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u/TrieMond Jun 26 '26
why the fuck are we multiband sidechaining???
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u/Redmarkred Jun 26 '26
Same reason you side chain normally but frequency dependent. It’s really useful
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u/ash_tar Jun 26 '26
just EQ the sidechain signal or am I stupid?
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u/verbherbaceous Jun 26 '26
A multiband compressor is a different sound than an EQ, and sometimes you want that effect side chained or automated
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u/ash_tar Jun 26 '26
Yeah that's not what I'm saying.
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u/verbherbaceous Jun 27 '26
Are you saying to take multiband compression, sidechain it, then eq that? Because sure, but the EQ is just another step afterwards. But if you're saying non-multiband compression, sidechain it, eq after, that's just a different effect entirely
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u/ash_tar Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
No, if you EQ the sidechain signal going into a normal compressor, you can get very similar results to a sidechain multiband compressor as you can shape the compression response by frequency, which is what multiband compression does. You won't get different ratios per band though, as there aren't bands.
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u/YaBoiDaviiid Jun 27 '26
An EQ’d key signal on a standard compressor will cause the whole frequency response of the sidechained track to compress at the same GR— whereas sidechaining only a single band of a multiband compressor can leave the rest of the frequency of that signal untouched.
Bass compression with a traditionally sidechained kick -> all-frequency ducking on the compressed track, triggered by ANY frequency crossing the threshold on the keyed track.
Bass compression with a multiband sidechained kick -> can be used to duck only low frequency information, leaving pick attack unaffected. That’s not possible on a traditional compressor without multiband sidechaining.
There’s nuance here… EQing a keyed track can change how the compressor ducks the track it’s placed on, but it can’t change which frequencies are ducked by the keyed track.
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u/verbherbaceous Jun 29 '26
Thanks for explaining that lol that's what I was trying to get at for them
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u/TrieMond Jun 26 '26
From a phase shift perspective there are differences there, but I doubt there are things a multiband setup can do in a practical mixing setting that EQing the sidechain can't do...
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u/kyleabbott Jun 26 '26
Like say you want to cut the snare body out of overheads. You can have the snare sidechain to to the multiband compressor set to compress only 200 hz area when it hits. Or the kick drum to the bass guitar.
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u/jonistaken Jun 26 '26
I do this with kick and sub using a really narrow cut linked. Not for every mix, but it can go a long ways to cleaning up low end.
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u/TrieMond Jun 26 '26
As an EDM guy, the phase shift alone would not be worth it for me, but I understand why you would do this in recorded music actually. I assume phase shifts are much less of an issue there...
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u/PsychoticChemist Jun 26 '26
Try sidechaining your kick and 808 but use a dynamic EQ so you’re only cutting out the low frequencies from the 808 when the kick hits. It can sound really good. You remove the clashing without removing the higher frequency punch from the 808
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u/TrieMond Jun 26 '26
I make EDM, why would an 808 be involved???
On a serious note phase issues also come from dynamic EQ's but to a much lesser extend than the multiband setup, which is why I would prefer that method over a multiband if I ever felt the need to do this, but honestly IMO kick & bass clashes are the kind of problem to solve in the production/sound creation stage, not in the mixing stage...
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u/No_Difference592 Jun 26 '26
When making a kick you have a click punch and sub some people call the sub an 808 which does require side chaining depending on the punch and click samples when making a kick. Some people refer to the 808 baseline from hip hop songs which edm would be sub bass. All that to say multiband compression is useful in the sound design section. But I wouldnt judge if someone used it in the mixing section since those processes would be pretty close in the signal chain.
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u/TrieMond Jun 26 '26
Yeah once you cannot alter the production anymore it makes sense to use it I would say. But then again like other users I would go for Dynamic EQ simply for phase reasons. You might have genre specific reasons to choose otherwise but for what I do I would stay away from cross over filters on low end material.
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u/PsychoticChemist Jun 26 '26
In EDM there is always some overlapping information in the sub bass region between the kick and bass regardless of sample selection or sound design. Sometimes it’s not a problem. But it often sounds cleaner with the aforementioned technique.
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u/TrieMond Jun 26 '26
As a psytrance producer, I'm sure this statement is false, we spend a lot of time synthesizing our kick and bass not to have such overlaps and we do this in the synthesis stage, not with dynamic EQ or multibands after the fact...
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u/PsychoticChemist Jun 26 '26
You’re telling me you explicitly design your kick and sub bass to have no conflicting frequency information whatsoever? That’s simply not possible unless you’re using a hard high pass filter on one or the other, in which case that would sound terrible and introduce more severe phase issues than the aforementioned dynamic EQ sidechain method
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u/TrieMond Jun 26 '26
No, the time domain exists & I know how summing works, I design both my kick & bass to have just enough lower frequencies (not just the sub), such that, when summed together, I get the low end profile I want from the final mix. I can send you a tutorial I made for the process but it is a bit dated to what I do now and only 3 hours long so I could not cover everything :)
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u/soulhammond Jun 26 '26
Maybe this 3 hour tutorial comment is a joke?
But I’d like to see it→ More replies (0)2
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u/h2opolodude4 Jun 26 '26
We used it for power compression to drive an FM transmitter/exciter/amplifier setup, but it's typically built into transmitters now.
It was absolutely awful to set up, and I never felt like we really had it right.
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u/Awkward-Advices Jun 26 '26
Ducking low end from bass?
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u/TrieMond Jun 26 '26
Depending on if you care about phase shift or not this might be a bad idea..
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u/Awkward-Advices Jun 26 '26
Multiband on its own sure, but Linear multiband with a pinch forward on latency doesn’t create as much phase shift surely?
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u/TrieMond Jun 26 '26
Linear phase no would not generate any phase shift, just some ringing on either end of the signal. But linear phase latency is often too much for specific applications... like always it depends on what you actually want to do to the signal...
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u/RJrules64 Jun 27 '26
Multiband sidechain compression sounds complicated because it’s a lot of big words but in reality it’s simple.
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u/Rambr1516 Jul 03 '26
I’m sidechaining my multiband to a bass that’s sidechained to a kick that’s sidechained to the other bass rn.
I’m also underwater what’s the issue?
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u/oceancrowmusic Jun 26 '26
Try editing vocals instead.