Pulsar Compressor sidechain

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Thu Nov 29, 2001 12:32 pm

I've read in a feature about compression that when mixing music with loud bassdrums (ie. techno/house) you can prevent the compressor that works on the master output from reacting too much on the bassdrum instead of the rest of the track by putting an eq with these low frequencies cut out in the sidechain. I tried to do this but I am not sure how to set it up. Anyone have any experience in this?

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Thu Nov 29, 2001 10:46 pm

Nice tip

So, following your explanation, it should look like this:

-> take the input from compressor. here, for mastercompressor, that's the mix output too
-> route it to High-Pass kinda EQ (for example HPF/lowcut @ 80Hz)
-> EQ to compressor sidechain in.

So the amount of compression will not be dominated by the bassdrums' volume... but rather by the rest of the mix.

cheers,

the atom.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Fri Nov 30, 2001 6:09 am

Well, that's about how it was explained in the article I read (from Future Music) but I'm not exactly sure.
I am using the dynamixer, main output to stereo compressor, stereo comp. out to pulsar analog out, then the eq with cut at around 80HZ connected to the sidechain, but when I do this, the compressor doesn't work at all, so that's not the right way.
So maybe I should try routing the mixer output to the eq as well as the ocmpressor in..?
I'l give it a few more tries, it seems very handy because I usually have the problem of the bassdrum pumping the mix too much.
Maybe I could also use a direct out from the mixer for the bassdrum and then the main out to the compressor, then mix these two signals together before going to analog out.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Fri Nov 30, 2001 10:18 am

Well, I see now what I did wrong, I forgot to connect the bloody mixer output to the eq. (Stupid!) So now it should work as follows:

connect mixer output to compressor input AND eq input, connect eq output to comp. sidechain input, connect compressor out to analog/digital out.
So now the compressor will be triggered by the eq-ed mix, but working on the complete mix.
I'll try it out on my new track.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Sat Dec 01, 2001 10:22 am

Well, it works allright. No more bassrums kicking holes in my mixes!