Waves CLA MixHub Analog Modeled Channel Strip Plug-in Reviews

I learned mixing years ago before plugins were a thing. I think the "visual" mixing is cool and helpful in a way, but try to avoid it as much as possible. This plugin not only sounds great, but it forces you to use your ears. This may be the best Waves plugin I have used (and I have used most of them). You won't regret getting this!

What a great resource for the working musicians, oh and drummers. Thanks for the excellent service, guys!
Peace!
gp

Well after research I found this to be for me and it was so easy to use and learn and as always fast shipping A1 service and of any question which I had a couple were answered quickly Bart is awesome

For years I was playing with free plugins that can "help" shape the sound to a finish. After finally purchasing plugins I started falling in love. Started with Amplitube 4 specifically the Cowboys From Hell expansion then EZ Drummer with the !Metal expansion. When I bought this. How do I say it? When I bought this, I was dumb and added it after other plugins that weren't giving me what I wanted. Instead, I did more research. Learned more about Chris Lord-Agle and found that using Mixhub as the first line of shaping, you can load a preset, that's crazy a preset and instantly hear a difference. I'm not promoting using presets (because that can be bad) but simply learning how he uses his SSL and Mixhub to really bring out what you're looking for. Simply applying several instances (8 drums, 5 guitars, 5 vocals) I manage to still be able to run my DAW at 50-60 % on a Ryzen 3 2200G pushing 3.4 Ghz on 4 cores. That's right, not overclocking I am managing those specs and honestly it's amazing. Definitely do more research because reading this means you're obviously interested, also, go check out Vocal Rider as well, I really tamed my solo guitar on a song and made it completely perfect by using Mixhub and Vocal Rider (was an experience) to really bring out the level as I moved up and down my guitar's neck. Def consider adding this to your library, you will not hate me.
Genres of production - Rock/Metal

The only thing missing really is the ability to turn multiple knobs at the same time... but that is minor... the ability to see and work on 8 tracks at a time is great.... thanks for this plugin waves &CLA!!!!

I"m a bit new to the mixing world. I write and record in a small home studio. Have many other CLA plugins and love them. The mixhub is no exception. The tone is great. Dig the two compressors and the mixing many channels at once is quicker and makes sense. Have watched how Chris does this in some of his videos and I like how he says to mix with your ears and not your eyes, mixing tracks in the context of the whole mix. This plugin facilitates that well. In other reviews people have expressed they wish there was a solo button on each track. Even though I think I understand why it"s not there, I wish it was there too. There are those times you need to solo tracks. However, I use Presonus Studio One with the Fader Port. With the Fader Port I can quickly switch through tracks in the DAW with the Track left and right buttons and push the solo button on it while mousing the Mixhub with my other hand. Works pretty well for me. Hope that helps some of you out there.

CLA has again provided a plugin that is very true to emulating the console he mixes on. Very easy to set up and use. I was able to reduce my plugin count on a lot of my mixes. I recommend this one for newbies and recording pros. Try the Demo as I did for purchase. You will love it. Thanks CLA and Sweetwater.

Seriously a great plug in!
I opened a PT session of a hit songwriter with hit song session players, recorded on pro gear.
I put one instance on a stereo acoustic track, selected a preset, and instantly started grinning!
One instance each on the drum kit, and could start to hear some magic happening!
After inserting it on the remaining 10 or so tracks each. The CPU usage was at 35 to 36%.

I only used the built in presets, and had to make very little to no adjustments.
The snare was very wooly sounding and required a lot of mids and some lows to be cut.

Overall the result was a great musical sounding mix, that I didn't have to fight with for an hour...
The mix sounded like I was listening to a real song on a real record.

CLA Mix Hub is fast any easy to use, even just using the "channel strip" one per each track like I did.
I haven't used the "bucket" mode yet. Some have mentioned not being able to solo/mute in "bucket" mode. But in "channel strip" mode I had no problems doing that from Pro Tools, even on my 15.6" laptop screen.

Finally I thought it inserting it on the Master Fader would be "the magic touch"... I was wrong!
It actually was too overpowering for the mix. So I ended up using Maxim for clean limiting, and it worked great!

You can also turn on/off the EQ,Comp, and Mic Pre sections. So I'm eager to explore using it in conjunction with other plug ins like T-Racks 5.

BIG Thanks to Chris and Waves!
And another BIG thanks to Alex and Will and all the great folks at Sweetwater!

It's pretty great overall but there are some things that are not all that great.

The good: It sounds very good. The comps and eq are great and very easy to tweak. It is good enough as a stand alone channel strip to pay the asking price. The Bucket View makes it easy to tweak comp and eq in "groups" which is a similar workflow to a console - at least for me. I have about 30 tracks going on a current mix and only around 45% CPU and Memory usage (i5 quad cire running @ 4ghz oc'd, Win10/64, 16mb ram). Still very responsive.

The bad: Bucket View is *only* good for tweaking comps and eq for a "group" of channels in the same window. There is no mute-solo, limited pan, and the biggest thing for me is no actual grouping functionality. This forces you to have to dance between the plugin and the DAW to tune in these operations. One work-around I have been playing with is to buss/submix/stem groups of tracks like vox, guitars and drums where you have a number of tracks that you wish to process together. This is more for mixdown but it helps with tracking too as things can get complicated quickly due to the whole no-grouping/no-mute-solo issue. Also - why only 8 channels in a bucket? This is limiting if you regularly end up with say 10-12 tracks of drums, vox or guitars. You end up having to split them between several buckets.

