Side Chaining

secondecho · Post by **secondecho** » Sun May 20, 2007 11:00 am

Hi Folks

I was wondering whether there was a technique for sidechgaining using only Ableton supplied plugins? Im running an Intel Mac and it seems that all the tutorials on sidechaining have links to only free PC plugin compressors. The technique itself seems relatiuvely straighforward so im sure Ableton have catered for this with one of their plug-ins?....

as always any advice is greatly appreciated...'''''...\\\\\\;;;;...

peace
dave

recently saw: Nathan Fake live - amazing Ableton gig, this kid is gifted to say the least
listening to: "CAN - Futute days" at this very moment... lovely stuff..

mortenperriard · Post by **mortenperriard** » Sun May 20, 2007 3:03 pm

Beleive it or not, Live 6 and the supplied plugins are not able to do sidechain compression... Which is like selling a car without wheels, if you ask me.. So much for "DJ friendly" and the other buzz..

If you are on a Mac, like me, there aren't really any 3rd party plugins for the job either. Well, there is DualComp, but I would not recommend it to anyone.

cheers, Morten

funk313 · Post by **funk313** » Sun May 20, 2007 3:20 pm

try Sonalksis Analog gate..its capable of sidechaining in Live and its for mac...

dabedoo · Post by **dabedoo** » Mon May 21, 2007 5:53 am

otiumFX Compadre - Stereo Sidechain compressor does the job quiet
smoothly too but it's not free

rokhausen · Post by **rokhausen** » Tue May 22, 2007 4:54 am

i was looking for an answer to this as well...

but i went ahead and experimented with ableton's native Compressor II plugin and acheived what appears to be sidechaining. i gave it it's own track and told it to accept audio from an operator kickdrum patch... then i routed some hastily thrown together eurotrash synth lines to the track with the compressor on it. i had to set the sidechain down down and make sure it responded to frequencies at the lower end of the spectrum (my kickdrum). eh, here's a pic:

the "pump" effect was pretty heavy. i also tried routing the synth tracks one at a time to the master channel, and they were definitely not pumping then. playing with the volume of the kick patch yielded pretty much the same results as not playing with it... so the compressor appeared to be frequency responsive! (?)

is there something more that a 3rd party plug can offer that i'm missing?

Clearscreen · Post by **Clearscreen** » Tue May 22, 2007 5:26 am

is there something more that a 3rd party plug can offer that i'm missing?

not really. compII does do traditional sidechaining, and works fine, but i think they really mean keytracked (is that the right word?) sidechaining where the compression is driven by a masking track thats routed to the compressor but not necessarily heard. have a play with this compressor and you'll see what i mean. http://www.geocities.jp/webmaster_of_sss/vst/#sidech

rokhausen · Post by **rokhausen** » Tue May 22, 2007 9:55 pm

Clearscreen wrote:
is there something more that a 3rd party plug can offer that i'm missing?
not really. compII does do traditional sidechaining, and works fine, but i think they really mean keytracked (is that the right word?) sidechaining where the compression is driven by a masking track thats routed to the compressor but not necessarily heard.

ahhhh, i see now. yes, that would be a nice native to have for certain applications. thanks for clearing it up.

laird · Post by **laird** » Tue May 22, 2007 10:12 pm

Live's Compressor II, as far as I understand, does not accept a side-chain (although I've never tried to send it one...)

the manual states that the side-chain EQ can take the audio that is being compressed, and run it through a filter first, and use that as a "side-chain".
It is a side-chain, but only a filtered copy of the incoming audio.

this is useful if you dont want to compress the thumpy kick drums... you can tell the compressor to ignore all loud signals that are below 200 hz (for instance) and only apply compression when stuff above 200hz goes above threshold.

Again, as I said, I've never tried to feed Compressor II a side-chain input... because that input is, according to the manual, an EQed copy of the audio input sent to COmpressor II.

Euklid.fox · Post by **Euklid.fox** » Sun May 27, 2007 1:41 am

well that'ts not a true stereo sidechain but it make almost same effect

make a track Awith your kick, pan it hard to left
make a track b with your pad/bass , pan it hard right

send both to a third track C. here you put your compresor II

now add an utility and keep only the right channel, so result is the pad track
compressed by the kick (..and the pad but as the kick is usually louder it will work) add another utility and set st widh to zero to get back to mono.

now you have to get back your original kick on another track.

play both and tweak, you'll get that pumping effect.

Airwave · Post by **Airwave** » Sun May 27, 2007 7:23 am

geez guys make a search

And don't say it's not the same, as you want to use a compressor as an fx, that's it.

Written by Airwave on Sept 22, updated today:

"Well well well

in fact, THERE IS a sidechain compressor, hidden somewhere in Live, and you wouldn't believe this, it really makes wonders for dance music, but unfortunately not for anything else..

Forget about comp II for 5 minutes. Insert AutoPan, set the rate to 1/4, with a sine-waveform, set the angle to O° first. OF course remove the L to R effect, unsuitable here. . Set the shape as you want it, to emulate the release of compression, while you can set the angle to 60, 70° to simulate slower attacks. Increase the amount slowly until you get the amount of "comp" that you want.

it really helps. So you guys wondering why the ableton ppl didn't go for sidechain compression plugins in L6?? I think this more or less explains why!

I am not sure but I didn't find this little tip back in the forum pages... maybe someone could post a link if there's 1?? "

Laurent

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Sun May 27, 2007 9:54 am

Airwave wrote: I am not sure but I didn't find this little tip back in the forum pages... maybe someone could post a link if there's 1?? "
Laurent

Tips and tricks sticky mate. No need to look far

Vaishiyas · Post by **Vaishiyas** » Mon May 28, 2007 3:11 pm

this one is really good working

ok it is not sony oxford but this is still good,but u have to use reaktor from Ni.

http://www.native-instruments.com/index ... tchid=4862

Hannes

jeskola · Post by **jeskola** » Mon May 28, 2007 3:35 pm

Anyone use Massive for sidechaingin - i read somthign in the manual about being able to do so - but didnt look much further ... anyone shed some light>?

Vaishiyas · Post by **Vaishiyas** » Mon May 28, 2007 3:50 pm

@ jeskola

massive support at the moment only his internal sidechaining,this works only for massives internal signal routing.

btw...will be cool to have an Massive fx to use it only other VSTI/Audio channels

Hannes

jeskola · Post by **jeskola** » Mon May 28, 2007 3:55 pm

Vaishiyas wrote:@ jeskola

massive support at the moment only his internal sidechaining,this works only for massives internal signal routing.

btw...will be cool to have an Massive fx to use it only other VSTI/Audio channels

Hannes

So could you not then set up a tempo synched dummy kick (4/4 for example) using the step seqencer and have it pump your massive synth or bass patch ? Or have i got what it does wrong?

Side Chaining

Side Chaining

this is working