Sidechain in Reason

[Desmondblack]

hi all,
how do you sidechain in Reason? I typically have the parallel bus of the kick connected to several Spiders, and these I then connect to an MClass compressor (or to the input of a multiband compressor patch I made). This works okay, but I am just wondering whether there is an easier way of doing this, it gets kind of messy with all the wires after a while (this is my general qualm with Reason, when you are nearing completion of a project its just a big old mess).
In Ableton / Logic you can simply select a channel as input for the sidechain. Is there no way to replicate this in Reason?
Cheers,
DZM

[Benedict]

This video walks (and talks) you through all the common ways & whys to Side-Chain Compress things and it is all in Reason.

As I just said in another post here, keep it elegant, the more you wire things to things to things to stuff to other stuff, the less you get a great result. If it is a mess then it is probably that the material is being overworked and there is a more elegant way which is less effort but better results - as Stav says fewer volts, more illusion.

[valankar]

I generally like the sidechain send method:

[Benedict]

Paul Ortiz: "What it could benefit from is some side-chaining"
Me: Actually no, it was nicer before.
Everyone who ever made RetroWave: oh but you have to!
Me: No you don't, there are far more interesting tings you can do.

[PhillipOrdonez]

It depends. If I need to use the kick to duck the bass in the usual way, I would use 'pump' instead as it is much cleaner than actually using a compressor. Or my preferred way would be to use an eq like neutron or Nova, using the parallel output from the kick into the device side chain to duck a single band as opposed to the full spectrum like with pump or a compressor. It depends on what effect I'm going for or what works best for the track... If I need to, I'd use the poly modular re to split the signal from the kick parallel instead of the spider unit.

[Reasonable man]

Just to confuse the op even more...(apologies dont think this is gonna help!). Your right about reason being a general modular mess when it comes to side-chaing ...i use SCRE from Reasonistas by the way...but its a complex set up of using a redrum to send it gate signals and then the output of SACRE'S envelope to the level cv in of a line mixer in the insert of whichever channel im using. It also involes a cv select device and a Hamu mod panel to switch it on and off . I do it this way as the hamu mod panel can switch between the dry signal and the sidechain signal which are on two seperate channels of the line mixer! . I found that you can balance out the levels of the two signals on a line mixer this way as the sidechain effect always seems to add unwanted volume to the signal.
Anyway i also like this method by Speo .. its also a vialble alternative. I'm guessing everyone on the forum will have a different method.

[chimp_spanner]

Paul Ortiz: "What it could benefit from is some side-chaining"
Me: Actually no, it was nicer before.
Everyone who ever made RetroWave: oh but you have to!
Me: No you don't, there are far more interesting tings you can do.

I gotta admit I do tend to overuse it sometimes - I think on that example I just made it super obvious so people could hear what it was doing but lately I try to keep most instrumentation free from ducking and just put it on one or two elements that really need it. Nice to have something over the top that's unaffected (like a melody or whatever). I'm sure the sidechaining craze will die down one of these days/years

[Benedict]

Paul Ortiz: "What it could benefit from is some side-chaining"
Me: Actually no, it was nicer before.
Everyone who ever made RetroWave: oh but you have to!
Me: No you don't, there are far more interesting tings you can do.

I gotta admit I do tend to overuse it sometimes - I think on that example I just made it super obvious so people could hear what it was doing but lately I try to keep most instrumentation free from ducking and just put it on one or two elements that really need it. Nice to have something over the top that's unaffected (like a melody or whatever). I'm sure the sidechaining craze will die down one of these days/years

Thanks for taking that in stride Your Tut was nicely made.

As I said on my Vid, the first few times I heard it it was like haha clever. Then every darned track defaults to that so they don't have to do any real work to make an interesting Story.

[selig]

hi all,
how do you sidechain in Reason?

If your goal is to move one element "out of the way" of another element, the only 100% reliable (and dead simple) way to do this is to use a crossfader (Groovy Melon is free and perfect for this).
If speaking of kick and bass, use the bass in the first input and the kick in the second, then use the kick split into the MClass compressor to generate the CV to perform the crossfade.
The reasoning is that such a setup is foolproof. You cannot have any overlap, which would negate the goal of opening up room in the mix. Specifically, if you're trying to keep the peak level of the mix under control, such that your kick and bass never actually take up the same space (and create a seamless transition between the two), this is the best (possibly only) way to do this.
An alternative setup is to run the mix (minus the kick) into the first input and the kick into the second. This setup insures the kick is the only element of the mix that is "taking up space" when it plays, allowing you to push the kick level all the way up to 0dBFS with 100% assurance the other elements of the mix cannot cause the output to clip.
With this setup, you still have control over how "deep" the ducking goes, and still have total control over release time etc. And you still have control over the level of the kick and other elements. In fact, I don't think there is any downside or otherwise limitation to using this approach, but I've not explored every possible option so maybe there's something I've overlooked.

