Splitting / doubling signal to feed compressor sidechain, most transparent way?

[huejahfink]

Just a quick workaround idea, if you have multiple AD connected from your daw, you could dupe the track in the daw and send one out either to an external unit to EQ before your sidechain input, or perform the EQ for the sidechain within the daw itself. Alternatively you might have a signal routing system via your software that would allow you to dupe the daw signal to different AD.
That might not always help if your compression is happening later in your analogue chain, but I felt it worth mentioning. It would certainly avoid having to split signals in the analogue domain if there were pretty light EQ before the comp that didn't effect the overall detection much, or if the EQ in your analogue domain was fairly easy to replicate on your software EQ for the purposes of feeding the sidechain.

[MAzevedo]

Y cable. Barring some kind of really screwy impedance mismatch, what could be more transparent than a piece of wire?

[666666]

Originally Posted by MAzevedo

Y cable. Barring some kind of really screwy impedance mismatch, what could be more transparent than a piece of wire?

But isn't it bad to take a signal and merely split it? Don't you lose half the energy going to each of the two destinations? As well, doesn't this indeed mess with the impedance? I never tried it but was always told not to. On a master bus or mastering chain, surely you don't want to mess around and do anything that might even slightly "degrade" the signal.

Man, I really wish more compressors had sidechain SENDS as well as returns. This is becoming an important feature in my world here.

[dcollins]

Originally Posted by 666666

But isn't it bad to take a signal and merely split it? Don't you lose half the energy going to each of the two destinations? As well, doesn't this indeed mess with the impedance?

No, no, probably not, and try it.

I never tried it but was always told not to. On a master bus or mastering chain, surely you don't want to mess around and do anything that might even slightly "degrade" the signal.

People will patch into a mult. freely, but mention a Y cord and all bets are suddenly off.


DC

[John Moran]

or if you want to be completely anal about it, get a simple transformer splitter box and send the xformer isolated output to the sidechain with the direct to the main input.

but try MAzevedo & DC's Y-cable first, it will most likely work just fine and be a helluva lot cheaper.