Say I set up a compressor on track A triggered by the signal of track B, which by its turn has a compressor triggered by track C, which in turn has a compressor triggered by track A. It doesn't have to be a closed cycle... But are these sidechain loops or chains a thing? I just woke up from a dream about that.

 

you could do it if you wanted, but I can't think of a reason to do it either. I think you will begin to get sample delay at the compressors, or some other negative outcome. You probably could set this up more easily using an enveloper.

keep in mind that when you are side-chaining a compressor, lookahead isn't going to help. So you probably will be building some kind of lag or delay. You would have to do it with audio triggering off the plugin before it. it will not exist for lookahead to see and fix. I do not think the Midi side-chain data will be passed along from one plugin to the next, so you are stuck with using audio. To speed up the compressor clamping down faster, your only option is to dial the compression ratio way up. Will an Opto be fast enough reacting to a plugin? that is already reacting to something else? Sometimes the higher ratio won't be bad, but you could maybe be double dipping and way over-compressing something. Not the way you may have wanted.

It would be much easier to just insert a few extra midi tracks and link the compressors to them individually. I do not see why you would set this up in serial, when you could do it so much more easily using Midi tracks to trip the compressors, or envelopers. Too complicated for me.

 

This is more practical...

 

Tutorial

 

Yes, it's a thing. It's also a thing to stack envelope shapers, such as Xfer LFOtool, Cableguys Shaperbox/Filterbox, etc.

 

and a OTT stack of at least 4 instances. Not sure what to think of that.

 

Yep, I know of people who are doing this.

 

Once you stack, you can't go back. ;)