Engineer and guitarist Sean Gould works with some of the best up-and-coming and established acts in the music industry, with recent projects have that include Train Save Me, San Francisco, Boys Like Girls Love Drunk, Uncle Kracker Happy Hour, and much more.
For his mixes, Gould relies heavily on Metric Halo ChannelStrip, a plug-in that combines equalization, dynamics, and delay, to turn out his known results on short deadlines. Gould, who prefers to mix in the box for portability, values ChannelStrip’s CPU footprint.
Gould runs multiple instances of ChannelStrip in a far smaller footprint than would be achievable with separate EQs, dynamics, and delays. “ChannelStrip is always the first plug-in I go to when something needs a fix or a change to make it sit better in the mix,” said Gould.”
“The interface is easy to look at and use,” he said. “It’s all right there – gating, compression, EQ – and all with selectable pre- and post-arrangements. It’s very versatile.” “I think there’s a tendency for people to collect as many plug-ins as they can,” he said.
“It can be a little overwhelming and ultimately, I think, counter-productive. It’s not like I have time to try out five different manufacturers’ EQs on a particular track!”
“For my way of thinking, it is better to have a few excellent plug-ins that I know backward and forward. It really speeds up the workflow. ChannelStrip is that plug-in for all the basic stuff that I need on just about every track.”
Though surprising to some, when Gould finds himself stuck for a bit of inspiration he often turns to ChannelStrip – relying on the presets to set him off in a productive direction. “It’s funny, but I don’t even stick to the presets that are designed for the instrument I’m working on,” he said.
“I’ll scroll through the vocal presets for a bass track. I invariably find something that makes me say, ‘wow, I never would have thought to do that, but it works!’ With a few tweaks, I have something inspiring.”
