Real Sidechaining

[TheBellows]

For me i got the most “natural” sounding sidechaining effect by (if i remember correctly), 2 tracks with each a “send to S01” on them, and on the S01 track a compressor (with some fiddeling around with the parameters).

Most would say this is just heavy compression, or 2 signals being compressed into 1, whatever. But the signal-follower way (to me at least) has more customization but it sounds a bit less natural.

I find it better to use a custom envelope with the keytracker, but this of course only works on one hit samples. If you’re unsure how to set up a custom key triggered envelope:http://forum.renoise.com/index.php/files/file/98-custom-key-triggered-envelope-generator/

I found that sidechaining filters sounds very nice with oversampling x8, like a kick controlling a high pass filter on the bass track. Much easier to get a nice result with the custom envelope as the visual representation gives you a better idea how it will react.

[Ch1PTh0rn]

+9000 for the sake of morphing plugins (mmorph, zynaptiq morph etc.)

[Roppenzo (Rpnz)]

+9000 for the sake of morphing plugins (mmorph, zynaptiq morph etc.)

Yeah. For example, every other plugin from Melda Production uses side-chaining, the latest one being Mmorph (a morphing plugin). Can’t use this in Renoise, though

+1.

damn those audio samples sounds cooool!;

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MMorph

YES we need audio routing! Using sidekick for the last 10 years but i think it’s time to try out some other vst’s that require input.

[ceejay]

Please add this in 3.2

The masses are pleading!

[Samtho]

+1 for this

[Abissus (VΔƎРЯÎŞΜ)]

I second the +9000

Was just about to get MMorph, is half price this week, have been waiting for a while for that. Been doing my head in trying to figure it out and now i know why i couldn’t get it going. Didn’t think about this. Glad I tried the demo first. Well there goes that idea poo & cheese.

[insane (allie)]

Come to think of it, it might be possible to replicate true sidechained compression with a doofer+formula device…

[Roppenzo (Rpnz)]

up.

[EnergyCrush]

Why the !@#% is there dead @#$@#$^ silence on this? I’ve been a renoise user for 14 !@#$@ years, since 1.28 from FTII 2.09, firmly invested, and pushing it whenever I can (EnergyCrush review @ kvr -> https://www.kvraudio.com/product/renoise-by-renoise/reviews)..)

I don’t ask for much, and I’m accepting of a lot - as long as that is !#@%#$@#$% communicated.

I’m used to solid dickery from a lot of other companies; hell, from some it’s just expected. But not here, not on my primary @#$@$# tool.

Answer this god damn @#$@. I’ve been here for you, supported you, championed you, continued to be a peon in the army of renoise. I, we, deserve more than your !@#@#$ silence.

Peace out.

[ffx]

Calm down, it’s common in here that all development will be kept totally secret. Honestly most companies do like this, have a look at Bitwig KVR forum. Ok, there are some really cool approaches here, for example I totally love the way the Sonar DAW team makes information politics: They now always announce next big features on a nice webpage, including development state: Cakewalk Sonar “In The Oven” webpage section

I agree with you though, a bit of information would satisfy lot of people in here… And no, that would not require an army of 1000 monkeys

Most users I am meeting assume that one of the next features actually is side chaining… So let’s hope we will get this base feature sooner or later.

[EnergyCrush]

Dude, you’re totally right - I was over the top, and pretty frustrated last night, my apologies.

I have a big project coming up in a week that I intended to use renoise for. It’s a little intense, as it’s a 48-hour horror-themed event, where you get 48 hours to make a film, and I’m the composer, and possibly the sound engineer. I figured out a workflow that allowed me to align scores with video frames, have picked up some great samples, trimmed down current set of VSTs to stay focused, etc.

The final touch getting prepared for this endeavor was picking up a good in-host morphing utility for those samples - need room for creative exploration on some of these sounds. The two primary candidates, of course, are Melda’s MMorph and Zynaptiq’s Morph 2. Coming back to the forums to find this particular long-in-the-tooth issue is still outstanding, but more, that there is zero information about either it being added nor when the next release that might include is…too much.

I’m a developer. My girlfriend is also, and works for MS. I totally get reasons for why and when promises about features aren’t communicated. Sometimes, it’s actually a legal issue or brand new technology, completely understandable.

But that’s not the case here. Instead this appears to be a completely unnecessary policy decision that leaves us in the dark, on the most fundamental component of my workflow. Now, I need to go pull open Reaper, or FL Studio, or Ableton, etc., refamiliarize myself, and establish a new fast-paced workflow, a week before the event.

