No one is ready for this Precision

[@Myexpectationsarerealistic]

As a Renoise and FL Studio guy, I am jealous of Bitwig’s interface. When I tried the trial, I was able to learn it and flow through and write an entire track in a few hours without any real learning curve. It’s that good.

[@eriklucasmusic]

If Bitwig had a better piano roll, competitive to FL’s, I’d switch right away.

[@Myexpectationsarerealistic]

@@eriklucasmusic I don’t see what’s so great about FL’s piano roll. I don’t even use it in Renoise, because it doesn’t have one

[@Robert_Babicz]

very interesting

[@borrasca]

Appreciate the shoutout it’s always cool to see variations and different takes on this method. I’d like to point out that the RMSC VST is not by me but another developer. I don’t use mringmodulator for this anymore like in the original video but my own M4L device, and sometimes the RMSC vst. But I’m working on a plugdata version now. Keep in mind that using the mid signal with Bitwig’s audio rate modulator can still peak over 0db when summed together if the target has side information; ideally rmsc:ing would be 100% stereo unlinked so both L and R get independent ducking, that’s if you’re looking for absolute headroom advantage. For the sound effect itself it doesn’t really matter.

[@_CRiT_hits_]

oooh are you gonna share that pd patch? I'd be interested in trying that out

[@88bsides]

You are a legend!

[@88bsides]

We need plug data version!

[@Alckemy]

I prefer to use a replacer on kicks and snares on mute and use that to create a midi note that will trigger a mseg on the volume of a tool. It’s precise and basically becomes lfo tool

[@cemicalshift]

This a fun and great way to learn Bitwig❤️

[@slowbrain8869]

Thank you bro.. i dont know when im gunna start making music instead of learnig bitiwg forever

[@paradoxic1888]

Just make music and have fun. Don't worry about your skill level and understanding everything. Find some presets that you like, save them and categorize them so you can quickly put frequently used FX chains and sounds on your tracks. Many of my popular presets are from Polarity and helps me not have to worry about sound design and understanding what each knob does. Also, F1 is your best friend. 😉

[@SKYENCE]

exactly where thousands and thousands of producer are stuck. exactly where plugin and hardware companies get you. people would (1) learn more if they didn't go to youtube for every problem they run into and (2) produce waaaay more music. fingers crossed you hit that u-turn at some point.

[@muteqx]

How are you going to learn if you don't make music? You have it back-to-front! Make whatever music you can make every day and you'll learn as you go. There's no point trying to learn music production abstracted away from producing music - it'll never happen. Music production is music practice!

[@TildeSounds]

Make music first, you can always learn biteig later

[@iso_brown]

nice tutorial. I'm an old time poducer. Never cared about such details in the past but it's nice to see the sound quality "granularity" that we can obtain these days.

[@PolarityMusic]

Yeah! But it's also not necessary; some people or styles can be a bit excessive with cleanliness imo

[@ht3k]

@@PolarityMusic I lot of us like the clean sound but I also love the dirty sound of older tunes. Why not both? =)

[@atmodiver]

if you have a desire, I would also like to see a video on creating multi-layered basses.Especially the rolling bass

[@citadelo5ricks]

First, all things Polarity are worth a watch!! Always!! RMSC techniques are interesting and informative but ultimately, I personally have never found RMSC useful. When I solo the ducked instrument noise pokes through, because you're ducking specific parts of the spectrum you are left with a waveform that has nothing to do with the original sound. I concluded that for hard duck it's tool with midi note sidechain from a "SC" midi track where I can lengthen or shorten notes and use timeshift to avoid attack 'clicks'. Alternatively, if you're just dying to keep some part of a sound I use Robert NIH linear phase crossover. Then I know exactly what it will sound like during a duck.

[@colognialist1964]

I always use audio-Sidechain... but interesting stuff. There are so many examples why Bitwig is soooo awesome. and you are really a Wizard...

[@Oversat_]

Sometimes the distortion is desirable and precisely why someone would use ringmod sidechain. It could add the sensation of intermodulation distortion without chainging the original sounds.

[@ht3k]

That and plus it's particularly better in high frequency sidechaining than lower freqs IMO without the need for smoothing

[@rd-cv4vm]

the ducking is what i have been doing, and mainly the reason i got bitwig, i use it also on EQ to dig specific frequencies instaed of ducking the entire frequency range of a sound.

[@atmodiver]

Thank you for another sidechain video....!

[@Pintosonic]

So this new way of sidechaining introduce distortion and to solve the problem we have to reinvent standard sidechain processing. Well….. looks like those audio engineers from the 50s were not complete idiots after all.

[@urigeheadmot1196]

Stop yapping and make music smart guy

[@Ernthir]

@@urigeheadmot1196

[@brianbergmusic5288]

Fascinating flavor of sidechain, thanks for the lesson! I'm not an experienced mixer, but what's wrong with a basic multiband sidechain? Is there some sort of overall volume advantage so that we can make "cigar" mixes?

[@PolarityMusic]

nothing wrong. i personally just use light ducking to make room. i like to have overlap :)

[@tekm]

Hell yea.🔥

[@No.0.o.0]

I learned this from Buunshin, sounds great on hats.

