Most commonly you hear the sidechain effect where the sidechain is used to lower the volume of instruments (often the bass / synths) when the kick hits. This will make the kick sounding louder, and ultimately the music will sound more tight and defined.

Here is a quick example where the bass and synths are sidechained against the kick.

It’s no secret that every EDM producer is using sidechaining among their primary mixing techniques.

The “volume sidechain effect” can be achieved in a multiple of ways.

Methods of sidechaining volume

1. You can use any compressor plugin with sidechain audio input feed.
2. Use a plugin which lowers / ducks your volume according to a curve.
3. Edit the audio track with volume automation to achieve the sidechain sound.

The most common sidechaining method is using a compressor

First of all let’s look at the most common way of sidechaining.

The most common way of sidechaining volume is using a compressor featuring a sidechain input. Every modern and professional DAW offer a compressor with this sidechain input option. This compressor plugin can either be applied to an individual track, or to a buss in your DAW.

How to sidechain audio in Logic Pro X

If we look at the Logic Pro X compressor plugin below. This native Logic compressor comes with sidechain input instantly available.

Importantly, you also get many options to tailor the sidechaining effect. You can also listen (preview) the sidechain input if you need to confirm the audio source. This means we have side chaining instantly accessible in Logic Pro X whenever we need it on a mixer track via the compressor plugin.

How to sidechain audio in FL Studio 20

FL Studio 20 takes a few more steps to make the side chaining happen. While Logics compressor can select any audio track as the side chain input directly, FL Studio requires you to route audio signals between tracks first.

Note: Yes, I know you can also use the Fruity Peak Controller to do sidechaining but that’s a more fiddly setup.

Firstly, in the image above we have channel 1 selected and right click on channel 8 cable input arrow at the bottom of the mixer strip. Select “Sidechain to this track”. We are now feeding channel 8 with a sidechain signal from the kick.

The mixer of FL Studio is very flexible and highly customizable. Although this extra “signal routing step” is required to set up side chaining.

Secondly, we add the Fruity Limiter as an insert effect to the bass (ch8). In the Fruity Limiter activate the Comp-tab at the bottom. Press the mouse button on-top of the SideChain value box and drag upwards to select SideChain Input 1.

Finally, if you set the compressor threshold to a lower value (-30db) and the Ratio to something like 7:1 you will start to see and hear the sidechaining effect.

In conclusion, the Fruity Limiter will now reduce the volume of the bass as soon as the kick hits. Your sidechain effect is completed!

The radio voice – background music sidechaining

Another common example of sidechaining is when DJs are talking over the music on the radio. When the DJ speaks, a limiter is activated upon the background music by the audio signal off the DJ talking. This causes the music to drop way down so that it doesn’t interfere with the speech. When the DJs finished talking, the silence on the voice track de-activates the limiter on the background music. The music will once again become the loudest part of the mix.

How to set up volume properly on side chained tracks

Want to learn how to set up volume properly on sidechained tracks? Then you can check this article where we discuss gain-staging and sidechain mixing. Importantly, in the article and video we discuss common problems when sidechaining audio.

What gear I use in the studio? Check out the Resources Page.

Join my exclusive community: https://www.patreon.com/gelhein

Be sure to sign up to our newsletter for new exciting articles in design, music production and sound design.

The post How to sidechain audio properly appeared first on Morningdew Media.

Gain Staging means striving for a clean and unclipped signal flow in your DAW.

What is gain staging?

Gain Staging is the procedure of getting a clean and unclipped signal flow within your DAW. That means you want a healthy and clean signal from the initial audio track input (or virtual instrument output) to your final master output.

How to get a clean signal from start to finish

Begin by setting your recording level so you have plenty of headroom. I suggest preparing your microphone and recording source so that you have a maximum peak of around -10db.

If you are recording a human vocal I suggest having around 20cm (3 inch) from mouth to microphone.

If you have a microphone pre-amp, or audio interface gain knob, adjust the audio input so that you get around -10 dB peaks in the DAW when the vocalist is singing the loudest parts of the song. Same thing with guitars, percussion etc.

Do NOT go into the “red” or near 0dB, this will just make your audio distort and sound bad and unprofessional.

Having around 10dB of headroom means we will not clip or distort our audio signal. Time to hit record in your DAW!

What is headroom?

Headroom is the space (measured in decibels – dB) between your highest peaks (transients) and 0 dB. Leaving headroom is crucial. It helps to prevent your mix from clipping and distorting.

Headroom is NOT measured between the average level (RMS) of your track and 0 dB (that will still clip). Many people get the two “methods of measurement” confused!

Recording with a clean audio signal into your DAW

Our recording path is now setup so we have 10dB of headroom and we record our audio takes into the DAW of choice. I’m working in Bitwig Studio 3 and Logic Pro X out of convenience.

These two DAWs, Bitwig & Logic, complement each other very well.

• Bitwig is good for sound design, sample chopping. It’s also a very flexible DAW with its modulators. Furthermore it now ships with the Grid which is a powerful modular environment for creating your own synths, sound generators and effects processing devices with ease.
• Logic Pro X, comes with the best plugin suite and sound package on the market (personal opinion). And is suitable for composing to film, games and media as the video support is excellent. It also has one of the best score sheet tools, if you are that kind of guy.

