There's a lot of info out there about the Console shaper and how best to use it. I personally don't use it because, for me, any benefit derived from its use (and I didn't find much if any, but my hearing is not great) was offset by the unacceptable additional cpu loading causing problems - ymmv.

I find using a 'tape emulator' on the master bus does the job for me with less fuss and crossbleed from hidden track artifacts etc. To be fair I haven't tried the Console Shaper for a long time and it may well be that subsequent iterations are just dandy and no doubt other posters will sing its praises....

What you're hearing has to do with the Bus / Passthrough settings I believe. There are different options for how it will interact with buses.

And yes, it's pretty CPU intensive in the production stage so I've stopped using it there.

It's easier to manage the CPU usage in a mix session.

There is CTC-1, it includes three models. The Custom one is my favorite, it's kind of like a stronger variation on the Console Shaper sound.

I have used it once on master bus back in the day it came out. I am not entirely sure it fits my style of music production. Crosstalk is nice maybe for live music recording/mixing. Noise... depends on situation and track. As for the saturation, I like to do that my way by combining J35 and Decapitator (mode E) in that order on master bus.

Console Shaper is ok but for my taste a bit on the quite side I prefer the Tape from Softube on the MixFx as it’s a bit more easy to get a quick on that (Also good looking !!)

Interesting. I didn't notice the CPU use. I'm guessing then my VCC is probably a better bet.

Is it possible to remove the place holder off my buses? I likely won't be using the shaper.