So I guess what you’re all saying is: I bought the wrong channel strip. Should have gone for Schepps… Oh well, maybe next year.
Nah. Use it. Learn what it sounds like. Learn what its limits are. Then you’ll be super quick when using it. There’s a magic to not wondering if you are using the “best” thing.
Agree with Boz, and I’m sure you’ll be very happy with the Izotope plug – they make great stuff IMO. They’re my go-to most all of the time.
IMHO, you can’t go wrong with Izotope. I’ve got Neutron 2 Advanced and Nectar 3. I picked up Nectar 3 at the beginning of the year, and it has been a game changer for me. It’s a bit of a CPU hog, but so worth it! (at least for me) I also have and like SOC. It’s really what makes most sense to you and your workflow.
True words. Strip plugins are good to work fast and will make you efficient.
That is true as well. My personal favorite daw when it comes to efficient work is FL Studio. When efficiency is not needed, I like to take my time with other daws. FL Studio offers phenomenal stock plugins that enable you to work super fast. FL studio is actually designed for working efficiently, whether with midis, color coding or setting up the soundstage. Its superiority in the efficiency area is simply unmatched.
FL Studio offers a visual representation of your soundstage that can be linked to very handy touch sensitive stock channel strip plugins, where all you have to do is simply drag your violinist up down forward backward visually and it will control the pan, the dryness and the wetness simultaneously. You can even enter your own formulas for control. I know that it is quite the hassle to do something like this in common daws like cubase which is practically a grandpa (no offense to gramps lol) when it comes to working with speed and efficiency, yet it is an amazing daw.
When such a workflow is paired with another good channel strip plugin, your work efficiency explodes. It all comes down to how efficient and crazy you are about being efficient 
…as a worker, mom , musician, producer and cook, efficiency is highly valued to me lol. So I say go for the strip plugins.
Some of them, but it depends. If the strip is transparent enough then most of them if not all. Usually strip plugins bring their own sonic characteristics, little knickknacks, errors etc. if I like the character it brings for a certain track, I keep it, if not then it is tossed back to the cupboard.
I know you’ve already made your decision, but I’d like to share my opinion with you. I have so many strips…it’s crazy. I’ve been a beta tester for quite a few companies, so it’s part of the job. However, as cool as they appear and have their own tonality fingerprint, I find myself not using anything these days.
The reason being, I’m super meticulous on nailing the sound in my head to where I really don’t need anything in a strip. It’s like back in the 80’s, some guys used all in one rack units that had chorus, delay, phase, compression etc all in one unit. I never liked that. So my dumb butt had a 25 space flight case loaded with rack units that excelled in one function. I’m exactly the same way today.
What that translates to is, I use what I need when I need it. No sense using an SSL or NEVE channel strip if not everything there is to my liking. I have quite an array of plugs and some of the best in my opinion for this task, are the UAD plugs. But even there, I like certain flavors. I don’t always need a bulky strip with all this stuff looking back at me.
I’m doing less and less processing these days. And that reason is due to what I said before. I’m nailing the sounds before I print them. This allows me to use next to nothing. A little compression on things here and there, major compression on other things for effect, a few simple high pass and low pass EQ settings while controlling low mid or mid range congestion and I’m done.
One day I woke up and came to the conclusion that if my mixes can’t stand on their own with 0 processing of any kind, I’m not tracking and recording properly. All this hype and fluff today and people sitting there carving up eq’s is a joke to me. If you record the right stuff and know what justifies good sound(s) that right there is 90% of the battle, trust me. I can’t remember the last time I sat inside a channel strip and went nuts with multiple things trying to multi-task inside it. That just makes no sense to me unless there is a credible reason to use it or there is a flavor it gives that is a necessity.
I have my eq’s that I love, my compressors that I love and my “tone coloration” devices. However, I don’t just use them on every project. Sometimes that’s not the way to handle the situation. Every recording presents a different set of circumstances. When you create the right stuff from the start, you lessen your possible issues. You remove the negativity and also cut down on the frustration of using lots of stuff or multiple options inside a single plugin.
