Side chain compression pedal??

[PRR]

> when I switch to external sidechain, the audio gets very loud and distorted (without feeding any sidechain signal).

That's how it works.

Review what a standard limiter does. You have a signal. It isn't loud enough. You turn it UP. OK, except now the loud parts distort. You can manually turn-down for the loud parts. OR you can hire a tiny demon to watch a meter and turn-down the loud parts (and turn the softs back up). Works good.

Now go to the supermarket. They play that stupid music. When they call "Cleanup in aisle 3!", the music should "duck" so the voice cuts through. You can feed the announce mike signal to the limiter demon--- when the manager talks, the demon should turn-down the stupid music, and recover when manager shuts-up. There are other ways this trick can be used.

> without feeding any sidechain signal

OK, you have turned-up but are NOT telling the demon "when" to turn-down. He sits there looking at the empty sidechain-input, which gives him no signal, is never "too loud". Of course it works as a straight booster. Which always risks gross overload, output sounds like splatt.

I don't know daft-punk and don't know what is supposed to go to the sidechain. But clearly something must; else why have a sidechain, the demon's paycheck, all those extra chips?

[PRR]

"The idea behind sidechain compression is that you briefly lower the volume of your bass part whenever the kick drum comes in. That gets the bass out of the way for just long enough to hear at least the attack of the kick drum clearly. And since the kick would have masked the bass part anyway, you usually don't miss hearing it for a short amount of time."
https://samplesfrommars.com/blogs/tips-tricks/18999227-how-to-use-sidechain-compression-to-make-kicks-cut-through-the-mix

So you set up the bass path so it does NOT distort. If the drummer doesn't show you can bass all night with fine sound.

Now the drummer starts kicking. But complains that his kicks can not be heard behind your thundering bass.

This is the same as the music and the manager. The kick is not continuous but is important. When a kick happens, you can duck the bass for a part-second. The bass still carries because strings ring longer than skins.

But for *this* use the key notion is that the main signal through the limiter is NOT turned-up to distortion.

[davidh]

Hey jamierichards1234 !!

I was building maybe exactly what you are looking for.

Its an optical "VCA" with an Side Chain Input with variable release.

Heres a short demo, schematic (not so precise) at the end of the video...

[acronso]

Hey jamierichards1234 !!

I was building maybe exactly what you are looking for.

Its an optical "VCA" with an Side Chain Input with variable release.

Heres a short demo, schematic (not so precise) at the end of the video...

Hey hey!

looks great!

Do you have a layout for this?
Schematic is a bit too complex for me :/

Thank you!

[ElectricDruid]

.. I should also mention that I don't need a wide range of release times, so if there's some sort of mod that can be done to reduce the overall release time (at the expense of losing longer release times) then that would still solve my problem.

If you just need shorter times overall, I'd be inclined to try reducing the size of the 1u caps (either side of that 1K resistor). There's two ways to reduce an RC time constant, after all, and reducing R is only one of them!

Try 470n or 330n and see if you can manage without the extra op-amp. That seems over-complicated to me, although I suppose it might prove necessary. I'd certainly want to test the simple way first though.

HTH,
Tom