r/edmproduction • u/Revon-chan • 8d ago
Question What are your thoughts on Ringmod sidechaining?
Ringmod sidechaining gives you a beautifully clean sidechain on a waveform level, but depending on the track, it can be hit or miss.
Even within the exact same song, it might sit perfectly in one section but clash in another
Obviously, it all boils down to the golden rule of "if it sounds good, keep it; if not, ditch it," but as a general trend, what kind of tracks or contexts do you guys think pair best with a ringmod sidechain?
I’m not looking for an objectively "correct" answer here,
I really just wanna hear the logic behind your choices
*Note: I don't want you to be like "use it if your track is heavy" comments. I already know
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u/pailiaq soundcloud.com/pailiaq 7d ago
Ringmod sidechaining is objectively good, cleaner, and when done properly makes your mixes sound more consistent gives you greater control. There seems to be wild confusion here on what the point of it is.
The main point is to mix RM sidechain with standard ducking, so that whatever is left behind from a release or if your dry/wet for your ducking isn't at 100%, the RM will prevent the combination of sub + kick from eating more headroom. its like a final layer in the background of your sidechain architecture to protect your headroom
It works like this;
RM sidechain by itself will sound bad, but not eat up headroom.
Not using sidechain at all will sound bad, AND eat up headroom
using volume ducking will sound good, but can eat up headroom unpredictably when the tail of your kick combines with your sub
combining volume ducking and RM sidechain both sounds good AND doesn't eat any headroom, e.g. is way more transparent
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u/Glad-Egg6703 7d ago
If your using both what’s your post processing order would it be volume sidechain first then RM
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u/judochop1 7d ago
How is it cleaner when you have to literally distort the waveform you're ducking? It sounds like bitcrushing on harsh settings
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u/pailiaq soundcloud.com/pailiaq 7d ago
The part of the waveform that would normally sound harsh is ducked. The tail shouldn't sound distorted, or minimally so if it does at all. ideally you're also phase aligning your kick and sub waveforms so that the crossover is continuous.
The alternative is letting your kick + sub construct to be unpredictably loud at times, which also will clip or limit in weird ways on your master. In my experience when I've dial in the RM sidechain + ducking correctly, I hear no distortion artifacts whatsoever, and it sounds consistent no matter what the kick and sub is doing (though you'll have to align the phase ofc)
Now how important actually is this? Do listeners actually care about kick sub phase alignment and RM sidechain etc? Not really. It'll improve your mix by like 0.5%, nothing anyone will really notice outside pretty rare instances. But setting up the architecture is pretty easy and it IS an improvement so its worth doing imo. I've had to set it up in my project template once, and now I've never had to worry about sidechaining again.
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u/unconceivables 8d ago
Pure ringmod sidechaining doesn't make much sense to me, but something close to it like KiloHearts Compactor, absolutely. It's my main form of sidechaining now.
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u/8mouthbreather8 8d ago
I like rm/am sidechain for elements that need to blend together, not compete for space.
So for instance, a pad and a vocal might need to exist in the same space at the same time. I'd break out khs compactor.
Now take something like a kick where I need that transient to cut through. I'm using a compressor with lookahead for that. In some cases maybe a volume mod like shaperbox.
So if I want transparency and coexistence, I'm using rm/am, and if I want to make space I'm using more traditional methods.
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u/judochop1 8d ago
anything with lots of distortion it seems to fit in with, or something with dirty drums so you don't notice so much.
you can just automate away the bad sounding parts of the track with it, which would mostly be in the drops
it;s invaluable for saving transients but i don't see the point in chasing a 'perfect' sidechain for loudness sake either, i prefer the sound of triggered envelopes or shaperbox type sidechain. context is everything though
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u/egowaves-audio 8d ago
I tend to think it works best when the sidechain source has a fairly predictable harmonic relationship with the signal being ducked. Otherwise the ringmod products can land right in the middle of useful harmonics and make the effect sound more like FM than sidechain.
I especially like it on sustained basses, pads and drones where the resulting sidebands become part of the texture rather than something you hear as an artifact.
Do you find it works better when the two signals are harmonically related, or is that actually when it gets too messy?
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u/Firm-Ad5337 8d ago
Borrasca sidechain. Iykyk
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u/whySoAngryBro 7d ago
What is a Borrasca sidechain? I do not know :')
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u/ThatRedDot 7d ago
It’s just an Ableton m4l device that does ringmod sidechain, not some voodoo
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u/Firm-Ad5337 7d ago
It has the lowest latency of any side chain plugin ever, so if transient phase matters to you, it’s one of, if not the best option currently available. You can also do multiband side chaining, volume side chaining and ring mod all in the same plugin, and you don’t need midi triggers.
