Dante: Again the six slots with essential elements leads to a compact design.   This time there is a slot for user selectable Insert Effect. What gave you this idea rather than giving another fixed device such as a limiter or stereo widener etc?

Ray: Enabling the analog feature will also act as a limiter and the compressor can work in peak mode. So no need for a limiter in my opinion. And since it is a mono device (1 channel) it can't be fitted with widening.  I couldn't think or decide of one dedicated processor to complete the set so I thought I'd keep it flexible, as with the EffectRack. It is designed with analog gear in mind and that is what you would want in the analog domain; chip in your own special processor giving it that extra that you want.

Dante: There seems to be plenty of tonal options including a 4-band equaliser, a graphic equaliser and the low pass filter and high pass filter combination. Was all this based on your experience of mixing on large analog desks ?

Ray: Not only desks but high end gear in general. Not an overload of features but a balanced set which just works.

Dante: I could see this device as useful not just at the mixing stage but also for recording. For example as a microphone pre. And the gate would be great for eliminating guitar amp hum. Did you have recording applications in mind this device?

Ray: Actually, if you ask me, it is even more appropriate for recording. Input your mike or guitar or whatever and tune to a good decent sound. If it sounds good just record it.  You can always record a second track parallel with no processing. But over time with your experience growing in mixing and recording you learn to make good decisions. And you know it is better to compress or equalise a little twice than a lot once!

Another trick; with an equaliser filtering sounds better than adding. So if you add highs and lows that generally sounds worse than just filtering some of the mids. One should realize that everything needs its place in a mix. Like a photograph you can’t all be a the center of attention. It has to be staged to add depth and width.  That is a different approach to compressing and equalising than processing an instrument solo-ed.

That is an example where filtering on the ChannelRack’s preamp can come in handy. Strip a signal of excess frequencies. It just clutters up the mix.  Just clean it up and polish a bit at recording stage.  You’ll end up using less processing in the mixing stage. If I recall correct ScopeRise has a good article on the 3d field in mixing.

Dante:  That may have been 'Mastering The Cube' which I'll come to later in the MultiCOMP discussion.

Ray: There were requests to make the ChannelRack stereo but since I had already made stereo compressors and equalisers which imho could do the job I thought it would be obsolete.  The only thing missing seems to be an effective gate or expander. The kind of processing on the Rack we tend to use more on voices or guitars, basses, kicks and snares or other instruments. Keyboards and synths have a wide frequency spectrum and most of the time a lot is done on the synth itself or with other processors I have released.

Dante and Ray January 2018