Best channel strip plugin that's NOT emulation of SSL, Neve, API, Amek, etc.

[meloco_go]

Metric Halo Channelstrip 3 is nice.

[thecontrolcentre]

Mix Control Pro

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/mixcon ... laborative

[jasonekratz]

Personally enjoy Omni Channel. Andrew and the Waves folks seemed to put a lot of usability thought into it and it sounds good.

[Rickskii]

Sonimus Satson CS seems to fit the bill.

[Dasheesh]

Eareckon the strip is my fave, and it used to be sold separately, but you have to buy the whole bundle to get it now on plug-in boutique. If you are up for it, I highly recommend it.

[Ploki]

I dont really like channel strip workflow because I prefer picking my own plugs, but Voxengo Voxformer is still sometimes on my sessions. It’s deceptively simple- but nearly every module has advanced edit screen.
Two compressors either splitband or series, parametric eq, multiband-gate (singleknob), de-esser, saturator, “presence” (some wierd dynamic processing), dc filter, oversampling.

[MogwaiBoy]

+1 for Voxformer. Ignore the vocal-only vibe in the name, it is a fully featured strip with all the Voxengo quality. It's old but still stands above the pack, as Voxengo products tend to do.

+1 Satson CS also. Light on modules but big on sound/quality.

There's a generic DDMF channelstrip too but I haven't used it.

Meh to Waves.

[Passing Bye]

I'm thinking of things like:
TBProAudio CS-5501 - https://www.tbproaudio.de/products/cs-5501

Think that one is ace!

[Dasheesh]

also DDMF makes one.

[cryophonik]

Still waiting for Fabfilter to make the king of channel strips...

[kritikon]

Probably because I'm an old fart I also don't get channel strips. You guys do realise that back when everything was on a desk (no DAWs) we spent ever increasing amounts of money on fancy desks precisely and exactly to get clean, transparent and absolutely essentially quiet mixers? The one exception to that is Eq - it's an obvious character thing, and I understand hunting down different flavours of Eq - the one thing that digital does well is transparent Eq - the opposite to what we wanted and still want most of the time. But what digital does well, and why it took over is because it's transparent in all the other aspects - mixing, no crosstalk, no distortion, no saturation, no anything that analogue desks did lots of. Cheap shit desks did lots of it, and the expensive desks did very little of it.

So you don't want channel strips emulating Neve, Trident etc...you want what? emulations of shit desks?

[jens]

I think you are confusing channel strip with console emulation, old man.

we spent ever increasing amounts of money on fancy desks precisely and exactly to get clean, transparent and absolutely essentially quiet mixers?

And what a sad waste of money that was...

[Steve Bolivar]

iZotope Neutron is pretty good, but they may be heading to being subscription only so be aware of that if it's a problem for you. It's very deep but after working thru the manual and using it regularly Neutron became very easy to use. Here's a TapeOp review that says it better than I can.
https://tapeop.com/reviews/gear/121/neu ... g-plug-in/

[ghettosynth]

Probably because I'm an old fart I also don't get channel strips. You guys do realise that back when everything was on a desk (no DAWs) we spent ever increasing amounts of money on fancy desks precisely and exactly to get clean, transparent and absolutely essentially quiet mixers? The one exception to that is Eq - it's an obvious character thing, and I understand hunting down different flavours of Eq - the one thing that digital does well is transparent Eq - the opposite to what we wanted and still want most of the time. But what digital does well, and why it took over is because it's transparent in all the other aspects - mixing, no crosstalk, no distortion, no saturation, no anything that analogue desks did lots of. Cheap shit desks did lots of it, and the expensive desks did very little of it.

So you don't want channel strips emulating Neve, Trident etc...you want what? emulations of shit desks?

False dichotomy, how about clean strips? You're focusing on the sound of the emulation, that's not what everyone is all about. I like(d) Neutron a lot. It's not about emulation, it's about having all of the things that you'd normally have in a strip in one clean U/I. In other words, it's about speed of mixing for doing all of the things that you'd do with an external mixer.

For me, a good modern channel strip is better than the old mixing boards because it includes features that were never in the mixing boards.

Back to Neutron, I liked the first strip. I don't like the updated one as it's larger and isn't consistent across channels because you have to enable channels and modules. The problem with the first one is that iZotope has/will not update it for new OSes and it has annoying detection bugs.

So I've been looking for a replacement for some time and I'm not really happy with any of the choices, in part, precisely because they think that everyone wants an emulation and I could give two shits about that. I want a lot of features with decent high quality modern modules and a fantastic and modern U/I.

It's not faster to use separate plugins in the DAW, even though that's what usually happens anyway.

[BONES]

You're focusing on the sound of the emulation, that's not what everyone is all about. I like(d) Neutron a lot. It's not about emulation, it's about having all of the things that you'd normally have in a strip in one clean U/I. In other words, it's about speed of mixing for doing all of the things that you'd do with an external mixer.

The only thing I'd do with an external mixer is set the level. And maybe pan.

People around here seem to look for excuses to use the maximum amount of effects on everything but where I prefer to put in my effort is to make the perfect sounds that require no effects whatsoever. Obviously that's not always possible, or achievable, but that's why more than half the effects I use in a song go onto my vocals and a couple go onto the drums (which are all sampled). For everything else, I tweak the patches to make things work together in a mix.