3rd Party Compressors (Side chaining)

[Louvelle]

Hi,
I just bought some waves plug-ins and so now i would like to use one of the compressors for sidechaining within Live. I cant for the life of me work out how to achieve this. i think i saw somewhere that this was possible in version 6 but is this still possible.

Any help on this would be much appreciated.

[jorgetakei]

since i cant afford any of the waves bundles, i dont know them well. but normally sidechaining works:

signal output -> compressor sidechain signal input

check your I/O channel-section, you should have the waves-compressor as an output-option. there goes your signal...

[Louvelle]

Thanks mate, its not the concept im having trouble with. This question relates to any 3rd party compressor (ie. not abletons compressor), doesn't have to be a waves plug.

You nailed it with the comment on the I/O sections of each channel.

BUT its not there.

only channels can be selected from the drop down box in the 'Audio to' section and likewise for 'Audio from, there is a second drop down box underneath it.. but its greyed out. that would be, (or was the location of the plugin selector in version 6) but in the current version, it looks like its been removed..

is there some obscure preference i haven't checked here?

[Nokatus]

Does the compressor you're trying to use in sidechain mode actually have an external sidechain key input?

[Louvelle]

ok people, problem solved.........................

i just opened up the Renaissance Compressor in AU instead of VST and low and behold, the menu is there. phew... i was thinking i wasted all that money...

Apologise for the cross posting guys.

[Nokatus]

Huh? Does the Renaissance Compressor have an input for an external key signal?

[Louvelle]

Huh? Does the Renaissance Compressor have an input for an external key signal?

not exactly, the routing doesn't occur within the compressor as you suggested (like Live's Compressor)

on the key input's channel, in the 'audio to' drop down menu, you can route a signal to another channel, just underneath that drop down box there is another space for a drop down box and that would be the location for routing a signal further into the signal chain of another channel, but this has been blank up until this point.

ok so what was the difference? i was using VST versions of all my waves plugs. I tried opening (by chance) Renaissance compressor in AU and Live opened up the second drop down box that i mentioned earlier, just as i thought.

So to answer your question, i think all 3rd party compressor will work with this method of external key input provided they are AU, regardless of the key input functionality being within the plugin itself. quite clever really



Thanks for your input on this guys.. So happy i sorted this one!!

[Nokatus]

not exactly, the routing doesn't occur within the compressor as you suggested (like Live's Compressor)

No man, I think there's a misunderstanding somewhere down the line

Suggesting that a 3rd party compressor has an external key input doesn't mean that it's integrated to the Live routing scheme the way it's in Live's compressor.

Instead, it just means that the compressor does have actual secondary inputs which the host software sees and can route a signal into, and thus the compressor is able to perform sidechain compression (controlled by an external key signal) in the first place.

In other words, if the compressor does indeed have this feature, it should have two sets of stereo inputs: one for the primary signal being compressed (used by default when you insert the compressor onto a channel) and another one (usually showing as inputs 3/4 in the Live routing dropdown) for the key signal. If there are no dedicated key inputs like this showing up when you set up the routing in the Live mixer, you aren't actually sending a key signal into the compressor, in the sense of doing actual sidechain compression.

i think all 3rd party compressor will work with this method of external key input

Not quite: in short, taking the above into account, the compressor itself needs to support the feature, it's not something that can be done automatically with any compressor even though the host is capable of the appropriate routing.

I hope this helps some, and also, I'm sorry if it's me who misunderstood what you were saying

[Louvelle]

yes mate.. think you may have misunderstand.. (my fault) i was saying that this is unlike Lives compressor but that the routing is configured from Lives side, not within the plug in..


never the less, its definitely working...... Good times.

[Nokatus]

i was saying that this is unlike Lives compressor but that the routing is configured from Lives side, not within the plug in..

That's exactly what I'm saying, too

And the only way that is going to work is, if the compressor does have an actual external key input. It will show as a dedicated choice in Live's routing dropdown, providing the compressor with a key signal that controls the compression of the main signal.

Anyway, good to hear you got it working