it should be easy, but its not.

until now i used to create a return track called "pre-master" and set all track outputs to "send only", increasing their send volumes to 0dB sending them fully to the "pre-master" track (except the kickdrum). then i dropped abletons internal compressor on this "pre-master" track, enabled its sidechain-button and selected the kickdrum track as source. everything was nice and i was very happy.

but now i'm sad, cause i wanted to use a third party compressor to do this compressing on the pre-master and this is not possible in ableton (remember, its a return-track).

so i tried routing (audio to) and sending (send only/sends) audio to all kinds of tracks/return tracks and nothing worked. the only thing i could come up with is grouping all tracks (except kick), insert the third party compressor in that group and route the audio of a ghost track to the plugin to trigger it.

and i would really be okay with this setup - if ableton would kindly allow me to hide it's fucking group track preview. nobody ever needs this shit. if you group a lot of tracks in ableton the group track gets bigger and bigger and you cannot adjust it's size like you can with any other track. the useless preview is taking up as much as half your screen/workspace if you group 20 tracks. it's so fat that some mums are rotating around its gravity!

if anyone of you gentleman knows a better way of achieving my humble goal of compressing everything except drums in ableton with a third party plugin, plz help me

 

First, why would you like to do sidechain compression triggered by kick with 3d party plugin? Seems pretty pointless to me. Second, create an audio track for Pre-master put a comp on it, wire everything but kick to it by selecting send audio to - track in. Wire kick to it by selecting send audio to - external sidechain {insert your plugin name}. Push the in button. Create another audio track for kick. Set - audio from - your original kick channel. Push the In button. Voila.

 

Last edited: May 4, 2016

I use LFO tool by xfer for all my sidechain stuff. Much more accurate and precise than abletons native sidechain. Take a look here to see how to properly use LFO tool for sidechaining, it's the best tutorial i've seen: http://cymatics.fm/2015/08/21/you-wont-believe-what-youre-missing-out-on-in-lfo-tool/

In your instance, you could you route all other tracks except your kick to an audio track in ableton, use lfo tool in note trigger mode to sidechain that track to your trigger, then route the track into your pre-master? That way all of your other stuff will be sidechaned to the trigger, but not the kick and everything is routed to your pre master fader. I hope understood your problem correctly!

 

I wish my this part of my brain worked like yours

 

thanx for the input. i just want to try some compressors to see if they somehow change the sound, for example use the ni solid compressors instead the ableton stock ones. plz tell me if this makes no sense, than i'll go trying other audio stuff that maybe has more a point to it

ps: i think i already tried the thing with "pushin the in button" - when doing that abletons latency compensation stopped to be in sync (had to introduce track delays to compensate). is that a normal thing?

 

Well, there is no point sidechaining kick to 3d party compressors, unless you want something like with looking forward attack time. The only thing i use ableton's compressor device for is for that. It's flexible and has very extreme settings. Yeah, you can use Lfo tool to make some stupid curves that you can't do with ableton compressor, but i find them useless, but again, you may not.
As for latency, the only time i can see that happen is when routing something in parallel -pre fx, and i'm not sure. Never encountered that.

 

I don't know if you are mixing dance music, but if you do, different parts should get different ducking rates: for instance for the best results, you may want to duck a sub-bass really hard when the kicks hits but this setting is too extreme for the synths. Sending everything to a single buss for ducking is in the best case "better than nothing" but is far from the purpose of this technique.

@Bill Vkerchi? is right with bussing using audio tracks not return tracks (and he's right with the use of stock compressor) but the final summing should be for a little final touch before mastering (maybe a very gentle glue compressor, some correction eq, light tape saturation) not hitting it with a "duck-it-all" compressor.

 

i use it very lightly - just 1 or max 2 db compression - just for the final gluing. i just wanted to try if using a siedchained ssl compressor may sound different then the sidechained stock compressor.