I see, it's all making a bit more sense now. Something I'm still struggling with is this sudden jump in level when I ease off the kick though. For instance I have two tracks, a kick and a bassline, I have a DB Audioware VST compressor on the kick bypassed, with the send enabled to 'A'. I then have the same type of compressor on the bassline with the receive set to 'A'. That's all good, when my kick is pounding away it sounds great, bass is ducking nicely. However if I mute the kick, obviously no signal is getting through to the bassline compressor so the levels rise as the compression is eased off. So, I'm trying to work out how I can be in the situation where I can kill the volume of the kick but still have its signal going to the bassline compressor, in order to maintain a constantish level of compression on the bassline, know what I mean? ZeMigL you demonstrated a nice way with hardware, is it possible with software also? (Sorry, I feel like i'm hounding you with question after question, please know that your help is SOOOO appreciated!).