Thanks Scott - I think it's the Bass end of things as you mention where it's
used by the sound of it. Personally I'm no big fan of exteme use of
compression particualrly with the recent 80's dance covers where they duck
like crazy in the bass end - but I have a feeling that in tranceproduction
it's used in a quite specific way to give that 'huge' sound they achieve.
Thanks - your info is useful to getting me started on some experimentation!

Cheers

H
"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
H wrote:
I know little about this other than I think it's used to good effect in
dance music. I'm just getting into trance production and think (in my
wisdom) I can hear the effect of this on tracks I'm listening to. Can
someone give an example of this (preferably in the trance/dance genre)
i.e.
not a specific piece of music but what is actaully done to achieve this.
Also if it's possible to do this with cubase's own plugins (SX2) or UAD-1
plugs?

Ducking is basically running one channel into the sidechain input of a
compressor while the rest of the mix is processed by that compressor.

When that first channel has signal on it, all the other channels are
pulled down.

This is a very common thing for applications like voiceover, or when you
need to pull vocals way forward in a song, or when you have bass and
drum interfering badly with one another and they are both poorly defined.

You can use it to make any one channel come way forward in the mix.
I have no idea how the techno guys are using it. But whenever you hear
everything else getting softer when one source gets louder, it's probably
the reason.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."