[@VirajAlankar]

I think the main benefit is at the transient. If both channels peak at 0db, do these methods result in the sum not going over 0db? Last time I looked at this there was a small sample delay and it went over 0db.

[@TildeSounds]

I tend to combine this with a transient triggered short ducker with some lookahead for those reasons. It also gets rid of the click a fast attack would otherwise cause.

[@DioXine-itwt]

WOW!!!! that is amazing!

[@bongospank8321]

The disconnect, I think, is that a lot of people end up getting steered toward RMSC when what they really want is something a bit different. They don't want the peaks and valleys, but rather a contour that goes from one peak to the next... ideally with a best fitted curve. Follower / audio sidechain isn't quite that either. One way to think of the goal would be that it is the inverse of the MSEG that created the kick. It's also worth noting that different people mean different things by "clean". The distortion seen between the peaks is one thing, but being completely out of the way on the first sample is another issue entirely. If any method fails to achieve that, there is the potential for a burst of up to 200% of full scale in those first few samples which can be far from subtle depending on what follows.

[@reinh]

What you're describing is the "convex hull" of the waveform (or more generally an "alpha shape" to allow some concavity). Imagine wrapping a rubber band around it. I'm not sure that it can be properly computed without infinite lookahead (since the next peak can come at any time in the future, or never), but there are approximations. Envelope followers are one of them. ;) In the modular world, you can just modulate both with the same envelope signal. You can probably do something similar in Bitwig somehow.

[@reinh]

In theory, the perfect distortion-free sidechaining you describe could be achieved with offline processing of the complete audio files, where you literally do have infinite lookahead. I suspect that offline processing is going to become a next big thing in audio because it turns out infinite lookahead is pretty useful: it makes hard things easy and impossible things possible.

[@bongospank8321]

@@reinh It's infinite only in theory, though. In practice, I don't see why it would need to be more than the next inverse peak at the lowest frequency you'd want to capture... or 25ms for half of a 20hz wave. That's for linear. A better fitted curve would probably require double that. I'm not saying it's easy... just that it may be a clearer description of the goal since there's no benefit to the wobbles between peaks, and followers introduce other issues.

[@bongospank8321]

@@reinh I'm absolutely convinced that offline processing (or at least some kind of ARAesque full scan) is what's necessary for proper leveling.

[@reinh]

@@bongospank8321 Yeah, that's what I meant by "approximations". You can scan your lookahead window for the next maximum peak and lerp to it. There are probably edge cases that make this more difficult than it sounds. Getting the windowing right might be hard, or highly program dependent. But it's a good idea.

[@rebirth4119]

Curious to know what you think. I use a 2 band linear split(sub frequencies + everything else) and use ringmod sidechain on the sub band but I also use regular envelope sidechain at the end for each band. Do you think this is fine or is it overkill?

[@PolarityMusic]

Yeah, it sounds a bit like overkill. Usually, you just want to duck the volume a bit to make room, not surgically remove everything. 😅

[@rebirth4119]

@PolarityMusic I probably should have mentioned that I do this for dubstep(where we typically don't like overlap)😅 but yeah for other genres that would sound very unnatural. Unless you think there's an issue even in the case of heavy electronic bass genres 😄

[@yajrobot]

I was always a bit sceptical about this RM sidechain, feels more like flexing your knowledge than actually doing something that makes your music sound clean. I don't even think it's that good for the sake of making mixes louder, is that crunchy result worth a hustle?

[@PolarityMusic]

imo no

[@TildeSounds]

Some of us enjoy tinkering with a technical concept trying to optimise it. Without that attitude no new audio software would ever be created.

[@subschnee4573]

What I'm never going to understand is why the people who want that clean sound just don't compose it. It's a synthesizer, you can dial in a precise envelope. Good video btw!

[@planb5260]

Bitwig's Audio Sidechain has a 1 ms rise minimum. This results in audible clicks before the signal is then pushed down after that 1 ms. I will never understand what possessed the devs to cripple the essence of this tool in this way.

[@ReasonanceHead]

I can recommend Duck from devious machines, has a lot of options to clean stuff out, and it looks ahead iirc. But maybe there is a workaround or something?

[@vertecsrecordings]

Nice twist to do sidechain ducking. Never thought about this. Thanks Polarity for the constant inspiration!! I will give it a try, but will stick with the CLip to Zero (CTZ) approach which I discovered during Covid on Baphometrix´s channel. Change my way of mixing and mastering 100%. And Baphy´s tutorials where the reason why I said goodby to Ableton at that time....And without THAT I would not have discovered Your deep Bitwig insights, Polarity! 😀

[@chaosmachines934]

hey , hey

[@apoplexiamusic]

I really do not understand why people would want to use the ringmod sidechain technique because it is utterly useless and sounds like crap. It seems like rectifying the audio rate signal is cleaner

[@musicproductionbrauns2594]

the added distortion is actually helpful for certain genres like dubstep, metal etc it can add a special flavor especially for snare sidechaining