The stock and third-party dynamics and EQ plugins installed on your Mac or PC provide endless scope for stringing together your own channel strip combos, but when you want to take your mixes to the next level, our shortlist of multi-faceted modular solutions represent the ultimate in operational integration, textural customisation and sonic cohesion.

McDSP 6050 Ultimate Channel Strip

Pulling together all 20 500-series ‘lunchbox’-style modules (ten each) from their superb 6020 Ultimate EQ and 6030 Ultimate Compressor plugins, and adding eight further processors covering expansion, gating, distortion and filtering, McDSP’s fun-packed offering makes constructing the ideal channel strip for any track or bus quick and easy. Three freely reorderable slots hold any button-selected combination of EQ/filter, compressor, and gate/expander or distortion modules, and the Input and Output sections to either side of the central rack house gain controls, metering and sidechain routing, with external keying switched in and out independently for each module.

The modules themselves draw inspiration from a variety of designs by Neve, Fairchild, Teletronix, Urei and other studio greats, but are in no way intended to be purist emulations of any of them, as made abundantly clear by their GUIs. Crucially, they all sound great, bursting with character and charm, and exemplifying a wide range of compression, equalisation and saturation styles; and the thoughtfully reductive control panels make the whole thing a joy to use. Check out Russ’s review for more.

Slate Digital VMR 2

Cut from the same ‘lunchbox’-format cloth as 6050 Ultimate Channel Strip, but predating it by a couple of years and far more ambitious in its approach, Virtual Mix Rack 2 lets you arrange up to eight modules dragged in from an extensive library of separately bought – or rolled in as part of the All Access subscription – dynamics processors, EQs, preamps, and more. You only get a handful of goodies to start with – specifically two EQs, three compressors, an enhancer, and a trim control and phase reverse module – but the full roster is packed with stunning emulations of classic console sections and standalone units, all powered by Slate’s dazzlingly authentic analogue modelling algorithms. The interface, meanwhile, is as functional as it is beautiful, with drag and drop of modules from the browser and between rack slots, per-module presets, the ability to save up to eight complete ‘Dream Strip’ presets into a readily accessible bar at the top, and a helpful automation assignment viewer system.

Although filling that module browser can quickly get expensive for non-subscribers, VMR 2 has the potential to be the only channel strip plugin you ever need, serving up an inexhaustible array of legendary signal shaping combinations.

PSP AudioWare InfiniStrip

The newest 500-series-style channel strip on the block, PSP’s entrant boasts 25 modules and nine slots: seven slots are each limited to a specific module type (Preamp, Filters, Gate, Compressor, EQ, Limiter and the fixed Master Control module slot), while the other two can access the full menu. ‘Lunchbox’ remakes of PSP’s acclaimed PreQursor, FETpressor, RetroQ, andTwinL plugins are included among the modules, which, alongside the titular fundamentals available to each slot, also take in expansion, ducking, saturation, de-essing, de-humming and even dynamic EQ. Slots can be reordered as required, and, notably, switching between modules in a slot maintains their settings, so you can audition different flavours of EQs, say, without affecting the parameters you just spent ten minutes dialling in. The GUI is resizable, too, and features a Mini view mode that collapses everything down to a single-panel display with a stack of buttons for switching between modules.

InfiniStrip’s nifty workflow, diverse processing proposition and zero-latency operation when tracking make for a hugely impressive channel strip playground, and PSP’s mastery of analogue modelling shines through in the sound, which simply can’t be faulted. See and hear it in action in Julian’s review.

iZotope Neutron 4

Clearing the lunchboxes out of the way, we turn our post-prandial attention to iZotope’s futuristic “mixing suite”, which racks up seven modules in the main Neutron plugin, and also supplies them as individual plugins for standalone use. Beyond the essential Compressor, EQ and Gate modules, the package also includes Transient Shaper, Exciter (incorporating Trash mode, based on the company’s seminal plugin of the same name), Sculptor (spectral shaping) and the amazing Unmask (spectral sidechaining, in a nutshell), and all of them qualify as supremely powerful tools in their own right, never mind as a collective.

As is the iZotope way these days, a key theme with Neutron is enabling the user to create their perfect channel strip through the deployment of machine learning, as realised by the Assistant View. Here, the plugin learns the sonic profile of the input signal and automagically sets up the optimal strip for it, optionally guided by an imported reference file that you want to replicate the sound of. On that score, it’s not half bad, certainly, but we wouldn’t be featuring Neutron in this round-up if it didn’t also function as a fully manual processing chain, which it most assuredly does – with aplomb.

Waves Scheps Omni Channel 2

Not as overtly ‘modular’ as the others here, Andrew Scheps’ lauded channel strip gives you five fixed (but reorderable) modules to work with, but opens things up with multiple transformational modes for its Preamp and Compressor sections: Odd, Even, Heavy and Crush saturation styles, and VCA, FET, Optical and Soft compression types, respectively. The other three modules comprise EQ, Gate and the DS2 de-esser, and between them, the five processors provide a great deal of control and flexibility, and sound… well, good enough for Scheps, so more than good enough for the likes of us!

That’s not the limit of Omni Channel 2’s talents, though, as it can also pull of a singularly impressive trick that really does take the modular channel strip concept in a different direction to the others here: the ability to host VST plugins. This means that any plugin on your computer becomes a potential module within the Omni Channel 2 plugin, positionable anywhere in the chain among the main five, and obviously bringing with it all sorts of exciting mixing and sound design implications – it’s the colourful icing on a truly delicious cake.

Do you have a favourite modular channel strip plugin, or are you firmly in the ‘build it yourself’ camp? Let us know in the comments.