Waves CLA MixDown

Want a ready-made master bus chain to push you a little further over the cliff? How about a box full of Chris Lord-Alge’s mixing wisdom?

Waves CLA MixDown is the latest signature series plugin developed in collaboration with top mixer Chris Lord-Alge (Muse, Green Day, Deftones, etc). Much like his other Waves CLA plugins (Drums, Guitars, Unplugged and bestseller Vocals) it’s based on his own processing chains, providing a simple ‘set and forget’ design with just a handful of key controls. This time around, the target is the mix bus, and the three processes at hand are EQ (Bass and Treble), compression (Glue) and desk saturation (Drive). With the controls arranged over just four key faders, and a choice of two styles for Glue, it’s not meant to be an in-depth mastering plugin.

Each fader offers more/less style scaling (+/- 10), and each processor can be bypassed to A/B its effect. Inter-processing gain is handled automatically by the plugin, and ideal operating levels are set using the handy multicolour sensitivity LED above the Input fader (yellow indicates a suitable level). Input and output levels can be further viewed using multipart peak- and VU-style needle meters, with the latter also switchable to gain reduction.

Starting point

MixDown’s four faders are calibrated to add some processing at the default zero position, and ours tests confirmed a gentle and broad 2dB boost centred around 100Hz and 3.5kHz. What’s more, a test tone at -14dBFS achieves 1dB of gain reduction for both compressor settings and some low-level odd and even harmonic distortions from the Drive process. While analysing the frequency response, we also noticed that all four processors introduced some high-frequency tail-off above 15kHz.

Sonically, this starting point – with faders at zero and the level turning the input LED yellow (as suggested in the manual) – adds gentle sweetening, presence and that desirable ‘glue’. Further testing revealed that at maximum settings, EQ boost is no more than 6dB, with cut no more than 3dB. Meanwhile, the Drive process remains dominated by the first three harmonics as its fader is raised to the max. This reveals MixDown to be a subtle rather than radical processor, a fact further reflected by the handful of presets, the majority of which do not use maximum settings.

In practice, we found the biggest decision to make when using MixDown was which – if any – of its Glue settings to use. The two flavours are snappy (setting 1) and more laid back (setting 2), both of which add glue and enhance presence, even with minimal gain reduction. With no detailed settings to adjust, we found picking one simply boiled down to whichever works best in the given situation. We noticed that EQ settings don’t influence compression, indicating that either the EQ is placed after the compressor or two are run in parallel. The Drive is influenced by both, so is clearly placed post EQ and compression.

Ultimately, CLA MixDown successfully achieves its aim of providing point-and-shoot mix bus processing, with a sonic signature that matches its famous endorsee. You can achieve near identical results with separate plugins, of course, but as a time-saving tool for quick DIY masters, this comes highly recommended.