We recently purchased a Flock audio patchbay for the studio and we love the agility and flexibility it provides. Unfortunately, one fairly important aspect of the product (to us, at least) is missing from Flock's marketing materials. 

The problem is that you can't really use it to manage preamp inputs. Meaning that this diagram taken from the manual is not actually a valid use case (mic -> flock -> pre input). Turns out that the signal levels between Flock and a preamp's inputs are widely mismatched and that connection results in a lot of buzzing. 

This is a problem because we were hoping to use the unit for auditioning different combinations of microphones and preamps on the fly. That's just not possible because of the resulting buzz. 

We exchanged messages with Flock's customer support and they stuck behind their marketing materials and even this manual diagram. But they also said the company will release a product in the future that will make this a possibility - we expect it will be something like Radial's mic switcher. Go figure. 

Still a great product but we are a bit disappointed with the misleading marketing here.