Dubstepforum.com

Hey everyone!
I'd like to know what you think is the best compressor for sidechaining, especially for drums. Some producers that have wicked drums imo are Knife Party, xKore and Noisia for example, and you can clearly hear that their kick and snare is sidechained to synths but with incredible speed. Any help?
Thanks!

with incredible speed? i don't think you understand how the attack, release, and threshold work on a compressor. i would reallllly learn what this stuff does before you even bother to go any further.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_ar ... ssors.html [this will teach you enough to get some good results within a day or two]

once you learn this, you can accomplish your task with ANY (good) compressor. the native ableton compressor works plenty well for my uses, as should any other stock daw compressor. waves is top of the line, and there are a few other brands that make amazing compressors too, can just search for reviews if you want to purchase one.

links to free compressors:
http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2012/02 ... u-plugins/
http://www.kvraudio.com/q.php?search=1& ... 0&format=0

Actually, I know my fair share about compressors. If you listen to tracks like "Boom" (xKore), you can definitely hear synths being ducked down pretty low by the kick and snare but going back up to their original volume very quickly, or at least faster than I can get my synths to without them distorting. But thanks for the read, I'll check it out later today, it looked pretty well detailed.

Any Compressor that comes with your DAW should suffice... at least Ableton's native one does. If you want a heavy sidechain, try around 0.07 seconds on the attack, between 10-50ms on the release, ratio of 4+... if it is ruining your sound try changing the values a bit, or change the lookahead to a bigger number if you have the option. Anyway, if you want a "pro plugin" for doing compression (and sidechaining too), take a look at Fabfilter's Pro-C, for example. Shouldn't be a must at all though.

Well, I was thinking of getting the Pro-C, especially since I have a student discount account on Fabfilter. Plus, this has a lookahead option, unlike the compressor I use, meaning I sometimes had to sidechain my shit with a muted track a couple of samples early. Thanks anyways for the answer

If you really want it to go FAST, then use a different sidechain trigger. I personally use a muted effect chain in ableton, which gates the samples before they go into the sidechain input; making them really short n snappy, then i adjust my release from there.

You want really fast? Try the rocket compressor, or elysia mpressor (my fav)

Otiumfx Compadre

xKore only uses sidechaining lightly, he uses Sonnox, Waves and PSP plugins along with FL's stuff - a lot of the punch in his drums comes from the fact he likes to use transient shapers to boost the fuck out of the transient so the drums smack harder.