This is of course just my take. Use whatever works and try whatever advice from others makes sense to you. But rest assured, if you nail the sounds from the start, you’ll use less and have less aggravation.
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Thanks Danny!
Good to hear someone out there is not using channel strips even after trying countless ones! I guess I’ll just have to try for myself. One of the things I miss in my own mixing is some sort of signature. I tend to use different plugins every time with only a few real favourites (like Nova by Tokio Dawn Labs) that I use every mix. I miss a workflow that can function as a basis of everything. The fact that every song is different is not just about writing different songs (in fact I’m sure there’s a definite signature there), but also about different mixing approaches I guess. I’m hoping the use of a channel strip helps there. But if it doesn’t, I’m glad to know someone out there who can churn out excelent mixes (of good songs) does not use channel strips!
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Well personally I wouldn’t. I’ve never used a channel strip yet. Modern DAWs can save a plugin combination, (Mixcraft certainly can) so I just call mine up every time I add a channel. I guess you could call that a channel strip at a pinch but I don’t see it like that. My saved processing is hi pass, lo pass, EQ comp. That is my limitation for most processing, I only use this one set of plugins (and BTW they are all free) and as Boz says, limitation is a good thing. It forces you into decisions, and it forces you into maximising what you have.
There’s really no need for a strip, it just makes what you’ve done a bit simpler for us rookies. I know I can set up something similar in Reaper, but there would be a lot of changing between plugs to do any fiddling, and the GUI for the free stuff is very basic.
One other factor when I pull up the Scheps strip is the feeling that I’m always supposed to be using everything on it. When you do things one at a time, you think about what you need to do a bit better rather than twisting knobs to see what happens.
I’d love a one knob, turn it up, and IT SOUNDS BETTER plug, but nobody has called to get my opinion on what it should sound like.
pretty sure with all the artificially bass boosted and cluttered music I hear lately on streams… a bit of low shelf combined with a fader would pretty much be this very plugin 
srsly about 90% of the music will just sound better if someone just took a flat iron and shelfed em all…
I can never seem to get on with c strips. I like more surgical eq and the compression on c strips i just never seem to have enough of the sort of compression i often need .They do save cpu power tho. Give me fab 3 and arouser comp over a channel strip .
@Aef a good way to get your signature you’re looking for is to create a few different templates if your DAW of choice supports that. I use Cakewalk Sonar as my main DAW of choice. It allows me to create and save track templates as well as specific instrument templates with effects, volumes, pans, configurations etc. So initially I’ll have good starting points.
For example, I have quite a few drum module templates I can fly in for drummers that may want to use my VDrums kit. Even if they want to change the drum sounds themselves, the template and routing is there and ready to go with effects already in place that I have specifically selected for that drum kit.
There are some things I always use for rock, metal and classic rock. Others things for country, rap, pop etc. From doing this for 100 years, I sort of know what is going to work for a style of music. But that said, just because the stuff comes with the template doesn’t mean I have to use it. But certain things like my UAD compressors on my master bus and guitar bus usually remain because they just work so incredibly well on everything.
One of the cool things with Sonar is, it sort of has its own channel strip on each track and the stock stuff works incredibly well. The Pro Channel Eq and bus compressor are really well done and work great too. It depends on what I’m presented with as well as what the client brings to the table in the talent and equipment areas.
See, if they come in and use all my tried and tested stuff to where I can produce them, my “signature” goes on their project because I’ve used these things a million times. When they bring their own stuff and have specific needs and want to produce themselves, your signature isn’t going to be as apparent.
But there should be nothing stopping you from achieving the signature you’re looking for. I think you trying multiple plugs like you’re doing is a good thing. You’ll find out what works for you and what may not. Just try not to fall down that rabbit hole of plugin experimentation along with buying into the hype and a million plugs. It’s really easy to have something like the waves mercury bundle of your machine to where you may not even see all those plugs in one year.
