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Is ducking the same concept as side chaining? Anyone familiar with this?

someone should correct me if Im wrong but I think ducking is reducing the gain (or editing out altogether) one of the conflicting elements in a track frequency wise, an alternate solution to the same problems that one might sidechain a compressor to correct.

basicly getting rid of unnecessary wave peaks that would otherwise cause you to reduce the fader gain when mixing.

like if a kick drum overlaps a sub bass signal making you go into the red, the sub bass at the instance of the kick might be redundant so you could edit out (at the zero point of the wave ) a few cycles of the sub bass that is simultaneous to the wave peak of the kick with little or no percievable effect without having to turn down the fader.

The true definition of ducking is when you attenuate one audio signal to give way for another.

The side chain is the curcuit that controls the compressors attack, deacy, ratio etc...

One classic example of ducking is on the radio when the presenter talks over the song playing and the volume of that song is automatically 'ducked' to allow the voice come through. This is normaly done using the sidechain (it can be done manualy by riding the fader but ducking with a compressor is easier).

You can also use the side for de-essing and other similar frequency removal/enhancement tricks and techniques.

Archaic is describing normal use of compression and is not really true ducking.


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