Ableton Forum

Today i tried to use some side compression on the whole mix trigerred by a kick drum, BUT Im not sure where i did it wrong:
1) I created a new audio track and called it BUS 1
2) I run all the audio tracks through BUS 1 (and here where i got a problem, it started to sound dull)
3) Put a compressor on BUS 1 and linked its sidechain to the kick
4) Then I created a separate track for the kick drum and routed the kick drum with "post fx"(so it does not get compressed by itself)

I then tried another aproach, i just created a rack in wich i had two compressors in chained together, one for the sidecompression, and another switched to monitor the kick so it could be heard. And it sounded as the original sound before compression (no dulling).

So why does summing all tracks into another track dulls the sound, while if you route all the tracks directly to master out it sounds just fine?

is 'BUS 1' a mono track?

the way i would do it is this: put the compressor on the master channel and have the kick side-chained in.

memes_33 wrote:is 'BUS 1' a mono track?

the way i would do it is this: put the compressor on the master channel and have the kick side-chained in.

but then it compresses itself.
i would do as you did. route(remember to put the tracks on send only) all your tracks to send 1, have the kick go to master, sidechain bus 1 to kick track, turn down the threshold.

Yeah, I'd do it on a send. If you send all of your channels except your kick drum, 100% to send 1. Set up your sidechaining compressor on send 1 with the kick channel as it's input source, and then set all of the channels bar the kick to 'sends only', you should (in theory) get the desired result.
Not at a computer right now, but off the top of my head, that's the best way of doing it.

Oh, and make sure send 1 is set to post mixer, or all of your levels and panning will be skewiff.

yep... a sidechainin' aux track is the logical way to go...
it 'might' be off in timing a little..
(Live has a slight problem calculating delays with return tracks feeding back.. so check for that..)

thanks for your input ! Ill try the "sends" technique in short.

As 3dot said : Live definately HAS some timing problems with return tracks routing.
If you route any Return Channel to ANY track other then master, you WILL have some timing issues, namely slight but noticable comb filtering.