Parallel compression effect

I having trouble understanding how to achieve a parallel compression effect. I have a long audio sample of a bass track which is a bar long. I want it to duck for the kick on 5,9 and 13.
I hold function and create a yellow trigger. Whilst holding the yellow trig I adjust the lev on arc page to 30.
What happens now though is the volume comes down for the yellow trig but then it stays down.
How do I get it to release?

I’ve tried length in trig page and the envelope in amp but I can’t get it to work.

Appreciate any help.

Hugh

You need to have a trig/trigless lock after it to make it reset to normal volume. Another nice way of pseudo compression is to use the LFO on src/amp volume if it’s unused :slight_smile:

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Ahhh I see. Thanks Dave.

I’m not at DT right now but can master compressor be only assigned to compress certain tracks? I know you can apply a side chain source so if it’s possible (and not being used for master compression) then this is also an option.

That’s sidechain rather than parallel compression incidentally - parallel compression is what happens if you use the “dry/wet” control on a software compressor (although that’s not how it was achieved originally).

It’s just mixing the (usually heavily) compressed signal with the uncompressed signal - ideally getting the best of both worlds: a thick sounding compressed signal with extra detail, but without losing punchy transients…

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basically:

or if you want to get mad geeky on this and have loads of time on your hands :wink:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/parallel-compression

tldr: the WIKI is slighly wrong as it isn’t really the same as upward compression.

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Nope, it’s a master compressor which affects the audio just before the main output (and just before the fx outputs unless reverb is switched to pre comp) . Otherwise that would be THE option :smiley:

That’s what I thought but couldn’t confirm at the moment…

Feature Request!

Not quite possible. You’d need a full compressor per audio track (or one assignable comp, but that’s a bit awkward) and DT is almost maxed out at what it can do performance wise :wink:

Oh yeah I know we can’t have individual on each track but rather the ability to include/exclude tracks from going through the compressor. Sure that would be doable.

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I had an idea, based on current experience, regarding parallel compression using the digitakt, a daw and ob plugin.

To my understanding until now, you can only use the dt compressor when all tracks are being routed to the master. But while using overbridge, this allows you to receive dry signal to the individual outputs regardless of the routing setting.

For this trick to work, a daw would be needed using the overbridge plugin. In your daw (I use ableton) create a master track for the digitakt master output, followed by 8 additional audio tracks for each 8 tracks in the digi. In the dt audio routing menu select send all tracks to master. Whilst sent to master, you can now use conpression. Now, to create the dry signal which one would use to mix back into the compressed signal, all you’d have to do is stream the dry signal from the 8 dt tracks into the 8 additional audio tracks you created in the daw and, finally, mix to your liking.

I don’t know how correct this would be in terms of parallel compression technique as my knowledge is limited to just some pieces of intel regarding the subject. I just stumbled upon this by mistake, forgot to disable the global setting in the audio routing, but was impressed to find my grooves had more dynamics when this has occurred, and I thought this could come close to the actual parallel comp. technique itself…

Please feel free to debate, argument, critique
etc.

Edit: of course this could be achieved better using other daw techniques. I thought about it in a way that would need or require minimum hardware/software resources.

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I’m really late here but I hope I contribute.

I was thinking of parallel compression in a live situation and it hit me.

I’m using the Zoom R16 as a mixer,recorder which has effects,not the best,but many.

So what I did was to take the headphone output of the Digitakt,plug a mono cable and connected it in to a mono channel of the Zoom.
The sound coming out of there was different,I imagine due to the different impedance of the outputs.It gave me a weirdly nice Lofi-ish kinda signal though.

So I heavily compressed/eq/slightly reverbed that channel and mixed it with the main stereo channel of the Digitakt.
It made the sound more pronounced and open,which is typically what happens in NY compression.
I imagine passing the signal through some better effect unit would wield even better results,nonetheless it works.

Hope it helps someone.

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