It's a good question and I asked that myself several years ago when I was first getting into it. Think of it this way, there is a specific tool to accomplish a specific task. Not all compressors work the same way, some do certain things better than others, same with channel strips, one might work great on drums while another works better with stringed instruments. The trick is to choose the plugins that accomplish a wide variety of tasks and are useable in many situations as opposed to those that are very specific. In the end trust me, you'll end up with about 10 compressors, 6 channel strips, 3 saturation modules, a couple of de-essers and then some more specific tools for very limited purposes but are essential to create a killer mix....welcome to the weird world of audio production :)
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Why do u need all this? Asking honestly cos I just got into mixing. Everything sounds so compliacted
It's a good question and I asked that myself several years ago when I was first getting into it. Think of it this way, there is a specific tool to accomplish a specific task. Not all compressors work the same way, some do certain things better than others, same with channel strips, one might work great on drums while another works better with stringed instruments. The trick is to choose the plugins that accomplish a wide variety of tasks and are useable in many situations as opposed to those that are very specific. In the end trust me, you'll end up with about 10 compressors, 6 channel strips, 3 saturation modules, a couple of de-essers and then some more specific tools for very limited purposes but are essential to create a killer mix....welcome to the weird world of audio production :)