I had a thought and It makes a lot of sense to me… how about a few opinions:
The term outboard can be considered “out of board” or “not inside the board”. When recording engineers / live sound technicians needed an external processor that was not a part of their mixing board they would go “Outboard”.
I thought that’s what it meant already.. Didn’t it?
I’ve never seen the term phrased in this way. It’s not in any definition I’ve ever seen. Anyone else?