On some level, everyone is susceptible to the dreaded panacea syndrome when it comes to adding tools to their workflow. “If I only had this one piece of gear, all my problems would be solved!” The Oven “Mojo Box” analog processor by Hendyamps and its plug-in counterpart by Brainworx (distributed by Plugin Alliance) might be as close to pro audio panacea as we’ll ever get. The Oven is a stereo multiband mastering grade character enhancer with an emphasis on odd-order harmonic saturation. Or, for short, a harmonic re-animator, which is my description because Hendyamps has struggled to pin The Oven down to one label. This is not by any fault of their own, but likely because The Oven’s primary function is to be malleable for the user. In some scenarios, it can behave like a mellow EQ; in others, it is a multiband saturation monster. Gentler settings can add a subtle hi-fi enhancement that can make sources bloom with added sheen.
The Oven was designed and built by Chris Henderson of Hendyamps in partnership with Maor Appelbaum Mastering. Maor had initially approached Chris with an idea for a custom build. Fast forward through a year and a half of blood, sweat, and tears during prototyping, and The Oven was born. Chris is Hendyamps, and he hand builds every product he makes; the Michelangelo EQ [Tape Op #130], the Pollock compressor [#146], and the Rothko EQ/compressor are now becoming go-to hardware for many in our industry. Chris’ designs are refreshingly innovative and worthy of the names they share with famous painters and kitchen appliances.
The magic of The Oven is in its MOSFET and tube drive circuits that work in parallel. With the price of admission, we get added drive controls for the low, mid, high, and air bands. The layout reminded me of a guitar amp, which made it feel instantly familiar. The Oven is packed to the brim with control functions but is still quite easy to use.
Adding saturation has always given me the perception of turning up the heat or heating something up. In lieu of normal identifiers, the knobs and switches are affectionately labeled like the controls one might see on an actual oven. The solid state and tube drive controls are labeled Temp and Cook. The Temp control has a Low and High mode switch to increase the “temperature” or the intensity of the MOSFET driver. The Cook control has two separate mode switches: Bake or Broil and Elec or Gas. The Bake/Broil switch toggles between two tube voicings. In Bake mode, the tube drive is more dynamic and open. With Broil engaged, the tube “compresses” more, creating complex harmonics. The Burners section allows for boosting and cutting saturation by respective bands. The Low, Mid, and Top Burns have an A/B Burn Type switch that changes the affected frequency range. In addition to the A/B switch, Top Burn has a Bunsen on/off switch, which seems to widen the affected top band. The last band control is the Sizzle knob, which drives the amount of air band saturation and boost. Like the Burners, the Sizzle knob is also paired with a Sizzle Type A/B switch, which I dubbed the “more” switch. There’s also a super neat lo-fi mode switch, Burned, that adds more distortion while narrowing the unit's bandwidth. The Hardware version of The Oven is bookended with separate Left and Right Calibration (gain) knobs, plus a single Flow (output) control. Similarly, The Oven plug-in version has adjustments for Headroom and Calibration modes to simulate gain staging environments that would cause the hardware unit to behave differently. The plug-in version also has the Brainworks native patented Tolerance Modeling Technology (TMT), which simulates channel variants in analog electrical components to mimic analog circuit behavior. Other added features only available on the plug-in version include a Mono Maker, Stereo Width Control, and Parallel Mix Control.
It felt natural to reach for knobs labeled Cook and Temp to adjust the amount and type of saturation. It immediately made sense to boost or cut saturation or “heat” by band with Low, Mid, and Top Burners – it just made sense. Do I want to add harmonic presence with an air band boost? Why wouldn't I reach for the Sizzle knob? I applaud the quirkiness of gear designed like this because it forces us to use our ears. It’s okay to have fun, and our tools should inspire us to be creative. The Oven does just that.
This review will be a little unorthodox as I chose to review the hardware unit and the plug-in version in tandem. I did this due to the variance of cost between the hardware and the software version as it pertains to accessibility. The hardware units are painstakingly hand-built, a single unit at a time, by Chris using extremely high-quality components. These are beautiful, and the price reflects that. But what’s awesome is how much of an effort Brainworx made for the plug-in to do the hardware unit justice. It may irk you that I won’t really spend much time comparing how different or similar they sound to each other. What I will say is that they’re close yet different, but they both were fantastic in my use cases. The lion’s share of the work I do in my home studio is mixing. The hardware version of The Oven ended up at the tail of my mix bus hardware chain. The plug-in generally ended up inserted on buses and individual sources in my DAW.
In this position, the hardware unit became the finishing touch on my mixes. Most of the time it was on a gentler setting, slightly boosting all of the burners and adding Sizzle to taste. The settings are program dependent. With heavier rock and punk, I tended to push the unit a little harder and make bolder moves. I generally didn’t mix into The Oven. Not to say that you couldn’t or shouldn’t. It just seemed to make more sense to me to insert it after I felt like a mix was close to finished. An unexpected benefit that I experienced across the board was significantly improved depth and definition. Even in subtle settings, The Oven made my mixes sound more three-dimensional with an improved transient response. It made everything bigger, with added punch and clarity and minimal change on my meters. On dense mixes, The Oven was also really effective at creating space and tightening things up with reductive Burner moves.
I found the plug-in to be a little more subtle and gentle, which allowed me to use it on everything. Brainworx did a great job with the programming, as I could have many instances without eating a ton of CPU resources. Putting The Oven on drum buses added punch, body, and detail. Guitars screamed forward with added edge but no harshness. I also found The Oven to be an extremely valuable utility when it came to sources that weren’t tracked that well. Some of my client base could be described as the “bedroom indie laptop artist” working within the constraints of suboptimal equipment. Not to say The Oven can work miracles, but I found it to excel at breathing life back into sources – sort of like harmonic reanimation. It was particularly effective on dull vocals and stale-sounding software instruments.
Both versions of The Oven, the hardware and the plug-in, have now become essential to my workflow – sometimes as a simple utility or other times like an injection of sonic steroids. Who wouldn’t want a tool that just makes everything sound objectively better? Whether tracking, mixing, mastering, or working in audio post-production, I would implore you to try The Oven in all phases of your process.