Hi , I'm looking for a sidechain ducking vst to make my 808's push away from the kick.
Important to me would be a visual display where you can see exactly when the 808 is ducked by the kick and when it starts again.

It would be important to mention that this Vst should work quasi offbeat....as far as I know you can only set the standard time signatures 1/4 1/8 1/16 and so on with most Vst....

I produce hip hop and also often old school hip hop, the kicks are not always one hundred percent on the grid.

I tried Duck from Devious Machines , I like it but unfortunately I sometimes have the problem that the Vst skips kicks because they are not in the grid....or the 808 is sometimes cut off because the grid does not fit.... maybe I have also set the Duck Vst wrong.

 

...use a compressor maybe?
I realize you're looking for a gate with an envelope akin to Nicky Romero's Kickstart, but for irregular kick patterns.
However figuring out how actual sidechain compression works would benefit you way more, even if it takes more work to set up.
1) Look up how aidechain is handles in your DAW.
2) Create two busses. Put a compressor with sidechain functionality (Pro-C 2, Fruity Limiter, whatever) on one of them, send your kick to its sidechain.
3) Route your bass and any other instruments you wish to duck to the bus with the compressor. Route your kick and everything else to the empty bus.
In a lazy way, you can put your sidechain compressor directly on your bass, but this will create time alignment issues if any of the plugins before the compressor in the signal path (this includes both kick and bass) have latency.

Also, since you'll try to your way first anyways, the best gate with an envelope IMO is Gatekeeper by Polyverse Music.

Now the most important part:
The sidechain technique you're trying to implement makes 808s sound weak. You'll want to blend kick and 808 instead. The exact procedure varies heavily, but in general you want to make sure their transients are phase-aligned and the kick is tight and short.

 

Kickstart, well at least kickstart2; can deal with irregular bass/kick scenario. If you look at top right side of the plugin, there is an option to make it watch incoming audio. Or you can switch it to Midi, if the channel is not rendered to audio yet and it will use the Note On to trigger the envelope. Another one is to duplicate the printed bass track, edit the bass hit waveform shape on the new duplicate, connect the sidechain to it, and mute it. Muting it will not disrupt the sidechain.

lots of ways. If you end up picking a compressor approach, remember that you *can change the ratio to infinity to make it ramp/ and clamp down faster because it has to go from 0-100 mph in very short order. It won't compress that much more, it will just be getting there faster.

Gatekeeper looks nice. Another very nice option is the lowly Fabfilter Pro-G. I never see it mentioned all that much, but most FF users usually have it installed already.

 

Last edited: Oct 17, 2023

You can trigger duck with sidechain , that way it respond everytiime a kick is present.

 

Another one you can experiment with the Midi Duck from Curtiss King. It's like DM Duck, but it's nice to have other options.

 

Gatekeeper is awesome indeed, and I have a personal affinity for it, as it is one of the few plugins I've ever paid for
But recently I've had to admit to myself that Shaperbox 3 by Cableguys absolutely blows it out of the water. It can do everything Gatekeeper can do, but the envelopes can control all kinds of stuff (filters, compressors, effects) built in the plugin itself.

As for the blending thing @justwannadownload mentioned, try a spectral compressor. SmartComp 2 works wonders for this kind of stuff.

 

"Sidechain" - Ducking

https://zeeks.app/
https://www.rewiredrecords.co.uk/products/sidekick2-vst
https://a1audio.alexhilton.net/a1triggergate
https://www.caelumaudio.com/CaelumAudio/?Page=FluxMini2

 

You don't need anything else other than Shaperbox 3

 

Fircomp 2 with lookahead works for me.

 

I'll just echo some stuff that was already said. Shaperbox's volume shaper or Kickstart (both buy Cableguys) should do the job. If you're working with MIDI it's pretty easy. I don't use Kickstart (because I have Shaperbox and it's redundant to me), but I think it works the same as Volume shaper... which will work great even with audio tracks that aren't perfectly grid-aligned because it can trigger based on the transients of the audio signal coming if you like. It doesn't have to be based grid/timing based.

 

Last edited: Oct 18, 2023

There are some differences between Shaperbox 2 and Kickstart2 for this purpose. Same programmer, but there would be no point in keeping them as separate products if not. Kickstart is more of a one trick pony, but it is more focused on that one trick. I probably wouldn't buy both, but it is certainly nice to have them available. The same way I would not get rid of Xfer LFO Tool. These kinds of Midi FX plugins are some of my favorite; because you can't get much more bang for the storage space they need. One that looked interesting to me is Dialog Audio Sequence Processor, along the lines of Shaperbox, but for some reason I couldn't get it to work right. oh well.

