I’m a huge fan of AR TG Mastering Chain. It’s one of my favorite “use this all the time” Waves plugins…
But Scheps Omni Channel is my favorite channel strip. I use it on tracks & submix busses all the time. It’s a swiss army knife!
Tonight I had the wild idea of using it on the mix bus, the way I normally use AR TG Mastering Chain.
As it turns out, it’s great tool to finalize a song! You get three types of saturation (I like a just a hint of “ODD” on the mix bus").
The “Bass Thump” is sometimes just what a song needs to warm it up and increase the bass. It actually works more like a “tilt” than a narrow low end boost, which is great. This can be a one-click fix if a song is feeling anemic.
I always use low/high pass filters on my mixes to cull the subsonic frequencies and round out the highest… And the filters sound good to my ears in Omni Channel and I enjoy the precise control. I actually use the additional Insert so I can use the saturation at the front in a “PRE” and the filter at the end in a second “PRE”. What an outstanding feature!
For those who don’t know – the Insert feature lets you insert almost any Waves plugin inside Omni Channel, which is particularly useful if you need something between the EQ and Compressor, for example…
But in my case I wanted a second “PRE” insert, and you can do that! You can add a second insert of any of Omni Channel Category which is — awesome.
Anyhow, what I found is the versatile EQ and two stages of dynamic EQ in the DS2 are really useful on the mix bus. And the compression, and built in limiter sound good even on the mix bus!
To be clear, I don’t crush my mixes… If I was going really heavy with limiting I’d probably use L1+ or L2, but if you’re exporting your mix with a reasonable dynamic range then Omni Channel works great on the mix bus!
Try it! Omni Channel may be Waves’s most versatile plugin. Use it anywhere, use it everywhere!