Product Review: One of the best Neve emulations out there? Lindell 80 Series by Plugin Alliance

In this product review, I'll be sharing my personal thoughts on the Lindell 80 Series channel strip by Plugin Alliance. I have been a Neve fan for quite some time and often enjoy comparing the different flavors available in the market. You can expect a completely unbiased review as I have no affiliation with Plugin Alliance in any way. I'll be giving you the good, bad, and the ugly, and I wont be holding any punches ;)

First Impressions

The first thing I notice is the User Interface (UI). I think it's laid out well and visually easy to understand. Going from left to right, you have your VU meter, In/Out, Gain Reduction, and a mic pre section along with a 20db pad, and a Unity button. Then you have your EQ/Filter section. Then you have your Dynamic section with parallel processing, side-chain options. Then you have a Gate section, followed by your output section.

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How I use the Lindell 80

My initial testing, includes using this plug-in as it was intended to be used which is as a channel strip to emulate a console. This means you would pull up an instance of Lindell 80 Channel on every track in your session, while using the Lindell 80 Bus on all your Aux/Bus/Master tracks.

Being an emulation of a Neve 80 series channel strip, this channel strip is very versatile and can be used on just about every genre of music. With TMT you can really dial in the amount of harmonic distortion you want in your signal. I've used this channel strip on some of my own recordings, beats, and mixes as well. It took some time to learn the "sweet spots"

Sometimes I even use the Lindell 80 Channel Strip on my mix bus and dial in just the right amount of processing to add warmth, glue, and shape the overall mix. ;)

Armed with the classic Neve Preamp section, both the 1073 and the 1084 EQ, 225 compressor and additional gate/expander, just makes it flat out dangerous.

Pros and Cons

Being within the Plugin Alliance bundle offerings, you get this lovely channel strip with any of their Mega plans. Without the subscription, you're looking at coughing up anywhere upwards of $300 to get a license. Get a 14 day full functional trial of the Plugin Alliance Mega plan for as little as $9.99/mo today.

Processing Power:

If you would like to mimic an analog console, you'll want to call up an instance of the Lindell 80 channel on every track, while calling up the Lindell 80 bus on your aux tracks, and master/mix bus. Keep in mind this takes up additional processing power from your cpu. Be sure to keep an eye on your system usage. (Most DAWs have this feature, see your documentation for your specific DAW to see how). If you find that you don't have enough processing power to run an instance on every track, then I would suggest just putting it on tracks that absolutely need treatment. Top down mixing is another great way to save on CPU processing power and is also another method of mixing altogether.

For me and others like me who can't particularly justify the purchase of a large format console like a Neve 80's series console, we've been aggressively chasing that warm silky Neve sound. With the Lindell 80 I believe this allows musicians to get that Neve sound for a fraction of the cost.

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My Final Thoughts

This brings me to my final thoughts on the Lindell 80. I'll say in my many years of doing of being involved in music production, this is one of the most inspiring Neve 80 Series console emulations out there. Its very fun to use and very easy to get great sounding results. Its really well designed and is jam packed with features that even the original console didn't have. It's safe to say the Lindell 80 series plugins by Plugin Alliance have earned it's spot in my mix chain! Have you used the Lindell 80? Let us know your thoughts on it!!