Certain things can be extremely counter productive if you’re not careful so make sure to keep yourself focused. One thing you can try that may help you…
I try to take one day per week doing what I call lab work. I’ll take some plugs I’ve never used and I’ll learn them and experiment. Or I’ll read about and learn a new recording technique or something hot and exciting that others may be talking about. But, this only happens once per week so I can stay focused and get things done.
If I’m not careful, I too fall down that rabbit hole. It’s YouTube watching videos about the plugs or techniques, then something else that I’m interested in pops up, then something else, and then 2 hours later I end up in that weird place on YouTube and wonder how I ended up there! LMAO!
So if you can keep focused and have one lab day to mess with plugs and experiment, you can stay focused and on point using things you are familiar with all the other days. This way you’re still able to get things done and make a few gains. If you have the time to add another lab day, by all means do it. You’ll find yourself in time and that signature you’re looking for will happen on its own.
Last tip…sometimes a new DAW helps you to find yourself. As much as I love Sonar (I still work for them as a beta tester) I also have Studio One, Reaper, Harrison Mix Bus, Sequoia, Adobe Audition, to name a few. Each one brings something different to the table while doing pretty much the same as the others. But you may find yourself that way. Harrison is $20 last I checked, Sonar is free, reaper is sort of free/nag ware until you decide if you want to support it, so you have some cool options out of the gate that won’t kill your piggy bank.
I think you’d fair better experimenting with a few different DAW possibilities over any channel strip. But try everything. You may end up finding yourself by using a channel strip that accentuates your work flow. I’m actually interested in seeing how you make out with this. Do keep us posted? Good luck!
Thanks for your good advice Danny. I have quite a few years of experience in mixing, but not all that many real hours of solid mixing. I only mix my own music so there’s no pressure in getting stuff finished. I only finish 2 or 3 songs a year… I am quite sure that what I really need is routine, and that’s not going to happen untill I get my pension in just under 3 years from now (but even then I have a book to write first and other plans…). But that’s all OK. I suppose I could use the limited time I spend much more effectively with fewer plugins and a more or less fixed workflow. But let me respond to some of your tips.
I use Reaper and as you probably know Reaper is immensely flexible so setting up different templates is no problem - once you’ve conquered the learning curve…
In fact I have a template for pretty much all the instruments I use. But I also change the template every song I mix. I use Addicitve for drums for instance and tend to output to individual tracks without any treatment (eq, comp) from AD, and treat the tracks individually. But for this individual treatment I tend to try the latest plugin I bought so I never get to know a plugin really well. The Reaper stock plugins are OK. I use ReaEQ quite a lot, but I’m a fan of Nova which I tend to use both as a dynamic and normal EQ, for tonal balance. But then when it comes to character EQ there’s so many to chose from I just pick whatever comes up. I don’t really know those plugins well enough and I probably overuse them (so I can hear the difference they make). Compressors are worse. I have no go-to compressor although I do differentiate between types of compressors (slow/ fast, clean/ coloured). But to be honest: more from what I’ve heard on You tube than from experience… Same with transient designers and other more specialist plugins. I hardly ever use gates, because I don’t record live drums and tend to edit vocal tracks by hand. And then we come to the many delay and reverb plugins which I can’t chose between because they’re all a bit different. I tend to use amp sims for my electric guitars but again, can’t chose. I started out with several free sims and gradually bought into them. I should have just gone for one of them and stick with it, but now I have 3 of them, none complete. Anyway I think my gravitation towards a channel is at least in part the result of too much choice.
The good thing about mixing my own songs is that my scope is limited, I don’t need to know how to mix music that I’m not particularly fond of (like metal and rap) 
Sounds just like my rabbithole…
I feel lucky if I have a full day a week to make music and mix it 
Now that’s an interesting idea I was wondering about myself. I’m working on upgrading my complete setup: new computer, new interface and new speakers. And in fact a new studio as well because we moved house. I just bought a Presonus quantum 2626 interface which comes with Studio 1 Artist. I’ve been hearing good things about Studio one and the integration with the Quantum is supposed to be a bonus. I don’t know yet, it’ll be a couple of months before I get around to building the studio (other work on the house has a higher priority, at least my other half has a strong conviction about this 
). But I will give Studio 1 a try. The learning curve is supposedly a lot less steep than Reaper, but the lack of flexibility might be frustrating.