This is just crappy Renoise devs. I need you to be the ‘professional’ DAW you’ve committed to being and I’ve accepted you to be, and while that may not mean having every latest-greatest feature pushing the edge, it certainly should include fundamental technologies that have established a firm standing in professional plug-ins, but at the very least needs to shed light on your awareness and intent around it so your users understand what you actually represent. I depend on you, your users depend on you, and this quite frankly, is…yeah, the biggest disappointment I’ve experienced with Renoise to date, only worse for your utter silence. Crappy.

[EnergyCrush]

Okay, problem solved.

Spent the entire day and hours of the last week digging into trials of different morphing utilities to little avail (though2C Audio’s Kaleidoscope proved to be amazing enough in it’s own right, it will be mine).

A few hours into the morning now, took another approach: are there any VST2 plugins that: a) will act as a VST3 host, b) allow complete control over side-chaining and audio separately, c) be absolutely solid, d) not break the bank.

And the answer is: yes. It’s Metaplugin by DDMF (https://www.kvraudio.com/product/metaplugin-by-ddmf). I did try Blue Cat Audio’s Patchwork and MB7 Mixer as well; don’t waste your money. The program makes poor assumptions about implicit side-chain routing that make it unusable for something like MMorph, not to mention it’s not very stable and repeatedly crashes itself and Renoise any time a plugin gets removed from the chain, or if you breath to heavy.

So is what I have working solidly right now:

• Pop DDMF effect onto a track, open the editor.
• Right-click in the DDMF screen, add a VST3 instance of discoDSP Bliss. Add another and then double click on them to open them up.
• Open Soundly, find a sample, highlight a section you want, drag it to an instance of Bliss. Find another sample and do the same for the second Bliss instance.
• Right-click back in DDMF, add a VST3 instance of melda MMorph.
• Connect the Midi input to an instance of Bliss, then connect the other.
• Connect the Master outputs from one instance of Bliss to the inputs on MMorph.
• Connect the Master outputs from the other instance of Bliss to the sidechain inputs of MMorph.
• Connect the MMorph outputs to the Audio Output
• Add VSTFX alias instrument in the same channel pointing to DDMF
• VST3 your brains out with MMorph or any other plugin

This workflow is…actually really damn simple.

DDMF is plain, but solid, hosts VST3, AU, AAX, RTAS, dead simple to use and customize. More, it loads any plugin (effect or instrument) I want and completely encapsulates the entire workflow away from the rest of the DAW while still allowing me to send the resulting audio for addition effects process consistent with everything else.

MMorph supports any two audio sources as long as you can get one to it’s primary inputs and the other to it’s sidechain inputs. That done, it’s got a lot of tweakability I’m finally getting to explore in my DAW of choice (despite…everything). I believe Zynaptiq Morph does this as well, if you feel great about getting another single iLok license for your money (don’t care, leave me alone).

discoDSP could be any sampler or sound generator you want. I actually have found it horrible for managing/using my sample libraries in general, but the ability to drag-and-drop samples onto it’s face and be lightweight actually makes it a perfect choice for this workflow.

I was turned onto Soundly byAsbjoern @ asoundeffect.com after picking up some samples. Trying it out for a month, but after demoing several top free and trial sample library managers, don’t think there is anything else like it.

So…yeah. Reliable VST3 and true sidechaining in Renoise. Go, avail yourselves of this maddening roar.

[EnergyCrush]

Something worth mentioning - the DDMF Metaplugin also exposes 100 generic automation parameters that can be quickly mapped to exposed parameters for any plugin you drop into it. The icing on that cake is that they also make that dead simple to use as through drop-down lists at the top of the plugin.

The 1st drop-down list contains the 100 generic Metaplugin parameters (param. 1, param.2, …, param. 100).

The 2nd drop-down list is populated with every insert/plugin currently showing in Metaplugin, updated as inserts/plugins are added/removed.

The 3rd drop-down gets auto-populated whenever an insert/plugin is selected in the 2nd drop-down.

What is especially cool is that you don’t just see the generic ‘param. 1’, etc. inside Renoise once you’ve established a mapping - instead you get the insert/plugin parameter name followed by (<plugin_index>: <plugin_name>), so you don’t have to try remembering what all the parameters are mapped to. Freaking awesome! I do notice that string is a little truncated in Renoise to 16 chars, so it’s not perfect, but reasonably functional.

Also, one other thing - while initially you do have to either drag-and-drop the plugin dll into the Metaplugin UI or right-click, ‘Load Plugin’, and navigate to it on disk, Metaplugin stores the info for each one you add and provides a hierarchical view of that list dynamically in the Metaplugin UI right-click menu by developer (discoDSP, FabFilter, etc.) - apparently alphabetically. It provides an option in that menu to also clear the list as well.

Seriously impressed by DDMF Metaplugin…very rare to see such a solid, well-designed, directly useful and functional tool that does exactly what I want without significant gaps while still not being bloated in any way. Kudos DDMF!

Hope this helps others using Renoise as well.