 

Shaperbox 3 is the cleanest way to go for a 'complete' ducking effect, BUT, if you want to 'blend' the kick and bass (ANY bass [or any other sound]) just use a dynamic EQ.
=> Find the peak harmonic frequency of the kick (using an EQ) and put a dynamic EQ on the bass track (side-chain it to the kick), then insert a node at the peak kick frequency (on the bass track's dynamic EQ) and set that node to dynamically dip that frequency in the bass when the kick plays. Experiment with what db level to dip the bass (whatever fits your style of music).
=> The best part of doing it this way is that you don't lose ALL of the bass frequencies when it gets ducked, you only temporarily (we're talking milliseconds here) lose the small frequency range that the bass doubles in the kick. The rest of your bass frequencies are still heard, and the kick punches through. This method is basically the same as a spectrum compressor but much simpler & more specific.

Hope that helps!

 

I've used many different ways to do this in the past....
Now I use soothe 2 to sidechain duck. Works really good and only ducks the exact clashing freqs not the whole band.
https://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/tutorials/frequency-sidechaining-with-oeksound-soothe2/

 

Trackspacer? Fuser?

 

I use Devious Machines' "Duck" for my sidechain.
You can set the kick track via sidechain input to trigger the "Duck" ducking, which you also can edit with curves and points.
Here's a good explanation video by "Venus Theory":

 

I use Cableguys shaperbox.
Plus Shaperbox can be Multiband as well. So that you duck only the low portion of the bass entirely and reduce a little bit of the mid bass and almost little to no reduction for the gritty bass.

 

I think you got it right from the start with Duck from Devious Machines and just need to learn it a bit better, the video @Chaindog posted is pretty good.

Devious Machines and Cableguys are in the same ballpark when it comes to ducking/sidechain and multi effects plugins, some people will like one or the other better depending on the functionalities, their taste in GIU and how the brand image makes them feel but they are essentially the same thing, but different...
but the same.

Duck : https://deviousmachines.com/product/duck/
Kickstart : https://www.kickstart-plugin.com/

I personnaly prefer Duck's functionalities for this purpose.

You can achieve similar volume automations with VolumeShaper from Cableguys or the gain section within Infiltrator 2 from Devious Machines.

VolumeShaper : https://www.cableguys.com/volumeshaper
Infiltrator 2 : https://deviousmachines.com/product/infiltrator/

I think VolumeShaper would be a little more appropriated for this task, seems clearer to naviguate IDK. Just take a look at the sheer volume of people using it : @triggerflipper , @Backtired , @naitguy , @clone , @gooober , @Anubhav Ukil , they certainly look happy about it.

I like the detailled answer from @justwannadownload who seems to know how to specifically make banging 808's, the original way of sidechaining things was to use a compressor so if you want to stay in the realm of modern GIU's Fabfilter Pro C-2 is good choice. Just seems that their are more optimized options nowadays.

https://www.fabfilter.com/products/pro-c-2-compressor-plug-in

I'm surprised only @thebert recommended Trackspacer from WavesFactory, it's very innovative and for lack of better words i'll just paste this description directly from their website :

"Trackspacer features an internal 32 band EQ that reacts to the incoming sidechain signal. It analyses the spectrum of the sidechain and applies a reversed EQ curve to another track. Trackspacer creates space for the primary track instantly."

Given what you are looking for this might be the perfect tool for your 808's as it carves the right frequencies automaticaly.

Trackspacer : https://www.wavesfactory.com/audio-plugins/trackspacer/

I'm the most interrested in @subGENRE technique cause he probably is familiar with all the above and choosed Soothe2 to do this task, it sounds somewhat similar to Trackspacer but can do way more way better. I think Soothe2 is one of the most forward looking plugin ATM and will be considered a game changer in music production (if not already regarder as such).

https://oeksound.com/plugins/soothe2/

I'm very curious about it as I never had to try it for myself but heard great things from a few well respected/established peoples.

Ultimately you just need a tool that understand volume and react to it the way you intend to.

I'll stick to Duck, I think it's great, just need to change the trigger mode to sidechain and set your layered kick as the incoming signal.

Cheers

 

In FL Studio you can also use the Timeshift Feature on the Kick Channel and adjust it to your needs without any Effect should be possible in other DAW's also. After that u can use Kickstart2 or anything mentioned here before if you not satisfied. Also be sure to Adjust the 808's Volume Envolope (Turn Delay,Att,Dec,Sus & Rel all the Way Down and Hold all the Way up that the 808 only last as long as the Midi Note is) the last point i mentioned is for 808's in general not only for sidechaining.

 

Last edited: Oct 18, 2023

I'm using Duck a lot on offbeat material and I don't have that problem you describe. The grid is linked to whenever the trigger occur, not with the DAW's grid, so any offbeat audio sent via sidechain or off beat midi feed into it will react when is told to. Also if you want more room to see the long 808 just set the speed parameter to whatever you need. And you can use that Offset parameter to correct any failings in the DAWs delay compensation, maybe that is the problem you are having. Hope this helps!