Hello
I know there are impressing experts here in this forum.
I use cubase 15 pro on a powerful windows 11 surface.
When I use the standard cubase compressor with sidechain, something very weird happens. And it does it for some times now.
Lets say a classic kick to sidechain to compressor on bass.
On the compressor display I see the effect of the sidechain on gain reduction, following the kick with a strong down and up movement but… the output signal is not affected.
Like if the GR wasn’t real, the output stays impervious to the gain reduction, very strange.
Of course, we are NOT in bypass. I see the Gain Reduction massively active, but it doesn’t affect the output viewmetter inside the compressor display. Very strange.
My question is both :
Is there a way to solve this, please?
Is there another tool in cubase pro 15 that could substitute to the dysfunctionning basic compressor?
Thank you very much for giving me your ideas on this.
Do you have it Pre, or Post Fader? Can you post a screenshot of your sidechain routing (option-click on the sidechain icon in the compressor)? It might be a minor config issue.
I don’t have any issues with sidechains using the basic compressors, but I generally prefer sidechaining the kick to the bass using the Frequency plugin.
Thank you so much guys. It helped me a lot.
It was a stupid mistake on the position of the Dry/Mix button.
I had it fully turned and it needed to be at min. Is it not counterintuitive?
Thanks for leading me toward the solution.
No, not that difficult. But it is unusual and a bit curious that Steinberg chose this approach instead of the more common and ubiquitous Dry/Wet control.
What @mlib said. Steinberg kept conventional names on all other functions of this compressor. And then they slipped in the Dry Mix knob at the end. Why?? It doesn’t make sense to me.
EDIT: In all fairness, I should add that the Dry Mix knob is different from a conventional Dry/Wet control and not just labelled upside down. Nonetheless, I still think that this wasn’t their best idea. FWIW, all compressors that were introduced after the standard compressor don’t have a Dry Mix anymore. So, Steinberg might agree on that one.
Nope but we’ve all done stupid things.
I’ve been engineering for decades but have still found my self trying to find the sweet spot on an EQ or compressor with the bypass on.
There are many examples available where this method is used.
I know a bunch of live sound consoles with that kind of implementation.
BTW, the dry mix method is a bit different from the dry/wet control.
The dry mix method will never lead to no compression if you dial in 100%.
It brings the dry signal to the same level as the wet.
And that was the original method for the parallel compression idea.
