Side chaining Problem.

[itssofly]

I want to side chain my snare with input key the kick. So when the kick and the snare play at the same time the snare will duck little so to make room for the kick and to control the peak level.

 

But I have the problem that sound becomes different and the volume of the snare who’s not ducking, is at once louder then when I have no compression/ side chaining on it. 

 

So for example I have a snare and the kick on the fourth beat . I want to duck the snare a little to make room for the kick and to control the peak level. I use for this the Logic Compressor Sidechaining  the snare by the kick as input key. The problem is that the snare who’s not sidechaining, for example on the second beat, is at once louder, also the sound is different. I check this by bypassing the compressor. I tried several settings like Attack Release Ratio and Threshold and Knee. What can be the problem? What do I wrong?

(I also tried Fabfilter pro c)

I hope you can help.

[JakobP]

Turn off makeup gain on the compressor ? 

[David Nahmani]

Also turn off the Auto gain in the Compressor. 

[itssofly]

I put down the make up gain and the auto gain,I tried several settings also the parameters Peak and RMS nothing is really the same. For example sometimes I have to lower Make up Gain or Auto gain on zero to get the same Decibel as before side chaining. I think it's the character, algorithm,of kind of compressor and in combination with particular kick. What do you think,is that the possibility? Thank you for your time.

[Arnaud]

In order to get to a ducking effect, and only that, you definitely need to have make-up gain at zero AND auto-gain off, otherwise you are affecting the level of the snare when the kick is not present (if make-up gain is not at zero, you change the general gain resulting from the compressor, even when it does not compress - duck - the snare, by a manual amount; if Auto gain is on, you do the same, by an amount that is computed automatically through a combination of the ratio and threshold settings, and will change if you change these settings).

 

So, in sidechain mode to get your ducking effect, you need to have the make-up gain at zero and auto-gain off. Then, you set the threshold value so that the compressor reacts to the kick (threshold should be below peak value of the kick sound), and once you have a "sensitive" enough compressor, you adjust ratio to obtain your ducking effect. The higher the ratio, the more pronounced the ducking. To adjust threshold and ratio you also can visually see how the compressor ducks the snare by monitoring the white curve (in graph mode) or needle (in VU mode) moving, and it should move along with the kick, not the underlying waveform (in graph mode) that represents the snare signal.