Mixing pre-recorded samples and VST instruments

Ok, but how do we handle mix levels for the samples and VST instruments in the DAW? Samples often come maximized and VST instruments output good healthy amplitude signal. How do we treat them in the mix?

Let’s begin by talking about samples from your regular sample packs.

How to gain stage sample pack content

Sample pack audio files are mixed and maximized

Yes, if you buy a sample pack in 99% of the cases the audio files in that pack are gonna be shipped as mixed and maximized files. The peaks will probably be hot around -0.3dB and the audio is considered production ready.

Now this also means that if you drag a kick sample from a sample pack into your DAW arrangement. That kick will be hitting 0.3dB if you don’t do anything about the track volume fader. It will be totally fine on its own, but as soon as you start adding in other samples / instruments and audio recordings, the master volume meter will soon start to blow (shine “red” light a diamond…or ruby) high above the 0dB limit.

Two simple ways to mix sample pack audio file volume levels

There are two simple ways to solve this early on in your project. To get that 10dB of headroom we talked about earlier in the article.

1. Either set your DAW to reduce all track volume faders to -10dB.
   Note: Bitwig Studio DAW has the option to set all faders to a certain dB by default. Use it to your advantage!
2. Add a gain- / tool- or utility-plugin as the first insert effect on your tracks.
   
3. Oh, yes there is actually a third option but it’s not as convenient. And that option is to just reduce the volume / gain of the actual audio clip within the DAW. But that means you have to do that on every single audio file you drag into the DAW…not that convenient. So let’s go for any of the two options above shall we… ;D

How to gain stage VST instruments

VST instruments often output high amplitude volume. We all want to demo punchy, high volume and powerful audio when playing those monster synths like Serum, Falcon, Omnisphere 2 or Diva.
Some plugins like Omnisphere 2 can really eat up a whole mix in both amplitude and stereo width. The sounds are designed to be super huge themselves, but in a mix they really need to step back a notch. But let’s talk about stereo spread in another article.

So the same thing goes for VST instruments. Give them a flick on the mixer fader, set it at around -10dB. Or add a gain- / tool- / utility-plugin as the first insert effect to reduce the volume to -10dB.

How to setup volume on a side-chained track

Firstly, you want to set a volume “ceiling” reference-point for the track. That is the highest volume level that specific track will reach at any one given time… even during breakdown sections etc. It’s the track volume peak level. As we talked about earlier this could (should) be around -10dB so we have plenty of headroom.

Now when the max volume is set, we can start adding a side-chain compressor or similar plugin on this track knowing that the volume should never go above our max peak point. Work with short release times on the side-chain compressors. Release times between 50 – 130ms should be fine in most cases.

I recently made a review of Dodge Pro which is an excellent plugin to automatically duck / envelope shape your audio without the need for a side-chain setup! Try it out!

Volume problems on side-chained tracks!

It can be tempting to start fiddling with the track volume fader after you side-chain a track, but keep in mind that this can cause unbalanced results if you are not careful about the release time of your side-chain compressors.

In this video, I show a scenario where you set the release time to around 400ms which will cause the track to never reach it’s max peak volume level, at least as long as something is triggering the side-chain…like a kick. Then when a breakdown section comes, and the side-chain trig is removed you might get volume swells. The volume can easily go out of hand and cause audio distortion and levels above 0dB.

Rule of thumb, work with short release times when side-chaining!

I hope you found this gain staging article useful. If you follow these simple principles you should have a clean, unclipped signal in your DAW.

Please write any comments or feedback to this article/video in the video comments. Thanks!

The post Gain Staging & Sidechain Mixing Masterclass appeared first on Morningdew Media.

We can all agree that side-chaining and volume gating is essential in music.

If you want a really impactful mix you need to balance that kick & bass to be just right! When done right the mix sounds much more powerful!

Dodge Pro review

I recently reviewed the Dodge Pro volume shaping plugin from W.A.Production which is a life-saver when it comes to side-chaining and rhythmical effects.

Dodge Pro handles everything from simple ducking, side-chaining to more complex multi-segment-envelopes. The plugin even features a multi-band processing setup so you can process each of three bands with a separate volume envelope curve! 

Buy Dodge Pro and use my affiliate link.

Multi-band volume envelopes in Dodge Pro

What makes Dodge Pro unique is the multi band split. Dodge pro can split your audio into three frequency bands and process each of these bands with a separate volume envelope.

This can create everything from interesting phasing effects to more profound rhythmical gatings if you use sharp envelopes.

Each band can be soloed, muted and level-adjusted. And the band split points can be adjusted via the graphical interface.

Dodge Pro also shows a level / gating meter for each band so you can easily see what’s going on with each band in your frequency spectrum.

Conclusion

Ducking, side-chaining and creating nice volume envelopes shouldn’t be tricky, and Dodge Pro lets us do this with ease. It’s not a heavy plugin on the CPU and you get one of the best volume envelope shapers (with multi-band support) for a bargain!

Buy Dodge Pro

Read more about side-chaining and mixing here.

And this article on how to side-chain properly.

What gear I use in the studio? Check out the Resources Page.

Join my exclusive community: https://www.patreon.com/gelhein

Be sure to sign up to our newsletter for new exciting articles in design, music production and sound design.

The post Dodge Pro review – volume shaping plugin appeared first on Morningdew Media.