[mr_moses]

Any chance you could post instructions on how to side-chain using Metaplugin? Do you also need MMorph as mentioned above? Being able to side-chain in Renoise would be my dream come true! Thanks for the post.

[gova (toblerpone)]

If you use a higher sample rate, like 96Khz, it’s possible to perform side chain on plugins that can filter out high frequency signals, which if free is unfortunately almost strictly compression. This uses MFrequency shifter and MCompressor. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ay4hr5k2tp8mu9i/side%20chain.xrns?dl=1

[EnergyCrush]

@mr moses - Sure, and no, you don’t need MMorph for side-chaining, it was just the plug-in I needed side-chaining for at the time.

You have a few options depending on what you want to do. There may be more than what I’m listing here.

1. Use Metaplugin as an instrument to host each plugin you want to side-chain (it can load as either an instrument or effect):

• Load MetapluginSynth as an instrument and open the editor
• Inside MetapluginSynth editor:
  • Drag desired plug-in dlls into window (or right-click and load; DDMF will remember each added)
  • Route midi-in to each instrument as needed(and out as needed)
  • Route audio output directly as needed from each instrument to primary Audio Output
  • Route other/additional audio output from each instrument you want to side-chain to the target plugin
• Example:
  • The example above is how I did this using Bliss as a sound generation source side-chained into MMorph, which mixes it’s own generator with the input from another source, Bliss in this case.

2. Use Metaplugin as an effect on a track to mix track output with plugin hosted inside Metaplugin instance:

• Add notes for an instrument to a track
• Add Metaplugin as an effect to that track and open its editor
  • Notice here that when loaded as an effect, Metaplugin automatically includes an Audio Input box
• Inside Metaplugin editor:
  • Drag desired plug-in dlls into window (or right-click and load)
  • Route any midi-in to each plugin you need
  • Route Audio Input to each plugin you want do side-chaining with
  • Route audio output from each plugin inside Metaplugin to the Audio Output box
• Example:
  • Load a vocal sample as an instrument on 00 and trigger it on Track 01
  • Add Metaplugin as an effect on Track 01
  • Create a new instrument on 01 a VST FX alias to the Metaplugin instance on Track 01
  • Add a few midi notes for VST FX alias on 01 to Track 02
  • Open the Metaplugin editor on Track 01, and from within it:
    • Load a vocoder plugin - I’ll use Native Instruments Reaktor w/Razor in this case
      • Note: specifically the ‘Reaktor 6 FX.dll’ in this case
    • Route Midi Input to Reaktor 6
    • Route the stereo Audio Input into Reaktor 6’s first two audio inputs
    • Route Reaktor 6’s first two audio outputs to the Audio Output box
    • Double-click on Reaktor 6 to open up it’s editor
    • Navigate to a Vocoder preset, and you should immediately start hearing the vocoded vocal sample

3. Use Metaplugin’s SendIt effect to transmit audio across channels for side-chaining

• Add an instrument or sound source to a track
• Add the SendIt plugin to that track and open its editor
  • Set it to ‘Send’ on Channel 1 and uncheck ‘PassThru’
• Add a second instrument you want to side-chain to on a separate track
• Add the SendIt plugin to this second track and open its editor
  • Set this SendIt instance to ‘Receive’ on Channel 1 and make sure ‘PassThru’ is checked
• Example:
  • I won’t go deep on this one save to say a couple of things:
    • You can test this setup without a second instrument by adding midi notes for the first instrument and see that audio is actually being routed to track with the receive instance of SendIt
    • I’ve noticed I sometimes need to open the receive instance of SendIt and click on the channel to get it working again - sometimes doesn’t immediately play on song trigger, but have never had it cut out during playback

Hopefully that’s plenty of detail (if not too much) that gives you enough to work from

Thanks,

Mickey

[mr_moses]

EnergyCrush you are the Renoise SAVIOR!! And Metaplugin too! AFTER YEARS, I am FINALLY sidechaining for real in Renoise. WHY DID IT TAKE THIS LONG?! Below is my 2 second cheap picture tutorial of how to duck bass via kick drum… We can’t thank you enough.

Hear my results here…https://soundcloud.com/aaron-kameron/kick-punch-toll

[Garth_Knight]

Hi where did you get all those Bass one shots please? is that the factory content ?

[Roppenzo (Rpnz)]

EnergyCrush you are the Renoise SAVIOR!! And Metaplugin too! AFTER YEARS, I am FINALLY sidechaining for real in Renoise. WHY DID IT TAKE THIS LONG?! Below is my 2 second cheap picture tutorial of how to duck bass via kick drum… We can’t thank you enough.

hq screenshots please? I can not read this…

[EnergyCrush]

That’s awesome, glad I could help. Yeah, this tool has opened up a world of options, hope it helps a lot of other people too