Duck!!! ...here comes the kick again!!

[RawDepth]

I was experimenting with ducking the bass track on my computer DAW. I used the kick drum track as the sidechain input. I ran the tracks out of the DAW, (soundcard) thru the D/A converters, and into the outboard compressor appropriately. I returned the ducked bass back thru the A/D converter, and back into the DAW to record it. It worked pretty well except that either my converters or that crappy ART compressor colored the bass track a bit. Oh well, I'll upgrade someday. I just wanted to see if it would work and it did.

I expected there would be noticeable latency in the new track, but there was not much at all. I zoomed in on the exact starting point of the first note and compared it with the original bass track. There was only 0.022 seconds of difference on the timeline. Of course, I chopped off that little bit and re-aligned the track.

There was one peculiar thing though. The new bass track appears to be in opposite phase now. Where some peaks in the original waveform used to go higher above the center line than below, they are now the opposite by being greater below the center line. I guess it doesn't matter because it is a mono track anyway. I just can't figure how that could have occurred though.

Oh well! I just thought I would share my little story.

RawDepth

 

[Joseph Hanna]

I'm curious as to what exactly is "crappy" about the ART compressor??? Admittedly I've only used them two or three times and where they seemed to be typically slow opto compression I did NOT come away from the session thinking they were crappy.

Seemed fairly musical in and of themselves.

 

[Farview]

Phase is a time relationship. Are the upswings of the waves lined up together? If they are, the compressor setting was quick enough to clamp down on the initial transient while leaving the downswing alone.
If the wave is the same, just upside down, you have a problem somewhere in that signal path.