Sidechain ducking from MIDI

I would like to be able to duck audio on an audio track using a MIDI track as the control source. Is this possible in Cubase? If so, does anyone know how to do it?

The closest thing I could find is the plug-in, “MIDI Gate”, but it only can do the exact opposite of what I want to accomplish, plus as a gate it is either all or none. I would also like to be able to control the degree of the sidechain ducking. A compressor side-chain seems like the way to go, but It doesn’t seem like the sidechains on the compressor plug-ins can accept input from a MIDI track.

If there is anyone who can tell me definitively that this is not currently possible, then I will post a request for this in the “New feature suggestions” forum.

Why not feed the midi to a vsti and the audio output of that vsti to a side chain enabled compressor.

Good idea. I’ll try that. Thanks!

It’s currently not possible. From the top of my mind the best solutions for this are Fabfilter Pro C2 or Pro-G ( you can set this Gate to Ducking) or Cableguys Volume Shaper.

Actually, this suggestion from “peakae” was a good one and worked just fine. In fact this solution should have been obvious to me initially, but it wasn’t.

I second the Cableguys Volumeshaper. I have been fighting with comps for ducking for a while now, always finetuning attack and release until my flow was totally gone… Now I just add this volumeshaper as insert, drag the curve a bit and voila… on with my next bit.

I also love the other plugs… you can try their free panner to see what they are about.

It’s probably a typical solution for electronic music with midi samplers and synths, but I think a midi ‘gate’ the way you described would be a nice clean and flexible on board feature for Cubase.

I guess it would have to be more of an LFO tool kind of thing. I don’t know how well midi alone will handle volume envelopes.