The option to use an audio track as sidechain input for the master limiter only affects the 8 audio tracks on the Play.
What should this feature achieve?
The ducking effect should lower the velocity of the notes on the midi tracks too. Lowering the volume by lowering the value of CC7 Volume for the midi tracks is unfortunately not an option for me as my hardware does not support it.
Are there any workarounds?
I work around this limitation by copying the audio track (used as sidechain input) to the midi side, then convert the midi notes to CV gate with a midi-to-cv converter, invert the gate signal to duck the VCA with an envelope. Alternatively, I send these midi notes to a spare synth that works as an audio trigger signal for a hardware compressor with sidechaining capabilities. All workarounds are tedious and involve losing functionalities on my hardware I need for other applications.
Any links to related discussions?
None Iâm aware of.
Any references to other products?
Edit: Some hardware compressors have the option to use midi as sidechain trigger signal such as the Suono Buono nABC+.
Thank you for a well written wish. My personal bet is that this will not be accepted, as there are so many aspects to it. But letâs see how it goes
I understand very much if you prefer keeping a computer and a DAW out of your equation (thatâs probably one of the top reasons why we spend hundreds of ⏠on Polyend gear). But a way around this could be to route the audio from the sidechaining channel over USB into your DAW, do the same with the audio from the gear that the MIDI channels are sequencing, and then set up your sidechaining in there. Similar to what you already do with a spare synth and an hw compressor.
Oh, the âreferences to other productsâ above implies that it should be possible to assign a midi track as the sidechain signal⌠Would be nice to complete the scope for this feature: Ability to select a midi track as the sidechain signal.
Yes I know itâs not that simple. Currently working on a Midihub patch with similar interaction: take specific note number and velocity from a midi channel and replace velocity information on the other midi channels with the inverted velocity value from the origin but no success so farâŚ
This would only work for very short attack times and quit short synth sounds in general. For longer attack times it would only ruin everything. For sustained sounds it doesnât make much sense either. If you trigger a sustained note before a kick hits it will not be ducked because the note still has normal velocity. Even if you place the sustained note and the kick on the same beat and velocity of the note is lowered due to âMIDI sidechainâ the kick ends but the note still sounds quiet due to low velocity.
Moreover, audio sidechain signal is continious but MIDI information is quantized to steps. My bet is that it will sound just bad.
I came to the same conclusion this afternoon in Midihub. Still, I wonder how the nABC+ works in this regard. Of course it doesnât process midi data but audio only. So, using a midi track as sidechain signal should be doable I think by looking at velocity as âenergyâ for the force of duckingâŚ
Using MIDI as a sidechain trigger is sure possible. In the compressor youâr e mentioning you have attack/release controls so you convert a simple MIDI note on event to curved continious sidechain signal.
But MIDI canât work as a sidechain signal unless you use CC for that. But the Play canât produce CC contuniously anyway. And also you said before your receiving hardware doesnât support that either.
I heard of a solution with Elektron boxes where LFOs are triggered to do the CC curving. This spec I now try to replicate in Midihub by transforming notes to CC which in turn modulate Midihubâs LFOsâŚthen converting to CV for use in my modular setuo.
