Could maybe be mix balance? If the kick is too loud then im pretty sure it would introduce a ducking type effect by virtue of masking other freqs way too much. I could be wrong.. my partner always tells me i am. Or as others suggested, too much compression or limiting.

A limiter on the master bus would do the same thing too. 

Concrete limiter in the master bus PC channel perhaps? 

wizard71


Could maybe be mix balance? If the kick is too loud then im pretty sure it would introduce a ducking type effect by virtue of masking other freqs way too much. I could be wrong.. my partner always tells me i am. Or as others suggested, too much compression or limiting.

The kick volume is definitely in keeping with the genre of music. And the problem only occurs when I apply the saturation knob to it. If I remove the saturation and turn the kick up to compensate, I don't hear the ducking. It's not a full on kick-sidechained ducking a la Daft Punk et al, it's slight but noticeable enough to be annoying. As said before I did actually have some very light compression (2:1 w/high threshold) on the master bus, and when I turned that off it helped a little, but I can still hear it. At this point I think I'm going to ignore it for a while to reset my ears...you know how it is when you focus them on one issue for too long 

cliffsp8


A limiter on the master bus would do the same thing too. 

Concrete limiter in the master bus PC channel perhaps? 

Not in this case, I haven't started screwing with concrete limiters yet. At this stage in my experience I think I'd probably mess things up pretty quickly with one!

Are you listening through the VRM box or straight off the Fast Track?

Straight off the Fast Track. 

If you have a multi band compressor, I was suggesting using it to just eliminate the low frequencies by soloing only the higher frequencies and see if you can hear the ducking sound. In other words, can you hear the ducking sound when you can't hear the kick?

I am absolutely clueless when it comes to the operation of a multiband compressor gswitz, unfortunately! That's another one for my list....

Right click Fx Bin > Audio FX > LP 64 Multiband
On right hand side under levels to the right of the attack, release, threshold, ration and gain nobs
you will find the ALL button.
Click the ALL button.
Double click the Ratio nob/pot and the Gain nob/pot (what's the difference between a nob and a pot?). This turns off gain and compression.
In the top 1/3 of the window, there are parameters that relate to different ranges of frequencies...
Low - Low Mid - Mid - High Mid - High
Just below these are 'S' buttons for SOLO.
Click the S buttons for Low.
This effectively gives you a strong Low Pass filter.you can slide the squares to adjust the range until you can hear the Kick.
If you pull the square for the low range towards the square for the Low Mid, you push up the cut above 125.
This should help isolate the kick.
Once you isolate the kick, reverse the soloing (click the S for the other 4 bands and unclick S for the Low band).
I find soloing the low range and increasing it (by dragging the squares) until it covers to about 200 works for me to get a kick.
Now, you have excluded all but the kick... still hear ducking?
You could also do this with RMix where the square is up off the bottom and pretty wide. Can you still hear ducking? So, what I'm trying to isolate is whether the ducking is only a result of the kick playing at the same time or whether it is affecting the other ranges through some side chain/compressor or other thing

 No, I don't hear the ducking after doing that. Having said that, it was definitely being partially caused by some very slight compression on the master bus. Once I took that off, the effect was certainly less exaggerated to my ears, and now I'm wondering whether or not my ears are playing tricks on me, having spent so long listening out for the damn thing! I'm going to approach the issue with fresh ears tomorrow, thanks for all your help!

PS can't get RMix to work now. It's always worked great for me, but now it's just showing a white screen when I open it