Software techniques for sidechain

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twonky

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Ahoy Ladies!

This subject came up in a another thread about dull mix problems. Blue BEar was telling me that he sidechains his Roland piano to the the tempo of his music along w/ some careful eq to get the piano samples to sound more life like.

Can anyone tell me how I can achieve this technique w/ my software compressors. I have the Waves stuff and abunch of other compressors as well. I am using Samplitude.

Thanks for any info

Twonky
 
I didn't read Bruce's post but I can comment on sidechains in general.One use you are probably already familiar with is "ducking".When you listen to a commercial with background music and the announcer's voice comes in,causing the music to duck down underneath it.When he finishes "...so buy the new Ford truck!" the music swells back up to its original loudness.
In this case,the compressor would be loaded on the music track with the voiceover track in the sidechain,acting as a trigger.Each time the voiceover made a signal,the compressor would kick in and push the music down.When ever the signal stops (trigger) so does the compression effect.
So you can use any effect that has a sidechain to be triggered by anything else routed to the sidechain.
 
this is good question...
Tom would you use this for things other then comercial? like make guitars louder when the vocal track is quiet ....
 
You could,but...It might be too noticeable.The sign of compressor overuse is genericaly known as "pumping and breathing".You might want to use automated fader changes instead.
De-essing is another common sidechain use.

Wow,now THAT is a big fish!
 
High!

I have some other possible applications of sidechaining:

Use a different EQ in the sidechain than in the compressed signal. If your bassy sounds get everything to pump in a mix you might try to cut the bass off in the sidechain. Then your bass drum won't let everything breath/pump...

Use a different track that you shifted back in time; the control siganl will arrive at the compressor before the signal to be compressed. This way you can quite easily level out percussive material without loosing the transients... (OK, you might be trying a better drummer ;) )

Use SLIGHT ducking on tracks that might collide with your vocal tracks. You will have to set up the comp in a way that it ducks the heavy distorted guitars by let's say 2 dB whenever the voice gets in. This seems to be used quite often in the hardcorish style... You might not be able to ride the faders as fast and accurate as your compressor does...

Ciao

Axel
 
Thanks for the replies folkes, but perhaps I need to make my actual question more clear:

Are there any software compressors that you guys know of that will allow me to emply the techniques you have described above?
I would like to avaiod going out of the PC to hardware devices
 
High!

I'm not perfectly sure, but I think the waves C1+ compressor can do this it is called L->R or so... then your left channel will serve as sidechain to your right one...

Axel
 
The db-audioware plugins have sidechains build in. You can plug one in the track you use for control and one into the track you want to affect and link them through their own sidechains.
It's one of the best sidechain implementations I've seen, very easy to use. Besides, the db-audioware plugins are great quality tmo and very cheap.

www.db-audioware.com

Peter.
 
Cooly!

Thems was the answers I was looking for. I have both of those comps. But I guess I havnt really figured out how to really impliment those functions.

Can either of you guys give me (without putting your self out too much) a little tutorial of how to use the sidechain feature?

Either way thanks for the info
 
With the db-audioware dynamics processor (actually the only one with sidechaining) it's very simple: you load up two of them, insert one in the track that you want to control the sidechain and set it to send, insert the other into the track you want to control and set it to receive.

Peter.
 
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