Sidechain advice/tips/feedback?

[smg]

Greetings to everyone over here;haven't been to these forums for a while but when I was posting a lot a year or so back learned a lot from everyone who replied to my threads and want to thank everyone again for taking the time to help me figure things out.....

Have moved to an "in the box" DAW approach from the hardware-based one I was using back then so I'm thinking that the situation of people offering suggestions based on using DAW's and my trying to figure out how to do things w/my set-up is no longer a factor.....

Currently working on a fairly complicated mix involving a focus on range allocation/levels so everything interacting rhythmically will be clearly audible,this is a latin percussion-oriented track where the low conga and bass play the same figure(or similar ones) at the same time and as a result I've set up a send from the conga track to the bass bus where I've got a compressor with sidechaining....

What I'm trying to figure out is how to have the bass stay at a relatively consistent level when it plays something that the low conga isn't simultaneously rhythmically supporting,I've figured out compressor settings that give me the type of low conga balance/level in the mix I'm after but whenever the bass plays something by itself the volume jumps way up so I decided to post over here after tweaking things for while without getting the results I was looking for-

The overall mix levels are still in the developing stages so things are very much fluid,in flux...have 4 different bass tracks w/different sounds blended together going into the bass bus and the relative bus level in the overall mix is still being looked at...

Factors involved here in terms of the sidechaining itself are the conga send level as well as all the usual compressor settings...I've got the standard fast attack as well as a release time that preserves the sustain of the bass notes,been trying different knee/ratio/threshold/makeup gain settings...

I'm wondering if setting up another compressor before the sidechain compressor would be a good idea in terms of the bass level remaining relatively constant or at least not jumping up abruptly.....

Again much thanks to everyone who replied to my earlier posts over here......

 

[keith.rogers]

Have you tried it the other way around, i.e., with the bass feeding a compressor on the conga? And, you might play with an EQ filter on input to the compressor so it only hits when they really overlap in range, whichever way you work it out.

It sounds very complex. Maybe the EQs for the instruments or busses may need a little more tweaking before turning on all the compressors.

P.S. (Edit) it's not clear (without hearing it) whether ducking is really what you are trying to achieve here, or if you just need to limit the combination of conga and bass, which might mean some filtered compression/limiting on the mixbus, or bussing those together and applying compression there. I mean, if you want to keep the bass level, sidechaining a compressor on that track/buss isn't going to do that, especially if you've got any makeup gain!

 

[smg]

Hey Keith! Remember you from earlier threads here, thx for posting man...

I'm not sure how a reverse approach would work as I want to duck the bass not the conga....

Appreciate your suggestions about setting things up in terms of specific frequency areas...

What type of approach would you use in terms of routing both instruments to a dedicated bus and processing things there and how would that be different from the way I've got things set up currently where a send from the conga track is feeding the sidechaining on the bass bus?I'm using a pre-fader send and it seems that a maximum level works best...

One of the main things I'm focusing on generally with this mix is keeping things out of the red/clipping zone,seem to have to keep pushing faders up to hear things then try to rebalance everything to eliminate this across the board...

In terms of the four bass tracks feeding the bus,not sure how many of these I'll actually be using,just set up some different EQ settings to see which fit best in the mix...

Still working on both the bass and conga (the latter has 99% of the conga sound I think works best for the overall mix,cut out a lot of the ring in favor of the slap/percussive effect and might dial a little back in)....so these factors will be part of the overall approach to getting these elements of the track to work together and in the context of the whole mix...

 

[Massive Master]

Maybe I missed it, but do you have a compressor on the bass that *isn't* fed by a different input...? You may need one to control the overall level of the instrument (or use volume automation) and another to control the balance between the two.

 

[smg]

Hey John!! Glad to see you're still involved over here man.....Appreciate all your help 2018-19...

Right now just have the sidechain set up on the bass bus...thx for the heads up re-using vol.autom.if necessary...

As far as your seconding my idea of preceding this one w/compressor for the bass itself,what kind of settings would you suggest for this one(as well as any ideas you might have re-sidechaining settings for all the parameters)....

Have been getting replies to this same thread posted in some FB mixing groups where people pointed to my using too aggressive a threshold level as being what's behind this ..so that the bass is being ducked to a point where this kind of "sudden shift to a louder level" effect is being created...