Perpetual Escape - Sin Six

[mikej]

That was one of the things I learned when looking into how all those initial Waves signature series of plug-ins worked and broke them down. Especially the CLA or JJP vocal ones. There's a lot of parallel compression and eq going on in those.. These days most of the time I send lead vocal to 4 or 5 parallel busses with different compression and eqs or distortion and blend them together. Throwing one out phase can create something interesting too.

Not sure if you have seen them already but there are some somewhat official diagrams floating about for the CLA ones that show roughly how they are set up, they certainly show the thinking behind them anyway.

Yeah, I think they are quite useful from a learning point of view. 
I find I mainly only use a small number of quite basic plugins these days (and I think my mixes are getting a bit better).  But I do use plenty of ideas and things (eq curves and compression ideas, etc) from all the various plugins I *thought* I needed, so not a total waste of money... haha.  Well I feel I have got value from them from an educational point of view.  It's funny - finding out what doesn't work for you is as equally useful as finding out what does I think.
I am pretty sure I wouldn't really understand what people are 'getting' from LA2A and 1176 compression unless I had the plugin emulations, for example.  I've never used any outboard gear.
I have certainly taken some inspiration from some of the eq curves, but I didn't really pick up on the parallel eq aspect before. I haven't tried the JJP ones but I did pick up the CLA pack a couple of years ago.  I quite like the cla bass one on occasion.
Anyway, bit of a ramble, but might be useful to someone I guess.
Cheers!