Softube Console 1 Compact

Softube take the shrink ray to their hands‑on mixing hardware.

Softube are obviously on something of a hardware roll. Hot on the heels of the impressive — and undeniably cute — Flow Studio (our cover story in the July 2026 issue) comes the Console 1 Compact. And, exactly as the name suggests, this new hardware unit provides the user with a compact — in terms of both size and budget — version of the company’s flagship Console 1 Channel MkIII. The latter has proved a very popular combination alongside the Console 1 MkIII Fader unit, offering a hardware‑based mixing interface for those who work primarily in the box but who want a more tactile approach to their workflow.

Like the Console 1 Channel MkIII, the new Compact model ships with Softube’s Core Mixing Suite plug‑in, a powerful and very flexible channel strip environment. This operates at low latency within your DAW so is perfectly suitable for use in both tracking and mixing contexts. The Console 1 Compact provides access to all the same functionality as its larger sibling but, at roughly half the size of the original, it does this by way of a dual ‘layer’ approach to assigning the main bank of rotary controllers. The user simply shifts between interacting with the EQ options or the Filter, Drive, Shape and Compressor options.

If you have access to other Softube plug‑ins, or some suitable third‑party options from the likes of Brainworx, Plugin Alliance, FabFilter and UAD, these can also be used within the Core Mixing Suite plug‑in. Finally, the Console 1 Compact provides control of core functions within most DAWs without the need for any mapping and, straight out the box, offers particularly tight integration with Cubase. So, if the full‑sized Console 1 Channel MkIII is beyond your budget or desk space, or you like the idea of a sophisticated hardware controller you can slip into a bag alongside your laptop, is the Console 1 Compact a worthy contender?

Small But Beautifully Formed

The Compact hardware features a single ‘smart’ high‑resolution display. The contents of this change as you interact with the hardware controls, providing very clear visual and numeric feedback as you make parameter changes, without you having to shift your eyes to your computer screen as you work. The display also handles tasks such as preset loading or changing the signal chain order within the Core Mixing Suite’s signal chain. Yes, at times, the text in some of the menus can get a little small, but the display is clear, bright, and suitably legible at normal working distances.

The physical controls are laid out in four groups. A dual row of buttons along the top provide channel selection within your DAW (top row) and options to activate/bypass individual processing sections within the currently selected instance of the Core Mixing Suite plug‑in (lower row). There is some multi‑functionality here (for example, during the menu selection processes) as well as options accessed via the Shift button (located bottom left) that are highlighted by alternative labels on the hardware surface.

On the left, the four vertical buttons provide options for quickly accessing global presets, favourites, selecting a strip/section preset (with more options available here if you have additional Softube plug‑ins installed) and turning on/off the On Screen Display (OSD) panel on your computer screen. This replicates much of what can been seen within the actual plug‑in window but is for visual feedback only; you can’t interact with the controls it shows. Beneath these, the Shift button aside, you get buttons to switch between control of the EQ or Dynamics layers of your channel strip, plus a rotary control to set the input gain to the channel strip for gain staging.

You can access your channel strip presets directly from the hardware or within the plug‑in.

On the right, the two upper rotary controls govern send and pan (with further options via the Shift button), with the bottom‑most rotary control adjusting channel volume by adjusting your DAW’s channel fader. The two buttons provide dedicated solo/mute options for the selected channel but also double as ‘confirm’ and ‘cancel’ while working within the menus.

The centre of the unit is dominated by the bank of 16 rotary controllers. Softube use the phrase “layered one‑to‑one workflow” in describing the Console 1 Compact, and it’s the Equalizer and Dynamics buttons mentioned earlier that let you switch the focus here. In Equalizer mode, they provide four sets of Q, Frequency and Gain controls, although their exact functions depend upon the actual EQ model inserted within the selected instance of the main plug‑in. The two buttons at the bottom provide options to change the filter type of the lower and upper bands and, in the Core Vintage and Core Modern EQ modules, these can switch between cut, shelf and bell types. The LEDs surrounding each knob are blue in EQ mode and provide excellent visual feedback as you make adjustments.

Switch to Dynamics mode and the 16 rotary controls are then dedicated to the Filter, Drive, Shape and Compressor modules within the channel strip. The LEDs that surround each rotary knob are colour‑coded...