is Metric Halo Channel Strip still worth getting in 2021, primarily for Vocal EQ and Compression ?

well if john hanes and Serban use it then it has to be good.

No sarcasm intended.

Cheers

I've gone back to this recently after trying/buying almost all of the SSL-style strips available over the years. The MH really is special and so fast to work with given the combo of knobs and/or graphs depending on your preference. The gate and compressor are two of the best in plug-in land, IMO and I adore the EQ.

In a word... Yes

I’ve never found a reason to look anywhere else as it always sets up fast and works. The gate is a great. The EQ never gets in the way, love the ability to stack HPF and LPF to change their behavior and the comp is super flexible. Don’t use the limiter.

That said, never use it on vocals. Got outboard for that.

Got a mail from Metric Halo today... Updates for mac, and............................................. they now support two activations on both mac and windows

"All new licenses have two activations available. All existing licenses have also been updated to support two activations. This change applies for both macOS and Windows.

If your existing license has already been activated to a machine or an iLok, you may not have an available activation in your iLok account. This issue can be resolved by deactivating the existing activation back to your account; once you have done this, the number of activations available should update to two - then you can re-activate the license onto your machine or iLok and you will have another activation available in your account. "

Still the SSL style plug with the most "rightness" for me. Was the first plug that felt "right" in the 90s. Has a sort of murk about it, so there is a little "win some - lose some" but the win some is great.

Long may it reign supreme. I've strayed many times from the Metric Halo Channelstrip to see if anything can beat it, but I always return to it. Still superb sounding, rock solid, and immensely powerful without an overwhelming number of controls. It leaves your transients and signal depth mostly intact, unlike so many plugins that attempt to sound "analog." And Halo was right on top of M1 Native compatibility before most other plugin developers, so bonus marks on that front...

Yup. It still sits in the default compressor position in PT for me (because then I also get the EQ, while having FF Pro-Q3 in the EQ slot for its dynamic capability). So fast to use, sounds excellent, and excellent support.

I literally do the exact same thing with my default compressor and EQ slots.

The MH CS3 is the best channel strip plugin ever made!! IMO. So powerful and easy to use.

I'm surprised so many ppl still use this. It doesn't really move me that "x" engineer uses it because we are all creatures of habit and i'm sure this is more than capable. It used to be my go to strip ~10yrs ago. I've since moved on and I don't even have it installed on any of my rigs. I remember the dynamics became a weak point. Using this as just an EQ defeats the purpose of using a strip. Might as well use ProQ/Crave + your favorite comp. bx_SSL9KJ and SSL CS3 are my go to strips.

This post does make me want to install it and play around with it. I don't automatically equate old to bad. I still use Sonnox and Waves R(comp&vox)

My main Channel Strip--and I have all the BX stuff as well as Waves.

Funny this thread should pop up. Was working on a mix last night with the artist next to me (ugh) and was auditioning between the MH Channel and SSL EV2 along with using either Oxford EQ or FFPro-Q with various compressors. The artist preferred the MH CS each time.

I usually reach for it first and have years of my own presets I saved with it so it's pretty fast for me to use.

There's something remarkable about this plug-in which I'm finding increasingly rare: it seems to almost perfectly maintain the transients and clarity/depth/width of the signal no matter what you are doing. Every other channel strip adds this flattening cloud of something or another which cumulatively over 24 to 32 channels simply bothers me. A mix on an analog console doesn't do this, it adds beef while maintaining clarity and depth, but plugins attempting to emulate that fail. Metric Halo seems to recognize this fact and opt for transparent yet lively and effective processing.

On pretty much every mix I do on most if not all tracks. This and Soothe get me 90% where I need to be. A few other things for saturation and dynamics.

Well said. I recently purchased MH CS and am slowly getting back into recording. Using great front end outboard pre and comp, Mogami, etc.

After getting signal (vox, keyboard, drum machine) into DAW, I hate the "flattening cloud" coming from a lot of plugs--zaps the depth and life right out of a track. Great results so far with MH.

Metric Halo just works - I've been using all of their plugins a lot

The partnership with Make Believe Studios really brought them to the next level. I use MB EQ over channelstrip now, but still use the compressor.
We live in a good time for audio, if you know what to use.

Love MH CS use it all the time.

Of all the CS I have, the only thing that I could see replacing MH CS is if Fabfilter or DMG made one
- FF: Give me a 6 band / 2 filter EQ, C2, Saturn with transformer or warm tape modes, the DS, and Gate.
- DMG, some 6 band/2 filter version of Equilibrium + Track Comp, and the DeEsser + Gate