Complicated Sidechain for multiple tracks

[Miky Mike]

Hello brothers and sisters in music

So I need some advice on the following , it's a little puzzle and it drives me crazy:

I have 3 tracks with a bassline ( on track 1, 2 ,3 ) which are all send to Return track A
This bassline needs to be sidechain compressed by the KICK just on below 80 HZ
I use Toneboosters FIX for this but Fabfilter- C would work or whatever plugin.

Normally I can route my kick straight to the bassline track into the compressor ( TB Fix, or Fabfilter Comp) But now it needs to be done on 3 tracks at the same time.
This doesn't work for me when the Audio that needs the compression is on a Return channel.

Any solutions?

Can you send one audio channel to multiple channels? in this case the kick to the three bass channels?
or can I send an audio channel into the return channels' compressor?

p.s. With the ableton compressor you can't compress specific frequencies, so this option doesn't work.

I hope someone can help.
Peace , miky

[3dot...]

if you use Lives' Compressor.. Glue comp... or Gate...
You have a handy sidechain selector on the left...

put 1 compressor on the 1st track and tweak to your liking.. then simply copy paste the device across other tracks

[regretfullySaid]

Group your bass tracks.

What I do though is have 2 main bus tracks, one called 'Drum Bus' and the oher called Rest Bus.
Tracks with prominent beats are routed to the Drum Bus track and the rest......well they get routed to the Rest Bus. The Rest Bus has a compressor with the Drum Bus sidechained to it.

[3dot...]

nice one...
but as I understand the OP...he wants to sidechain the tracks independently (before the group) using the same SC input.

since 3rd party VST that have SC input.. don't have an "input chooser" a la Live devices SC....that would be a tedious process
he would need to set up 3 audio tracks receiving input from the drums.. and route each individual SC track to an appropriate Bassline compressor

[Miky Mike]

Thanks you'll for your advices , very helpful!
And 3dot , exactly , that is what I wanted, but I guess that is not going to happen , so:

So I have found another solution, not as I completely wanted it but it works anyhow :

I send the 3 bass tracks ( 1,2,3) to a new audio track ( 4) , so track 4 is now 1 bass track. On this track I place my SC compressor.
Then I create another new track with just the kick which I route to track 4 to the SC compressors to apply just compression under 80 Hz when the kick comes in.

So not that dificult after all, but I find it rather strange that you can't specifically send signals into specific plugins in a RETURN track , this can only be done for normal audio tracks.

Anyway , thanks for all your helps lads!
Peace and happy music making.

[3dot...]

hi mike...
That's true for any DAW... it's a limitation of the plugin...
Lives' internal devices are superior in this department...

you can also use m4l to sidechain... but the performance is hardly precise/predictable so scratch that

[JamesFB]

Why would you not send the 3 bass tracks to their own individual mirror tracks?

Just create three new tracks, and have their input be the three bass tracks respectively... mute the channels... send audio where you want.

Don't use the Return tracks for this sort of work. They add a lot of unnecessary processing and won't do what you want properly; just create new tracks in the main window.

Also... for the sidechain compression... do you want the sidechain to effect the signal below 80hz, or do you want the sidechain to occur across the whole spectrum when the input signal hits 80hz?

If it's the first... you'll need to split your audio using a linear phase multi-band compressor. Really, you should be using Fabfilter Pro-MB for this, not their Pro-C