SIDECHAIN BUS

[whoisp]

Is there anyone here that would or have sent all your buses less your kick and vocals to a sidechain bus before your mix bus? Namely,  you can sidechain everything on one bus or would you sidechain each bus. I side chain each bus and not them all because you can create bottom end space with EQ on some buses so no need and each bus also has a different dynamic and maybe already have some comp on the track to bus that you could end up smashing.  HOWEVER, Iv'e been dabbling with buses and patches WHY YOU ASK.....  When you are  going epic crazy (lots of tracks) and want the kick maybe to cut through or vocal without pumping everything or adding sidechain to every track to see where the problem is, do you think the bus option.  i do have a drum patch on my template before bus for para comp which i find better that an bus for drums or bass or both and i do sometimes sidechain the patch.  Just asking as i never really sidechain on one track, either patch or bus, i am just wondering what people do when you haev lots going on. i have 12 buses on my standard template and was wondering would you do sidechain  on patches or bus and why etc if anyone can understand what im say haha 

 

[SuperFreq]

Not sure if this is exactly what you're doing but I've gotten good results with this strategy. But I don't do it for every track, just for tracks that need to pop out, like drums/percussion, vocals and solo instruments. For example with drums I have the regular DRUMS bus and I also create a sidechain called DRUMS CLIFF (for that "extra little push over the cliff" if you catch the ref), and the CLIFF bus has extreme EQ and compression that really pulls it to the forefront.

Has to be used sparingly of course, because if you do this with every track in your mix then what's the point lol. But yea I feel like I get good results. Not long ago I learned that Andrew Scheps (Chili Peppers, lots of great bands from the 90s-00s) does something similar. So if I'm in the right ballpark, I'd say check out some Andrew Scheps tutorials on youtube for some ideas!

[whoisp]

3 hours ago, SuperFreq said:

Not sure if this is exactly what you're doing but I've gotten good results with this strategy. But I don't do it for every track, just for tracks that need to pop out, like drums/percussion, vocals and solo instruments. For example with drums I have the regular DRUMS bus and I also create a sidechain called DRUMS CLIFF (for that "extra little push over the cliff" if you catch the ref), and the CLIFF bus has extreme EQ and compression that really pulls it to the forefront.

Has to be used sparingly of course, because if you do this with every track in your mix then what's the point lol. But yea I feel like I get good results. Not long ago I learned that Andrew Scheps (Chili Peppers, lots of great bands from the 90s-00s) does something similar. So if I'm in the right ballpark, I'd say check out some Andrew Scheps tutorials on youtube for some ideas!

Yes Andrew Scheps is big on parallel compression bus for drums and bass, or a light bright air one for vocals. i tend to use a patches which are amazing to use, you can send all tracks to your patches, have a side chain patch or parallel compression and then send to any bus or double vocals etc saving loads of CPU.  I use Andrew Scheps trade secrete 6DB Gain rule on mix bus, Steaky and few pros uses it to on the mix bus so i tried it even though it sort of makes no sense to turn you gain back to Zero before mixdown because you would think you would need to adjust everything again from putting 6dB of gain at start of chain then dropping to 0db, obviously you still don't clip your mete when on 6dbr! My average is about -3 when im sticking 6db in So when you take the 6 off there is about -5 or -6db headroom for mastering and only a little tweak is needed due to the Equal-loudness contour, just a nice bit of colour on mix bus because people always over do it, i tried it and works  so well and better than just turning down the master to bounce. I matched my old mix to new mix and the colour was so much better this way. I'm not sure why, but apparently when you push the mastering back up, your bring that colour back hmmm