Sidechain

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stugood
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Sidechain

Post by stugood »

Can anyone explain how to use sidechain or share a link where it's used with guitar or noise?
Koekepan
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Re: Sidechain

Post by Koekepan »

The question needs more detail.

In sunvox you can sidechain just about anything with just about anything else. Want to handle overdrive gain boost on the basis of the 800Hz band of a different track? Can do. But it'll be different from just sidechained compression (which is an easy function in the compressor module).

So what exactly are you trying to achieve?
stugood
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Re: Sidechain

Post by stugood »

There is nothing more I could say as this is the point. I am a newbie and don't really understand a lot of music production.
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queries
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Re: Sidechain

Post by queries »

The first 7 minutes of this vid is a good overview of how and when to use sidechain compression:



He's using Cubasis, but the same principles apply in SunVox.

Connect two audio sources to the Compressor. Tell the compressor to use one of its inputs as the sidechain input. Then, the sidechain signal will not be heard in the compressor output... but, instead of the audible signal controlling the compressor (which is the default), the sidechain signal is controlling the compressor. That will hopefully make more sense once you've seen his examples.
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queries
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Re: Sidechain

Post by queries »

For example, with guitar or noise as you mention, you could have some sort of noise going at a certain volume, and then sidechain compress it with the guitar signal. Whenever the guitar was played, the volume of the noise would be reduced as the guitar is controlling the noise's compressor. The time that it takes to be fully reduced is the attack speed controller. As the guitar signal fades or becomes silent, the noise would come back to its original volume. That is the release speed controller.

You'll have to play around with the other compressor settings once you have a basic setup. SunVox has a nice compressor UI I think. For years it has shown really useful visual information about the audio signal and how it's being compressed. Other platforms have only recently started doing the same or simply still don't offer that kind of visual feedback.
stugood
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Re: Sidechain

Post by stugood »

Thanks so much, this is kinda what I thought sidechain did. I will experiment with it. I'm still not sure if I need compression for acoustic guitar, as when I have played around with it, it's made the track sound a bit plastic-y.

queries wrote: Thu Feb 04, 2021 9:33 pm For example, with guitar or noise as you mention, you could have some sort of noise going at a certain volume, and then sidechain compress it with the guitar signal. Whenever the guitar was played, the volume of the noise would be reduced as the guitar is controlling the noise's compressor. The time that it takes to be fully reduced is the attack speed controller. As the guitar signal fades or becomes silent, the noise would come back to its original volume. That is the release speed controller.

You'll have to play around with the other compressor settings once you have a basic setup. SunVox has a nice compressor UI I think. For years it has shown really useful visual information about the audio signal and how it's being compressed. Other platforms have only recently started doing the same or simply still don't offer that kind of visual feedback.
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burij
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Re: Sidechain

Post by burij »

In 90% of all situation you will need compression on "real" soundsources, like acoustic guitar. if it's sound plastic, you probably overdid that. try to do it very subtle, like 60% slope and the treshhold is just touching the input sound a bit. so that you almost can't notice that. good technik is to lower treshhold from the top very slowly until you can notice some effect and than go a little bit back.
stugood wrote: Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:44 pm Thanks so much, this is kinda what I thought sidechain did. I will experiment with it. I'm still not sure if I need compression for acoustic guitar, as when I have played around with it, it's made the track sound a bit plastic-y.

queries wrote: Thu Feb 04, 2021 9:33 pm For example, with guitar or noise as you mention, you could have some sort of noise going at a certain volume, and then sidechain compress it with the guitar signal. Whenever the guitar was played, the volume of the noise would be reduced as the guitar is controlling the noise's compressor. The time that it takes to be fully reduced is the attack speed controller. As the guitar signal fades or becomes silent, the noise would come back to its original volume. That is the release speed controller.

You'll have to play around with the other compressor settings once you have a basic setup. SunVox has a nice compressor UI I think. For years it has shown really useful visual information about the audio signal and how it's being compressed. Other platforms have only recently started doing the same or simply still don't offer that kind of visual feedback.
You can download my exclusive Sunvox-Metamodules here: https://label.weddinger-schule.de/category/tools/
a1matt
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Re: Sidechain

Post by a1matt »

stugood wrote: Thu Feb 04, 2021 10:44 pm Thanks so much, this is kinda what I thought sidechain did. I will experiment with it. I'm still not sure if I need compression for acoustic guitar, as when I have played around with it, it's made the track sound a bit plastic-y.
Compression can be used for multiple purposes, one of which is to even out the volume of acoustic recordings.

I saw in another thread you are using guitar samples.

It's quite possible the samples have already been processed already and don't need any further compression. At least not for the purposes of levelling.
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burij
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Re: Sidechain

Post by burij »

Ah ok, sry. I thought we are speaking about recorded guitar.
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a1matt
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Re: Sidechain

Post by a1matt »

burij wrote: Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:24 pm Ah ok, sry. I thought we are speaking about recorded guitar.
Even if my guess that the samples are pre-processed is correct, I have a feeling your post will still help the OP in exploring and understanding compression :friends:
stugood
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Re: Sidechain

Post by stugood »

Yes, this is all helpful, thank you.The guitar was recorded by me. I either use one sample, or try and make sure the conditions including distance from mic are the same for another sample. My basic understanding is that compression allows for something to sound louder whilst not distorting, and that gain is related to recording distance of source, or volume level/sensitivity at starting point.
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burij
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Re: Sidechain

Post by burij »

What compression does is to reduce the dynamic range of your sound. This means, that the difference between the loudest and quitest parts of your sound is going to be less after compression. live instruments, voice, analog synths have way to big dynamic range, so that's why you compress it: you don't want to hear just peaks in the mix, but also some subtile staff, like breating during singing. it's a very simple concept, but with dramatic change to the sounds, which also a bit difficult to control, just because there is a lot of way, how the dynamic range can be change. with time you get used to compression and all the settings.
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Keres
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Re: Sidechain

Post by Keres »

practical uses for sidechain:

use the bassdrum kick to sidechain your bass guitar track. connect the bass and the kick drum. tell the compressor to use the kick as the side chain. if you are using a loop or sample for your drums, low-pass the drums using a profilter, then connect the pro-filter to the compressor instead of the drums. this should leave only the bass of the kick and the low pop of the snare. set the threshold to the middle of the peak of the bass-drum kick. set the attack to 0 (use real-time peak setting). set the release under 100ms (usually). this will lessen the volume of the bass guitar track at the point where the kick drum strikes. this way you hear the kick clearly, then the bass note fades in. this reduces the "mud" in your overall mix.

another main use is to soften the keyboard or electric guitar sound at the point of a snare drum hit. the process is the same. sometime the keys or guitars have so much mid-range they drown out the sound of the snare drum. in this case the side chaining is usually much less than the example above, usually there is only a 6 to 3 db lessening of the sound at the hit of the snare.

some house producers chain their whole mix by the kick drum with a slow release that is in tempo with the tune. this produces a sucking sound or backwards effect and accentuates the bass drum. usually used with a big pad and a huge sustained saw lead.
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