@Aef you sound like you are exactly where you need to be after reading you here. I think you’ll be fine with whatever you decide. The new PC and interface may really change things for you. It’s amazing how better stuff can improve everything. You may have a few rough spots at first with your new monitors but once you dial everything in, I think you’re going to be fine.
Make sure you check out Cakewalk Sonar if you haven’t. It’s completely free right now and in my opinion, one of the most powerful, under rated and easy to learn DAW’s out there.
I like studio 1 also. But for me I like it a bit more for mastering. I always liked Reaper too. I have a pretty cool custom look that took me forever to create. It’s got some cool features but I never liked the stock plugins. In Cakewalk, the Sonitus plugins and Blue Tubes are really good as well as the stuff in pro channel.
Whatever the case, good luck and I hope your new studio and all your gear turn out to be great for you. When you’re all settled and can spend some time with stuff, stop back here and let us know how things are going. 
I have tried it, but never got round to working out some of the basics that are just a bit different. Actually, Cakewalk was the very first DAW I had (somewhere around 2002 I guess) but I did’nt get far in actual recordings because my interface was prety much useless. From there (with better computer and interface) I ‘progressed’ to Cubase which became ever more expensive. When I read about the open source, free for beginners approach of Reaper I immediatly liked the vibe. It took a while to learn how to use it though… I’m quite at home in Reaper now, but I also know there’s a lot more possible than I actually use.
That’s something I’m very curious about. I bought a set of Focal Alpha’s 6,5 inch to replace my old Samson Rubicons 5 (the ones with the ribbon tweeters). I hope it really is an upgrade… The reviews of the Focals are pretty good, but so were the Rubicons 15 years ago.
Anyway, getting a bit too much off topic here! A channel strip is something to just try, and maybe stick with it for a couple of songs at least until I really know what I want.
I’d call that an advantage rather than a disadvantage.
Do people twist knobs to see what happens? I can understand it if you’ve just got the plugin and you’re trying to ascertain its capabilities, but it shouldn’t be happening on an actual mix.
IMO there’s the temptation to find use for everything on the strip. I don’t, but part of my mixing process is to try a few things to see if they help. They generally get thrown out, but tried.
My ability to hear what something needs is getting better, but I’m not in your league in terms of knowing intuitively what will work.
It’s not?!?! Well I guess I didn’t read the version of the Mixing Bible. 
Personally, I love random surprises in mixes. It’s pretty much what makes it fun for me… Otherwise it becomes just like another soul-sucking assembly line factory job.
Random experiments have been part of my process for a long time. Hell, some of the coolest stuff I’ve discovered happened by mistake and trying stuff out!
It all started when I was mixing a track for a client, and the second verse had no change in textures from the first. I thought: "I wonder what would happen if I took this guitar bit from the first verse, turned it backwards, stretched it out to be twice as long, and then run it through the most outrageous, convoluted FX chain preset I can find in Guitar Rig. Lo & behold, the result was truly strange and wonderful all at the same time… it was just what the track needed, and the band loved it.
… in fact I did that with a whole mix here just to see if it could be done - Throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
“YMMV” as they say 
Fair enough, there are no rules as you rightly point out Andrew. Personally I couldn’t operate that way, it’s difficult enough getting the sound I want without introducing spuriosity into the mix (pun intended). If a mix needs something wacky or different I will already know what that is beforehand through reference tracks, (or just through imagining it beforehand) and I will be concentrating on getting what’s in my head on to tape.
Admittedly on the journey towards getting the required sound/mix something interesting pops up now and again and sometimes I might decide to ‘keep’ it, but that’s very different from knob twiddling with the sole intention of ‘finding’ something.
I think the process I use is what you are describing here, too Andrew:
Here, you’ve already come up with the idea in your head and everything you do from that point is working towards manifesting what’s already in your head. That’s not the same as random knob twiddling in the hope that something will happen that you like.
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But surely you learn from that experience?