ECS is a smooth and clean channel I use as a kind of polish or "touch up" on any individual track in my Pro Tools mixes. Based on vintage 1970's hardware EQs, there is a musical-sounding three-band equalizer with a separate high pass filter section that ranges from 20Hz to 300Hz. I liked that this extra filter section either adds to the EQ or is switchable to the side-chain of the compressor section to lessen gain reduction on audio with heavy low frequency content. It is a thoughtful design that keeps this filter in play even though the EQ section is bypassed.

The EQ section continues with a variable low frequency shelf (35Hz to 300Hz), a semi-parametric mid-range section (250Hz to 8kHz) with switchable narrow and broad Q choices, and a high frequency shelf (4kHz to 16kHz). All three bands have variable +/- 15dB of boost/cut and when you mouse over either the boost/cut or frequency knobs there is an instant popup window to indicate their exact values--nice!

I thought the compressor section very simple and somewhat pre-set in that there are no attack and release controls but those time constants were well selected and contribute to the smooth-operating ECS. There are also just three Ratio choices (3:1, 5:1, and 10:1) and a calibrated Threshold control (-50dBFS to 0dBFS). I could have used a larger and calibrated Gain Reduction meter plus GR does not show up along side of the channel fader in Pro Tools.

The plugin finishes with a Wet/Dry control, Output final level, and Drive. Drive applies saturation in small doses all the way up to distortion. This is a great way to add some grit or "hair" around super clean guitars, keyboard parts--even lead vocals. I liked that Drive is a real tool that works very gently and doesn't come on "all at once" like many distortion plugins--a little goes a long way.

I used the ECS on a bass guitar track with good results. I balanced the plugin by adjusting the Output Level to match the plugin on bypass--making inserting ECS on an already automated track work well. I also liked many of the presets use the Wet/Dry more than I normally would--that is OK too. Wet/Dry allows parallel processing without worry of phase issues.

Next I tried ECS on a softly sung lead vocal that had difficult competing with a busy track. ECS shined here with easy going compression and a smooth EQ curve. A small amount of Drive (set to 1.7) lifted the vocal track up in just the right way! Awesome!

The Symphony ECS Channel Strip, now also a Native plugin, sells for $99 MSRP as a download.