Sidechaning confusion.

[Gps]

Made some progress, I was able to have the ducking sound with musicbears vid as tutorial and not giving up.

Still a bit confused about all the knobs on the calf sidechain compressor.

I did find out, how that compressor knows what sound to duck, and why there is a knob with something about crossing there.
With that knob you can change what sound will be lowered.

[Gps]

It's official, I hate side chain compression, or it hates me.

Seen two vids, were the calf side chain compressor is used.

In both vids, they insert the compressor and have site chaining.

The ducking sound I am after is not there.
Totally confused about, what knob i refer too in my last post. lol

I seem to be able to boost the kick, but that's all.

[slipstick]

I'd never tried sidechaining in LMMS so I thought I'd have a play...and now I understand your pain.

Have you found any documentation for the Calf Sidechain Compressor ? It's got a load of controls and I have no idea what most of them are supposed to do.

The way I understand it the basic thing about sidechaining is that the compressor should have two inputs, one is the signal that's being compressed or ducked and the other is the control signal that makes it duck (and that signal shouldn't appear in the output). The tut shows routing 3 tracks to the SC but I don't see how you tell it which is main signal (Pad) and which is the control signal (or signals ?). It's dead easy with real outboard compressors...you connect them to different input plugs !

Oh well I guess I'll have to do some more playing around.

Steve

[musikbear]

*sigh* sorry for not being clear if it is my version you both are referring to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntzWiufjkko
I guess i confused the issue by showing TWO different and not related ways 8|
That was apparently a bad idea. I have added some annotations, and i hope that makes it more understandable?

Happy New Year

[slipstick]

Thanks musikbear and Happy New Year. Those annotations may prove helpful though I did understand that you were showing two different types of sidechain signal.

So o.k. I got it sort of working. Got it ducking o.k. but I can't stop the control kick (or whatever) from bleeding through into the output. Perhaps there's a there's a control in Calf SC that I haven't found yet or I'm expecting something that only the expensive professional sidechain compressors will do. But there are several odd controls....e.g. what SC Mode and SC Route are doing is a mystery to me. And I still can't work out how it knows which of the signals routed to it are intended to be the sidechain controls. I'll have a bit more of a play later.

Gps you may NEED to use the Calf SC controls, you maybe can't just drop it on and hope the defaults work. Certainly in my case the compression Ratio was set too low and I had to turn it way up in order to hear any real ducking. Reducing Threshold also helped.

Steve

[Gps]

@ Musikbear, thank you but its not just you're vid. There is another one on you tube who also uses the side chain compressor.

Both vids do the same, but seem to have instantly sidechaning when they insert the plug- in.

I am not that lucky it seems. I am not giving up yet, and will give it another try, with the suggestions by slipstick.

sc route confuses me too, I can hear something is happening , which suggests its working, but it does not make sense.

[Gps]

Progress. Ratio all the way up, lower threshold.

And then some more fiddling, with other knobs.

What I have been doing "wrong", I tried every knob but if I did not notice a difference, I returned the knob roughly to its previous position. LOL

I am now gonna try it a different way. Use a triple os to control the side chaining. ( So I wont have to change the sound of the kick)

[slipstick]

And just to confuse things further I think I've worked out that you don't need the dedicated Sidechain channel at all. It seems to work just as well if you drop the Calf SC on the channel you want ducking (e.g. Instrument), leave that sent to master and send the sidechain kick channel to that one. And that's more like the way you set sidechaining up in most other DAWs I've looked at.

But the interplay between the Calf SC controls and the setup of the control kick/3OSC or whatever gets really complicated. Hours of fun sorting that lot out .

Steve

[Gps]

That other way sounds interesting. I like the part were you add the compressor, to the channel you want to duck.

The triple ocs will prob take a lot of time, but I think we can get a much better result.

I now have the most easy set up with only three channels. I could do as musicbear suggests fiddle with the envelop, but then I am chaining the sound of the kick too.

Now I finally get why you might want to use a copy of a track, and then do the actual side chaining with the copy which you fine tune, for the side chaining.

[musikbear]

maby i should have said something about what compression actually does..

You achieve the peak of a wave is pressed, into another (lower) peak area with the press-factor as the compression occurs.
You set a 'limit' aka ' Threshold ' and a 'press-factor' aka ' Ratio '.
The sound will never be louder than your set threshold. The art here is to ge a threshold that is as close to the sound with NO compressor, but with no clipping!!
That is difficult
When the sound-loudness passes through the compressor, 'loudness above ' threshold ' will be forced down with set Ratio

so the actual working process:
* Set a Threshold
* Set ratio
* Determines attack-time
* Determines release
* Add makeup gain to normal or desired level is reached

All this is by ear + a plugin like SPAN or spectrum-analyzer !

Then experiment with knee
That one is quite difficult to explain, but its is kind of like Tension in lmms' automation-editor. Knee will 'soften or 'sharpen' the steepness of the shape of the compression

..pfeeew