Side-chaining in Sonar 6?

Hey guys,

There's a lot of confusion about stereo sidechaining/ducking compression in Sonar 6, so I thought I'd write up this short tutorial.

There are multiple ways to have true stereo sidechains in Sonar.
One way used by the twistedlemon.nl sidekick plugin is to have "virtual sidechain channels" (or "universal sidechain" as the db-audioware plugs call them - those plugs allow this as well), like this:

trigger -> compressor in bypass mode (only sends out trigger info to virtual sidechain) -> mix out
programme -> compressor (gets trigger info from virtual sidechain) -> mix out

However this isn't always totally reliable.

Another way is to split your stereo programme, and send the left channel to the first instance of a mono-sidechain plugin, and the left channel of the trigger goes to the other channel of that first instance. The same thing happens with the right channels:

trigger left -> Comp1 trigger input
programme left -> Comp1 mono input -> Mix left out

trigger right -> Comp2 trigger input
programme right -> Comp2 mono input -> Mix right out

But then, changing the settings in one plugin instance doesn't change the settings in the other instance. Not good if you like good hands-on control.

Another way is to use a surround channel. This is the best way to do it in Sonar 6. This is how to do it, step by step:

1. Create a surround bus in your project (right click on the bus pane and "Insert Surround Bus")
2. Call the bus something recognizable, like "crunchessor sidechain"
3. Go to your programme track pane. This is the track that's going to get ducked. Set the output to our "crunchessor sidechain" bus we created in Step 1.
4. Open the surround panner for your programme (by right-clicking on the track pane's surround panner and selecting "Open Surround Panner")
5. In there, make sure the channels L and R have numbers 0.0 next to them. Do this by changing the angle, focus, and width. It should be so by default.. but just in case, here are the settings I needed: Angle 0.0, Focus 100.0, Width 60.0
6. Go to your trigger's track pane. This will be the track that will be triggering the ducking. Set the output to our "crunchessor sidechain" bus.
7. In the trigger's surround panner, make sure you get the numbers next to Ls and Rs to 0.0. Do this by setting the correct Width in the panner. I set my width to 240.5 (I couldn't hit 240 :-) ), Angle to 0.0, Focus to 100.0. Make sure the crosshair is still up on top. You can also get the Ls and Rs levels to 0.0 by using the settings Angle -180, Width 120, Focus 100, but then the triggers will be swapped: the left trigger channel will trigger the ducking of the right programme channel and vice versa. You don't want that.
8. Go to our bus, "crunchessor sidechain". Insert Crunchessor as an FX bin.
9. Open the Crunchessor control. You will notice there are 4 tabs with channel names and a fifth tab called Surround Bridge. Those 4 tabs are four separate instances of Crunchessor.
10. In the Surround bridge, use these settings:
(Plugin #): 1 (Left input): Left (Right input): Left Surround (Linked): Yes (Enable): Yes
(Plugin #): 2 (Left input): Right (Right input): Right Surround (Linked): Yes (Enable): Yes
(Plugin #): 3 and 4 - leave everything unchanged except for (Linked): No (Enable): No. This will turn off the 3rd and 4th instance of the plugin.
11. Now go to the first tab, which should read "L / Ls" (in that order, NOT "Ls / L"). Use this setting for the Crunchessor's sidechain: SC: R. This setting will propagate to the second instance of Crunchessor ("R / Rs"). It means that your trigger is the trigger channel you have panned to the surround back, in step 7.
12. Set up all your settings as you wish. True stereo ducking.
13. One more problem: we still have the trigger in the surround back. Even if you just mix down to stereo, the back signal will leak down to your front mix. We need to cut it out in the signal chain right after Crunchessor. To do this we will use Sonalksis FreeG (it's a free download), or any other plugin which can be used to mute (not turn down.. mute) audio. Insert this plugin as the next FX bin after Crunchessor.
14. In the Surround Bridge for FreeG, turn off all instances except for the one that's got Left Surround and Right Surround routed to it.
15. In the Ls / Rs tab, use the Mute button to cut out the trigger signal in the surround back.

Done!


Question is: why can't S6 use Crunchessor as a 4-in, 2-out plugin, like it's supposed to? :(

Cheers,
D.

Make a stereo FX bus/channel and pan the kick hard left and the bass hard right then use a compressor with sidechain then wither (Either) send THAT to a mono bus or use MDA imager to bring one of the two channels to centre (I.e the bass) and cancel out the kick so you get the kick triggering the comp/gate but you only hear the bass or whatever you want.

ORIGINAL: Dr. Mac

I know this is not exactly side-chaining, but I've had some success in rock music by simply creating a new buss called "Kick and bass", fed from the kicks/bass busses. I place a nice limiter in there, push it a bit, and BAM, it sounds great!

Let's hope for side-chaining in the next release!

ORIGINAL: axe

This was one of the major reasons that I skipped Sonar 6, it makes one wonder why.