What I would like to see in the future is:
- An "All Channels" view. This would really be a time saver for folks like me who mix-on-the-fly - i.e. I build my mixes up as I go.
- Increase the number of tracks in a bucket and use a scroll bar.
- Add the mute-solo and full panning to the bucket view.

I'm sure Waves will improve this plugin as time goes on and they have a great starting point. I am looking forward to more usability improvements.

Thanks,
Frank

I had mistakenly said in my review of CLA MixHub that the compressor was what caused the extreme spike in CPU cycles. I meant to say that the EQ section is what causes it, not the compressor.

I had been up all night in a session when I posted the earlier review. Sorry about the confusion.

The concept is good and the plugin sounds really good but the CPU hit, especially with the compressors engaged is huge!!! My system is very robust and this really strains it. I can get about 14 instances running with just the input and EQ engaged but when I turn on just one comp the whole thing goes up in flames.

I can see many uses for it but until Waves addresses the cycle-gobbling (which they always seem to with an update) it is impractical in full usage.

The other thing is it will not save bucket assignments in Cakewalk by Bandlab (the newest version of Sonar). Waves knows about the problem but I don't know if they have plans on addressing it.

The good: The plugin sounds great. I was surprised at the quality of the filters, the eq and dynamics control. Very nice to have that at the ready and know that it sounds good. Also I love having the Mic input volume. Adds some nice saturation. Being able to organize your recording into "buckets" is very cool. I have a track I'm working on that has 64 tracks to it. I was excited about having the tracks organized in the CLA Mix Hub, which would save me from having to look for tracks constantly on my Logic Pro X mixing board. The controls are sensitive and a little goes a long way.

The bad: I can't really tell the difference between the normal compression setting and the Blue setting.

The solo button is only available on whatever selected track you're working on and it does... nothing. So, if the solo button on the individual CLA mix hub tracks worked, then you'd still have to select that individual track to activate it, which means you have to exit CLA mix hub, select the track and then choose that channel in CLA where the solo button is available. Which defeats the purpose of the plugin.

However, since it doesn't work, you have to go back to your DAW and solo the track individually. That is a massive pain since by exiting the plugin you're defeating the very purpose it was supposed to have been designed for, again, and that's in the case of whether the solo button actually worked in the plugin or not. This is a MAJOR design flaw. There should be a solo button available on every track in every bucket.

Another MAJOR design flaw is the lack of a Master Volume. How did this get by Waves and CLA?

I desperately hope that WAVES will do an update of the software to include an easy access solo button that actually WORKS without having to exit the plugin.

Also, this plugin will suck up CPU like you wouldn't believe. I am running no plugins on any of the individual tracks (all bounced in place) and was running Newfangled Audio's Equivocate and Elevate, a Dynamics Mapper, a Width knob, and a FET compressor plugin on the stereo buss on an i7 Core Macbook Pro with 16gb ram and an internal SSD and my computer could not keep up. Could not handle but one or two seconds of playback. I can't recommend this plugin to anyone because, frankly, having to go back and forth every time I wanted to fine tune a track to solo it, especially when you're working with 8 full buckets, was a massive pain. I still found myself looking for the tracks in the DAW, which means the CLA Mix Hub is failing at its main purpose. I have 3 different SSL boards, so I can still take advantage of the great compressors and Eq's and dynamics they provide. I suppose I will just have to go back to grouping within Logic Pro X, which works well, but I was looking forward to that total control from within one plugin that was hyped.

I'm kind of bummed because even though the price was dropped to $69 and the plugin sounds great, it does NOT solve the problem it purports to solve - which is namely to be able to move from one group of tracks to another, maintaining complete control of each track within CLA mix hub without having to go back to your DAW. It fails in this regard. I abandoned the CLA Mix Hub after having to keep going back to look for individual tracks so that I could activate the few plugins I had running on the stereo buss, which the CLA Mix Hub CPU consumption was preventing me from doing. Waves and CLA have put out some really good products. I hope they can update this one and fix the design flaws, which are MAJOR. I have no idea how neither WAVES nor CLA noticed this. Please fix it!! I don't plan to use it again otherwise.. and I would have lost $... in the deal. Bummer.

If they do an update and fix these issues and I find myself using it, I will definitely update this review. But right now, a total disappointment. My intention isn't to sour anyone on the CLA brand of plugins, since I own two other ones that work great and I still use. But this one isn't ready for primetime.

First, I love Sweetwater, and Waves, both! I purchased the CLA Mix Hub plug-in, got the download and code with no problem but, when I tried to use it in my DAW (Cubase Pro 10), I was shocked to see my whole DAW crash! Twice! I spoke with Paul, from tech-support and we did a "remote" session, downloading a different DAW, temporarily, to diagnose the problem. I was sad, but understood and Paul was great.
I would love to use the plug-in but, won't even try unless the bugs are dealt with.
I do have the SSL Plug-ins in my Cubase, (E& G channels Bus Comp & EQ), I just thought having CLA's SSL console would be a kick.
Again, I love Sweetwater and Waves, both, but, I might be a little weary of a "Latest & Greatest" plug-in.... in the future.

Cordially, Greg