I’m now working on a track that had compression on it already to even out the bass, but if I add a second compressor after it to duck when the kick hits, n-Track now seems to get confused about which compressor I’m sidechaining - they both have the Sidechain button “lit” but only the second (sidechained) one shows the “reaction” (the signal level moving up the slope in the left pane). It appears that the first comperssor still responds to changes in Threshold, Ratio, Gain etc. but it’s impossible to see what effect this is having on the signal.
Also, I’m concerned about the previous question I asked, if the kick is now considered part of this “group” isn’t the signal leaking through into my bass channel and throwing the balance and EQ off?
I’ve tested the case where the track that has the sidechain compressor also has another compressor, and from the source track (e.g. kick drum) I can assign to either compressors. They are listed in the Sidechain output menu in the order in which they appear on the track.
The issue that I’ve found is that when a compressor had a sidechain input but you then remove it (for example by sending a send to another plugin), the compressor continues to think that it should be receiving the sidechain input, so the UI is not in sync with what is actually happening with the signal. A workaround is to remove and re-add the plugin, or alternatively close and reopen the song.
The issue will be fixed in one of the next updates.
As for your last point, I’m not 100% sure if I understand what you mean, however note that the compressor doesn’t leak from the sidechain input (e.g. drums) to the actual plugin signal (e.g. bass), it only uses the sidechain/drums input to modulate the gain on the track/bass signal. The grouping I was referring to in my previous post is related to the logic that n-Track uses to decide to mute channels when you activate the Solo or Mute buttons.
I have the sidechain routed to compressor 2, and that works fine. However, I don’t know if you noticed that compressor 1 doesn’t show the signal levels in the left pane, even though it is obviously doing its job as the Threshold etc. can be changed and the results can be heard?
And sorry, I probably didn’t explain the last point very well. As we discussed in my previous post, when I solo the bass track I can also hear the kick drum; does this mean that the kick drum audio is now being passed through to the bass channel, in which case it will affect the overall level (and possibly the EQ) of the kick drum as it’s now being output from 2 separate channels? Or is it only in solo for reference to show how it’s affecting the compressor, and the actual audio is only coming from the kick drum track?
I wasn’t able to reproduce this. Does this happen after you close and reopen the song? As I mentioned before, I was able to reproduce the compressor not showing the correct signal on the UI only after removing a sidechain input to the compressor.
And sorry, I probably didn’t explain the last point very well. As we discussed in my previous post, when I solo the bass track I can also hear the kick drum; does this mean that the kick drum audio is now being passed through to the bass channel, in which case it will affect the overall level (and possibly the EQ) of the kick drum as it’s now being output from 2 separate channels? Or is it only in solo for reference to show how it’s affecting the compressor, and the actual audio is only coming from the kick drum track?
The kick drum does not go through the bass track, it’s only that if you solo the bass track, the kick track is not muted as other tracks would normally be in response to a track being soloed.
I initially sent the sidechain to the first compressor, but of course I lost the “levelling” effect it was there for, so I added a second compressor and switched the sidechain to that one, that’s when I noticed the first one didn’t show a signal any more. I will check that it behaves as expected this evening when I reopen the song.
And thanks for putting my mind at rest about the kick drum audio and the bass channel.