This is something that's bugged me since I've started working with Sonar and I'm not knowledgeable enough about audio to suss out why it's happening. When I have a strong, heavy kick thumping away, if there is even so much as a little of the saturation knob applied (not even 2 notches), the kick causes a ducking effect on other tracks. The effect is more pronounced if I have it set to "keep low" but is still noticeable on "neutral" or "keep high" although to a lesser extent. 


I like the sound of it on a kick drum, but man does it have a tendency to ruin the other audio. Right now I'm working on a track with a heavy hip hop style kick, and the saturation knob is ruining the nice raspy synth bass line I have, and also causes audible ducking in a higher register synth as well. 

Can anyone explain why this happens? All fader levels are set quite low and nothing is clipping either on the tracks or the master bus.  There is of course no compression sidechaining going on either. 

In fact the more I've used the Softube saturation the more I'm driven to use the Tube module instead. 

any chance your speakers pushing the thick drum sound aren't able to give the definition on the higher frequency tracks? what happens when you dim the kick? can you see ducking in the analyst plug?

I'm listening on ATH-M50's at the minute, too late for speakers. Volume isn't too high, and I hear it through my Grado's as well. 

When I dim the kick, it doesn't happen. 

I can't see it happening on the analyst plug. 

AFAIK it's not possible that the plugin ducks tracks to which it's not connected. Have you gotten it confirmed somehow that ducking takes place, not just frequency conflict?

Yes I have tried carving out inverse EQ curves for them to see if they're just fighting for the same space, and that didn't seem to help matters. It's a definite perceived lowering of volume when the kick sounds. 

I have almost the exact setup as you do, even down to the same exact headphones. I do hip-hop/dance/synthpop music and I have the saturation knob on all my kicks. I never get the pumping effect you're talking about.

The only way I can imagine is if there is a compressor somewhere in the signal chain that contains both the kick signal and the synth signals. Even if the compressor is not sidechained, you will still hear a type of pumping since the kick is much deeper and "thumpier" than your synths, especially if the threshold set on the compressor is set really low (or input set really high).

I'd say check for a compressor like this (maybe on a bus that contains both the kick and synths?) and try disabling it. See of that fixes it. Perhaps you accidentally enabled a prochannel compressor or something.

so it is possible high end definition is lost when speaker attempts the kick. try using multi band compressor solo all but bass. still hear problems? turn off compression and gain btw.

if accidentally side chaining, you should hear it by solo kick plus related track.

I'm with Vaultwit, a compressor further down the chain reacting to the kick could create a similar effect. Remember that the compression triggered by the bass end will be more noticeable on the higher frequencies.

I did have a tiny bit of compression on the master bus (forgot it was there actually) and turning it off has made a slight improvement, but it's still happening a little. Oddly enough I have also found that the saturation knob's location in the chain alters things slightly as well. I'm hearing it a little more when the saturation is behind the EQ than when it's after it. 

I'm completely clueless about multiband compressors as well....going to have to get up to speed with all that some time!

At this point though, I'm going to give my ears a rest. The poor things!