What are "racks" for?

[Nightfire]

Sorry, yet another stupid newbie question. I am not quite sure why people us "racks", let me rephrase, what are all the different devices that people have in their racks? (dont say silicone)
Seems like every home rec. studio on here has a mixer, and beside it a rack with a bunch of diff. machines. Are these effects?


Mike

 

[bennychico11]

some of them effects units, yes. you have your dynamic and time based hardware units.

some of them preamps. maybe a speak amp, and a headphone amp. maybe a sync I/O or a word clock unit. Maybe the actual audio interface is rack mountable. Then of course a patch bay (analog or digital) to connect everything together.

 

[Nightfire]

Makes sense, thanks.


Mike

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Mic pres, patchbays, power conditioners, tuners etc. and pretty much anything you have as a VST plug will be available in hardware.

My 8u rack consists of just mic pres (8 channels) and one 1u Lexicon multi effects unit. I recorded for a few years without any rack gear, it's not essential these days.

This is my favourite rack unit:

 

[legionserial]

So you've got someone thing to look at while your talking to women....

..oh wait...wrong racks...sorry.