Vintage Channel Strips
Console yourself with these virtual emulations
Setting up chains of effects to process individual or grouped sounds within a mix is second nature for producers and mix engineers alike. We work intuitively, with one plugin for tone control often suggesting another for dynamics taming before we add a third and a fourth, creatively adding effect after effect to smooth out or rough up our sounds, as we see fit. But in the pre-DAW days, mix engineers and producers had far fewer options when it came to shaping the sounds in their tracks. Often, key controls for tone and compression, in particular, were handled by their choice of mixing console. Classic consoles from the likes of SSL, Neve, API and Trident (among many others) feature their own, distinctive sound, and large format consoles offer much more than a volume fader, a pan dial and a gain control. The EQ and dynamics sections of such consoles provide ‘built-in’ tone and volume-shaping capabilities; as a vertical column of controls from the top of a single mixing desk channel offers such comprehensive parameter shaping, the term ‘channel strip’ was born.
However, for most of us, the prohibitive cost and unrealistic space requirements – to say nothing of the numerous advantages of mixing in the box – mean that large-format consoles are impractical choices. Plus, it can be liberating to reach for sound-shaping plugins from a variety of sources, mixing and matching effects of all types and descriptions, depending on the requirements of a particular sound in our mixes. However, well-modelled channel strip plugins have a distinct advantage over this mix-and-match approach, bringing us back to why specific large-console mixing desks became so popular in the first place. The components which make up an SSL E Series console, or the Neve 88RS, or other classic desks, have all been sourced with excellence and consistency in mind. From one channel to the next, the ‘sound’ of an individual channel strip is replicated through a consistency of sonic character, meaning that a mix carried out on one of those consoles has a distinctive tone and energy. And, of course, those components are ‘real’, with a signal flow which requires electrical particles to be channelled in specific, musically pleasing ways.
So it’s no surprise that the manufacturers of high-end plugins make the accurate modelling of channel strips a significant part of their product ranges, with Waves, UAD, Softube, and many others, key players in this field. Their channel strips offer component-level modelling of classic consoles, bringing that ‘joined-up’ ethos to the plugin arena. In our walkthroughs, tips and video this month, we’ll learn how to configure channel strip plugins, see how versatile they can be and understand what functions they offer. Remember that if channel strip processing truly appeals to you, provided you have an adequately powerful CPU, you could set up the same plugin on every channel of your project to provide an in-the-box version of a large format console mix.