I am experiencing an issue with the frequency sidechain function in Cubase 12 Pro. Specifically, I set up a frequency sidechain on a piano channel that is linked to a vocal channel. The intention is for specific frequencies from the piano to be reduced whenever the vocals are played. Initially, this works as expected, and the designated frequencies from the piano are lowered according to my settings.
However, at some point, the sidechain seems to “fall asleep,” meaning that the frequency reduction stops occurring entirely, and the piano’s frequencies are no longer being attenuated. Interestingly, this issue resolves itself temporarily when I click on the threshold control; the sidechain “wakes up” and resumes the intended frequency reductions.
This intermittent behavior is concerning and disrupts my mixing process, as it makes the sidechain functionality unreliable.
Have you checked if there is any accidental automation involved? If this behaviour occurs at a specific point in the project that would be a strong indicator. Does disabling Read in the project make any difference?
Also, you could try starting the project in safe mode to narrow down possible culprits.
Ok, but do you have automation on the track? (Controlling Frequency EQ?)
The idea is to write some automation for the threshold parameter of the band. But just one automation node won’t do, you need more than one. So, try to wiggle the fader back and forth a bit at the start of the project to write automation, fine tune the last automation value manually so that the threshold is what you want, and see if it helps or if it still goes to sleep.
IMHO this is a bug. I noticed that about a year ago. Just stopped using Frequency.
It’s great to be able to use separate sidechain sources in Steinberg’s EQ, but because of this bug I prefer to use several Pro-Q3 instances in series for the same task, if I need to at all.
By the way, I was planning to check if it’s really the case that it stops working, or just stops showing that it works (bug either way). However, I haven’t had time to do it yet, and the Pro-Q3 or Kirchhoff in series just works and is enough for me.
I’m currently using C13 and I haven’t used Frequency once yet.