Sidechaining kick/bass while recording or mixing?

I never find it necessary to side-chain to make room for kick and bass.

But if you're going to, it really only makes sense to worry about it during the mix.

Worry more about performance and tone during the tracking stages.

If you're going to do it, I agree during mixing makes the most sense. Getting the kick and bass to play well together is very important, but spending a little more time up front to find good complimentary tones will make your mixdown way easier and may avoid your need to do the side-chaining.

adamlewis7609


Oh I heard it is necessary to do the kick/bass sidechaining so that the kick doesn't interfere with the bass frequencies?   Atleast for synth/electronic music.   Thanks!

 
 
Even in that genre, it seems you could notch out your heavy bass tracks so that your fundamental of the kick was still slammin'.
 

adamlewis7609


Hello all....

Quick question here.  I was wondering if I should set up my project or template for kick/bass sidechaining before recording, or is it something that should be done before the mix?   Does it even matter, is one better than the other?   Just wondering how you guys do it.

Thanks everyone!
Adam

I lean more toward Skullsession's reply, ie., to go for it when mixing and focus on the creative stuff first.
 
However, some people like to mix as they go and mix into the bus, so to speak;  if your'e willing to put aside the creative flow a bit while doing that, fine; but I do think it can wait until the mixing stage.
 
 

Sorry, I am really new to audio interfaces, but why do you not need to record as hot  using 24-bit?   Just curious.   What levels do you record at pre-mix and pre-master?

Thanks for all the help!!!

adamlewis7609


Sorry, I am really new to audio interfaces, but why do you not need to record as hot  using 24-bit?   Just curious.   What levels do you record at pre-mix and pre-master?

Thanks for all the help!!!

I would suggest you try to learn all you can about these kinds of things; they will make a huge difference in understanding gain staging, and other important techniques.
 
24bit yields are MUCH greater signal to noise ratio and headroom than 16 bit (as Legion points out).
This means you can record a lower levels yet sitll yield solid signal without the noise floor.
 
And it also gives the engineer/producer/DAW user the flexibility to avoid clipping quickly.   In analogue days, it was important to get as hot a signal as one could without clipping -mostly to avoid the noise.  That was difficult always.  And in order to avoid compression at the beginning of the signal chain, it took great expertise to get hot signals that way.
 
In the digital domain you don't need such hot signals, especially if working in 24bit format.   So again - the result is a solid signal without the noise, giving much more headroom to work with.