Side chain compression

Rhysyrhys · Post by **Rhysyrhys** » Fri Feb 22, 2013 9:46 pm

Sorry for the double thread, do hope no one minds. Ableton has a really nice and simple but fully featured sidechain compressor but Maschine doesn't so I've been checking out FabFilters Pro - C to get my side chain fix, it seems quite cool. All the free one look shit, any one know of one thats good? Also, do you guys find yourself sidechaining anything else of a regular basis? I was considering doing a sidechain reverb on a synth and seeing what weird effects I coud dredge up.

Freddy V-C · Post by **Freddy V-C** » Fri Feb 22, 2013 10:16 pm

Gating is the main thing I use sidechaining for. I love using room mics when recording drums, but a lot of the time you get SO MUCH of the cymbals in your room mics, so I like to have a sidechain gate on the room mics, with the key input set to the kick and snare, and sometimes the toms. If you get the gate set up right, and maybe add a small amount of reverb, you can make the drums sound huge without HORRID OVERLY LOUD CYMBALS.

Brandon W · Post by **Brandon W** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 5:04 pm

I'm having terrible compression issues. I just over compressed a song so bad and it's like the more fancy plug-ins i get the more i fuck everything up. I guess i brickwalled it or whatever. At times it sounds like air brakes on an 18 wheeler..weird noises and shit. I see side chain compression in several plug-ins i use but then i have to go and read exactly what it does and it takes me all day. I have to go trial and error and it sucks. I'm frustrated. I have 0 patience to wait for people to compress it for me so i do it myself and here we are. I'm wondering now if i should compress each file individually. That would be a nightmare because i'll have 15 guitars on one piece. Maybe i should be compressing each instrument individually..That would be a bitch too because the one i'm wrapping up has piano, violin, drums, 3 different synth basses, guitar, etc. wow. I still have bass guitar that i played and didn't cut yet. Fuck me. Maybe i should save everyone the time and go back to writing blues songs..

Brandon W · Post by **Brandon W** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 5:14 pm

Brickwalled may be the wrong term because the waveform after compression still had peaks so it wasn't like a rectangle with a straight line. I have no idea how to word this.