Anyone experience with the OTO BOUM for sidechain compression?
I realize that if I drive the master through the BOUM, and send a sidechain signal through it (four to the floor), the problem is that the drums/kickdrum will be ducked as well.
However: the most important parts I’d like to duck come from my Vermona Perfourmer, or Analog Four
I also have analog heat (but no compressor in it) and AR MK2.
Is it possible to send the main stereo out of my AR MK2 to my mixer, but also send a cable from the kick output from AR to the sidechain input of the BOUM. If i then send the stereo out of A4 (perhaps with the Vermona through the oudio in of A4) through the BOUM, wouldt I achieve side chain compression on the synths then?
Hope to hear your thoughts on this.
I’d also love to be able to do this with the Analog Heat, but I’m afraid its not the same, an envelope follower works with signal intensity/threshold, not specifically the kick, and i prefer having the analog heat for saturation on my master anyways.
Have you tried using the Analog Four’s CV track to modulate CONTROL IN by connecting a cable from CV OUT to CONTROL 1. Put some trigs on the CV track where you want ducking to be applied and configure CONTROL 1’s parameters to volume control.
Why don’t you use the AR compressor on the kick as well?
Genuinely curious as I’m about to buy an AR and wanted to know if the master compressor and distortion are not good enough
Yep. The AR comp and drive is excellent. But, you know, some people like to go nuts. Can’t say I’m one of them, except for that one time I couldn’t resist throwing a reverb between the AR and Boum, because, GATED REVERB DRUMS
If you dont want to duck the kick you need a different routing. I have my “master” compressor on a bus on my mixer so i can route different tracks into it. If i want a ducking sidechain i dont send the kick to the compressor inputs. And i use an aux send to the sidechain inputs.
But my favorite method for that “ducking” sound is to use the Analog Heat. I set up the envelope follower as an AD envelope. Set the it to control wet level, and use a negative amount. Adjust the attack and release on the envelope to taste. Same with treshold.
As JamesM said, you can use midi to trigger the side chain on the boum. Basically. if you can’t route the audio of just the kick to the boum input, you can alternatively just send a midi note to it on the same step as your kicks. Of course, you can do this for more than just kicks, but you get the picture. It’s a really great option.
As you wrote “master compressor”, I think you know it sits over the whole set of drum tracks, plus the external audio input. It’s pretty good; sounds nice and has a wide range of abilities.
In case you don’t know, and for anyone new stumbling across this thread, it’s worth noting: the AR compressor doesn’t have an external input to its side-chain, so you can’t use it to pump the drum mix keyed off the kick specifically. You also can’t selectively apply it to a subset of the tracks. It does have an EQ/filter param that acts like what you’d get if you used the drum mix through an eq as the side-chain input. Thus, you can get it to engage the compression when triggered by the low-end, the high-end, or this nice two-peak eq curve. The low-pass setting does allow for a kind of pumping keyed off the kick and bass, but it’ll compress the whole buss including the kick.
Thank you @thomaso, i saw a youtube vid on this too. but don’t fully understand.
So if you set up an envelope follower, with destination the wet level, and perhaps even set the trigger according to EQ in the kick level frequency, i can understand that the wet level will duck more or less following the kick, making the analog heat saturation duck at those moments. But still this will not be comparable to sidechain compression? or am I missing somethin?
thanks, might be better than sending the audio indeed! however, the AR has both the stereo/main out and the individual kick out, so in this case that would work too without compromising the kick signal (as this is also going trough the main out, and I would route this audio to a mixer, and the synths trough the boum before going to the mixer). Or am I missing something here?
Yeah. It will be pretty similar to sidechain compression. And that was my point. But i just like how it does it compared to regular sidechain through my bus compressor. And it feels like a bonus as i can free up the bus comp to lighter compressor duties to “glue” the mix better.
You can also play around with the envelope controling drive instead of wet level. Gives a different feeling. Or in some cases it can be cool with a slow attack on the envelope, and have it increase the bass eq. It will not be the same as sidechain compression, but it will give a dynamic groove that can be very cool on some stuff.
If you can send out the kick to the dedicated output + duplicate into the main output, then you are good to use your kick as sidechain to trigger the compression on the BOUM. Put your PERfourMER and A4 in the BOUM input and this should work.
If the AR can’t duplicate the kick signal to both output, you have to use a kind of passive gear to duplicate the kick and send it back to you main mix and to your BOUM sidechain
Thanks I believe the AR does do this (send all the drums including kick out the stereo output) and the simultaneously the dry kick out of the kick individual out.
Interesting! So you could just make a sequence with trigless trigs on the octatrack and velocity on 127 on the kick/four to the floor trigs and 0 on the others and route the midi to boum?
Yes, just enable the MIDI out in the Track settings and you are Good to go… Since the kick trigs will send MIDI you will have the exact pattern for ducking
But i just like how it does it compared to regular sidechain through my bus compressor. And it feels like a bonus as i can free up the bus comp to lighter compressor duties to “glue” the mix better.