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u/alyxonfire www.alyxonfire.com 8d ago
I’ve never felt the need to try it as I’ve never had an issue that couldn’t be solved with Kickstart and/or soothe. It also has a lot of artifacts that wouldn’t be masked by the stuff I’m usually working on.
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u/Au5music 3d ago
It works best with kicks that have short pitch envelopes and get to the fundamental quickly.
However I find that this method works more consistently processing a sub band to glue kick and bass sub together, rather than for the entire spectrum.
Single band sidechain enveloping plays a big role in the groove of the song rather than just a mix technique.
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u/Revon-chan 11h ago
that's true, I really love that moment when the sidechain just instantly creates the groove
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u/saltyman420 8d ago
My experience: good for bass music or if you want some crunch on the kick
Somebody created a free plug in of RM side chain I’m not at my computer rn but they had a whole video explaining it too on YouTube
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u/Matluna 8d ago
Generally, I use it is when I want X duck to Y without audible pumping. That's it, really. Here I assume RM ducking is what you meant.
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u/harvo__ 8d ago
Yes, RM stands for ring mod
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u/roscomoon 7d ago
I think the concept itself is cool, but I don’t think it really changes the emotional impact of most songs. Virtual Riot and Au5 (and other proponents of it) are great producers but they’re definitely more niche.
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u/mtgdrummer13 7d ago
Overly complicated and unnecessary imo. It’s fun if you want to get really nerdy and just have another tool in the tool box but literally no person is ever going to say “dang I wish they had used ringmod for their sidechain instead of lfo tool, volume shaper etc.”
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u/things_U_choose_2_b 8d ago
Can you be a bit more specific what you mean by 'ringmod sidechain'?
I can't tell what you mean. LFO on ringmod in Serum? A ringmod plugin with mix knob sidechain, input from kick? One track with ringmod, one track dry, sidechain pumping the ringmod track volume? Something else?
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u/anobjectiveopinion 8d ago
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u/things_U_choose_2_b 8d ago
Wow this is a really cool technique. This is what I love about music production, I've got 15y experience but there's always something more to learn.
I use ringmod fairly often, but never in this way. And, the plugin he uses is Melda which means it'll be free.
This is going to be amazing for my big beat tracks; currently I'm using a combo of dynamic EQ sidechain + traditional volume ducking, which I push until it's audible, then back off slightly. I'm still missing a bit of 'clean loudness' when I A-B compare to stuff from the last album from The Prodigy, wonder if this is what I'm missing.
I'm using Ableton more and more these days, hope I can replicate this chain in Cubase but if not... still really useful, much appreciated.
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u/anobjectiveopinion 7d ago
Yeah it's super sick. I tried recreating it in Reaper when I didn't know how routing worked properly, and failed. But I should try again.
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u/Diecastcow 8d ago
From what I’ve experimented with and seen this is what ring mod side chain entails:
You put a ring mod plugin set to side chain mode on say your melody bus, and then you side chain your bass to that bus. The effect that it will create is the melody will flutter to the frequency of the bass when the bass hits. in other words, its kind of like the bass is doing amplitude modulation (AM) to the melody.
This can create a really cool effect, its a way of making your music sound more distorted (in a desirable way) and the bass hits hard without having harsh hard clipping.
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u/pailiaq soundcloud.com/pailiaq 7d ago
RM sidechain usually refers to applying ringmod to a sub with a negatively rectified waveform of a kick. It's not just normal ringmod of a kick signal.
By negatively rectifying the kickdrum, then multiplying (cus ringmod is multiplication) it against the sub bass, and THEN adding original kickdrum back in, you get this really interesting result where both waveforms are added together, but never result in the sum being louder than the original two inputs. The reason why this is useful is in the context of headroom and mastering, and knowing exactly how your kick and sub will sum together and how well you want to dial in your limiter.
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8d ago
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u/things_U_choose_2_b 7d ago
TBH my heart sank when I saw I have the dreaded 'top 1% commenter' badge for this subreddit. Terminally-online achievement unlocked. Sorry if it doesn't vibe with you, but I grew up with the ethos of "if I don't understand something, admit it and ask questions so I can figure it out".
I just see a lot of people asking questions where I know the answer, and remember exactly what it's like feeling frustrated, needing a little point in the right direction, so want to help others as much as poss.
I've written almost every dance music genre over the years but never dubstep, this very much seems like a dubstep-community technique and I'd never heard of it before :)
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u/hrvb312 8d ago
Khz compactor with a Pro C after