to your interface. In this "Round Trip" configuration, all kinds of level and impedance issues that would normally limit the use of older or unbalanced gear and pedals in the modern studio are remedied. 

Even beyond this premise, the SEND/RETURN stages are quite useful individually: The SEND stage is actually a passive pair of quality transformer "re-amp" lines with level and impedance controls that can be used independently. This is actually my personal favorite "re-amp" circuit - easy to dial in and natural sounding. Meanwhile, the RETURN stage makes a fantastic route to bring any unbalanced or low-gain gear you can think of directly into your interface's balanced inputs, with extra gain on tap via level control.

Excited to bring this concept to you cats.

Round trip is currently undergoing a circuit update.

If you have interest, give me a shout to get on the waiting list.