[EdGrip]

Interesting! Is it possible you might miss the attack of the kick because the CV from the compressor doesn't "fade it up" fast enough in the crossfader? The attack time of the comp would essentially control how much of the HF kick attack you get to hear? With a normal S/C set up the kick doesn't have to be faded up so it's not a problem.

I did a little test with regard to the CPU usage of SCRE, Pump and a normal sidechained MClass comp.
SCRE uses most CPU by a fair margin (as you'd expect - there's lots going on.)
Then Pump,
then MClass Comp - you can pile those up, fed a sidechain kick from spiders, for miles and miles with little effect on the CPU.

It's cheaper on the CPU, rather than use one SCRE on every channel you want to duck, to use one SCRE (or any other envelope designer of your choice, Pump or even the ADSR of a Subtractor - whatever you like) and then split its envelope CV out to simple gain controls like Selig Gain or Panda's AMP. I found getting the CV into the right range was not as simple or intuitive as it might be with this method, though a Janitor solves everything.

The advantage of envelope generators over kicks or ghost kicks is you can immediately experiment with the envelope of the ducking visually, rather than having to swap samples or hope the decay of the comp will go far enough. Once you get the hang of what the CV is doing you can tune the depth of the ducking using the channel's gain RE. You can even tweak the envelope per-channel by using the Attack and Decay controls on a Janitor placed before the gain RE. You can save all this in your template - basically I think envelope generators and gain devices are the best way of doing kick S/C in Reason.

[orthodox]

Is it possible you might miss the attack of the kick because the CV from the compressor doesn't "fade it up" fast enough in the crossfader?

Sure you may miss it. That will depend on the compressor attack time plus the latency the CV introduces (1ms).

The attack time of the comp would essentially control how much of the HF kick attack you get to hear? With a normal S/C set up the kick doesn't have to be faded up so it's not a problem.

I didn't try that, but it looks that indeed there will be a gate effect on the kick in this crossfade setup.

[chimp_spanner]

I gotta admit I do tend to overuse it sometimes - I think on that example I just made it super obvious so people could hear what it was doing but lately I try to keep most instrumentation free from ducking and just put it on one or two elements that really need it. Nice to have something over the top that's unaffected (like a melody or whatever). I'm sure the sidechaining craze will die down one of these days/years

Thanks for taking that in stride Your Tut was nicely made.

As I said on my Vid, the first few times I heard it it was like haha clever. Then every darned track defaults to that so they don't have to do any real work to make an interesting Story.

Oh for real, I agree! There are so many songs that I love the progression or melody or vibe or whatever but they pump it so hard it becomes physically difficult to bear. I think we'll look back on it in a few years like "...why was everyone doing that" haha.

[orthodox]

hi all,
how do you sidechain in Reason?

If your goal is to move one element "out of the way" of another element, the only 100% reliable (and dead simple) way to do this is to use a crossfader (Groovy Melon is free and perfect for this).
If speaking of kick and bass, use the bass in the first input and the kick in the second, then use the kick split into the MClass compressor to generate the CV to perform the crossfade.
The reasoning is that such a setup is foolproof. You cannot have any overlap, which would negate the goal of opening up room in the mix. Specifically, if you're trying to keep the peak level of the mix under control, such that your kick and bass never actually take up the same space (and create a seamless transition between the two), this is the best (possibly only) way to do this.
An alternative setup is to run the mix (minus the kick) into the first input and the kick into the second. This setup insures the kick is the only element of the mix that is "taking up space" when it plays, allowing you to push the kick level all the way up to 0dBFS with 100% assurance the other elements of the mix cannot cause the output to clip.
With this setup, you still have control over how "deep" the ducking goes, and still have total control over release time etc. And you still have control over the level of the kick and other elements. In fact, I don't think there is any downside or otherwise limitation to using this approach, but I've not explored every possible option so maybe there's something I've overlooked.

This crossfade approach is equivalent to self-expanding the kick and sidechain-ducking the rest.
I still prefer the conventional sidechain method of ducking. In order to ensure that two signals never cross in the same space, I would use either peak (zero attack) or lookahead compressor in sidechain mode.

[Benedict]

I didn't think of using Morphin Crossfade for this but it is a technique I pretty well loathe. I will stow that idea away tho as I like the idea of how it would work, esp connected to an ENV.