Help to make Side chain plugin like Nicky Romero Kickstart

[Nubeat7]

An advanced much More flexible tool is cableguys volumeshaper

[tulamide]

I never understood what an envelope follower is and nobody ever explained it to me in a way I could understand.

An envelope follower converts the amplitude of an incoming sound to a control level, usually unipolar and typically in the range 0-1. This can then be used for anything that a control signal could be used for. For example controlling the output level (as in a compressor), or the filter cutoff frequency or a display on a meter.

The design details of the envelope follower will affect its response to the incoming signal. For example do you want to follow the rms value or the peak value and also how fast should it respond and how slowly the control signal should decay.
Plus, no fast envelope follower is immune to producing ripple on the control signal so a compromise may be needed for some applications to avoid distortion.

Hope that helps a bit.

Cheers

Spogg

Thank you! So, basically this is the equivalent of a CV?

However, now I understand your question. I used the word amplitude, but what I really meant was just volume. You can achieve the very same as you can with such plugins by automating the audio track's volume slider of the mixer. But it is faster and more convenient to use such a plugin.

[Spogg]

Thank you! So, basically this is the equivalent of a CV?

Yes

It generates a CV whose value relates to the amplitude (volume if you like) of an incoming signal. The actual relationship between signal level and CV is determined by the design and settings of the envelope follower. This is like a transfer function that defines level input (peak, rms, average etc.) to CV out.
The threshold, slope shape and amount, offset, limiting and time constants all determine the behaviour of whatever the CV is controlling.

Cheers

Spogg

[Spogg]

Well I’ve played around with the demo version of Kick Starter for a while.

First off, there is no side chain. The system seems to use a re-triggerable envelope generator to control the amplitude. The EG is triggered typically by the host’s clock and you can choose from a limited range of 1 bar, half, quarter note etc. The envelope shapes are pre-made. You can move the envelope trigger point earlier and later and the scope shows the waveform segment being processed, presumably to accurately align the effect (why I don't really know - it should be accurate to start with). The CPU use for the plugin will be low but would be lower without the scope and its processing.

The amount of amplitude reduction is set on the large knob from zero to full ducking. The envelope could be triggered by the host (normal) and also by a MIDI keyboard on any key press (with an optional MIDI filter) but in the demo it wouldn’t open the MIDI port for my Keystation, said not available even though the keyboard was working fine in Reaper.

My guess is this works based on the assumption that the Kick drum is normally regular and on the beat and that is where you want the sound to reduce to create the classic EDM pump. This means it would not be used on the master track since this would also dip the Kick itself, so you’d need one instance per track you want to duck. Probably not the vocal tracks, but I’m not an EDM guy.

This is not, in my view, using a LFO although you could possibly use one with a sync input that caused a cycle reset. It does sound like a LFO due to the repetitive nature. If you did use a LFO the rate would have to be linked to the tempo since the pumping effect in my tests stayed the same shape as I varied the tempo. This is also true for the overall envelope duration of course, so BPM would affect the rate of envelope creation/reading/counting.

In my view this is a novel method but strictly limited to one genre.

Cheers

Spogg

[Youlean]

You need to have pitch and volume ADSR to achieve that.

EDIT: Sorry, I thought that you need to make a kick!

[rdgaudio]

Yea, I agree (with Nubeat7 sir), "its basically a trancegate with different waveforms"... Cable guys Volume shaper is better than Nicky Romero Kickstart.

[rdgaudio]

I asked them (cable Guys), they told me it was built using Juice
What do you think?

[adamszabo]

A plugin like this is also very easy in FlowStone, you dont need Juice for that