How do you side-chain in ableton?

[Apex Beat]

I know the compresser II has a sidechain button, although when I click on it just lights up green and nothing seems to happen? Any ideas appricated!!!

[Komplex]

its not really a proper sidechain like on hardware units.

[Apex Beat]

do you know how it works? Hopefully it will do something as I'm having problems with massive basslines getting in the way of my kicks

[lau]

Please... anyone????

Having the same problems too....

Is this possible... and if it is then how..???

[DJZeMigL]

"...The most exotic feature of Compressor II is the sidechain EQ. The “sidechain” is the part of the signal
that is used to control the compressor. Normally the sidechain signal is the same as the input signal.
However, it can make sense to apply some filtering here. Imagine a bass drum, a snare and some
chords in the background. The bass drum has a pretty high level and it will normally determine how
the compressor reacts. If you now turn the side chain EQ on and set its Frequency to 100 Hz and the
Gain to -15 dB, the bass drum will not influence the compression anymore and the behavior of the
compressor will be very different. You could also set the Frequency to around 1 kHz and turn up the
gain to make the compressor more responsive to the snare. Since the EQ is only in the sidechain and
not part of the normal signal path, it will not change the sound of the input signal. It only changes
how the compressor reacts to different frequencies of the input...."

Not much of a Live geek but I guess U need 2 group the kick and the sound U want 2 sidechain and the use Comp II on that track (or bouce u audio all of them 2gether)... or just use comp 2 on the master efx!

Z

[davethedrummer]

i've been scratching my head over this too
it just doesn't seem to work so well.
like ze migl said its just a way of tuning in the compressor so it reacts to certain frequencys more than others
good for a complex sound , but on a single sound like a kik or something you will hardly notice the difference
in fact i hardly noticed the difference on anything much
apart from the fact that it does actually compress things of course

[DJZeMigL]

don't forget that sidechain is ment for one sound 2 "compress" another, so if u use individually not much should happen. As u don't have mixer tracks grouping in ableton U have 2 use a work'a'round ... either bounce the kick and bass (for instance) 2gether and the use comp II on that or use the sends 1 (as an example), bring they're track fader all the way down so u have no original sound (the sends will have 2 b post-fader), now compress the send 1 track with comp II ----- I haven't tryed but should work like a charm...

PS - use send 1 level for each sound 2 get the right balance!

Z

[xfive]

I just tried this myself:

Made 2 midi tracks each with an impulse, put a kick sample into one and a snare into the other
snare pattern is all 16 steps, kick pattern standard 4....
I pointed the output of both to an audio track that has a compressor2 on it.
Set the monitoring to "on"....
Now crank your ratios, threshold etc... set the sidechain eq to 125 or so... you should hear the snare volume dipping out when the kick hits now.... pumping effect.

It was somewhat subtle... but I really didn't spend long on it.. I'm sure the results could be better.

[techno_smack]

yeah im kinda stuck on this myself. no of wats been posted here helps me.

how to i send the kick signal into the compress to activate the sidechain?

[MARK ANXIOUS]

ok, fire up 2 audio channels. lets say a bass line and a kick.

put comp on bass track and you'll see the new sidechain panel (press the triange on top left to expand if you can't see it!). drop down 'audio from' and select the kick channel.

reduce the threshold and hear the effect. if you want to really hear the effect, silence the kick by changing the 'audio to' on it's channel to 'sends only'. you should hear nice and easy what it's doing...

ok so now onto eq. activate the eq. this filters the sidechain input so it only responds to certain frequencies. you might want to use this if let's say you were using a drum loop instead of a kick and want to just use the kick out of this loop to drive the sidechain.

you can also monitor the input by clicking the headphones button between the sidechain and eq sections. if you do this, sweep that freq knob about and hear how the sound changes as you alter the freq of the filter.

gate and auto filter ALSO have sidechain. try replacing the compressor with the gate. activate the sidechain, choose the audio from channel, from the drop down like before. now, when the kick falls below the threshold the bass will cut out completely. not the best for a kick/bass sidechain combination of course, but try other combinations instead!!!! experiment!!!!

the auto filter lets you trigger the envelop follower with another signal! this is genius!!!!

[techno_smack]

what is u want the kick to compress a vst on a midi channel?

does it need to be converted to an a loop and put in an audio channel?

[MARK ANXIOUS]

try it!!!

and you'll find out it works, no need to bounce down to audio (just make sure it's after the vst synth) ;)

[techno_smack]

thanks man! very helpful

[MARK ANXIOUS]

wicked.

have just updated the main site tutorial too:

http://www.blackoutaudio.co.uk/content/view/98/50/

[BloodStar]

hey Mark, nice tutorial, didnt see it :)

Anyway you have got little typo there:

"...Hard knee is good for test purposes (lets say 30db)."

the thing is, that on Sonalksis compressor Hard knee is on 0dB, 30 dB is soft knee ;)

[techno_smack]

yeah nice one, sorted now. cheers!

[HMD]

here's a couple of tutorials from youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5eep4inXYs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlyntTZgdyc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpnp-asuSoM