SQ5 Ducking Mode Sidechain

[MityVee]

Hi there!

Am I missing something? Have been searching Forums, Manual and Signalflow chart… Found nothing on that topic.
Is it really that if I have a channel ducked by sidechain there is no option to have the sidechain follow channel mute of the source channel?
Or choose “eg. post mute/ post fade” sidechain as source..?
The problem is, the Channel having the ducker inserted always gets ducked according to the source’s input level even though the source channel is muted.
I know the QU Series has sidechain options? The SQ does not??
For my opinion there are not many cases where this behaviour makes much sense.

If, for example, I have a presenter mic ducking the music channel, the music will still pump up and down even though the presenter is off air.

running V 1.5.2.

Thanks for any advice!

[Dave Meadowcroft]

I’ve just tested this and can confirm you’re correct, side chains are definitely pre mute.
I can’t find a way to alter this either! I’m surprised I hadn’t spotted this before to be honest so thanks for pointing it out before it caught me out.

Keith – any suggestions, or can this be looked at for a future update?

[MarkPAman]

If you have one spare, you could send the presenter’s mic to a mix & use that as the side chain feed.

Like Dave, I’d not noticed this before, so it’s useful to know, thanks.

More choice in how side chains are sourced would probably be a good thing.

[MityVee]

Yes, there are some ways ways of workaround but having to blow a mix or group for each channel being ducked is just not practical.
I did a broadcast last weekend with a presenter ducking two incoming feeds, ducking another input differently, mixed all this into a “Floor audio”
which was then interpreted into 6 languages with each interpreter ducking their corresponding floor audio.
So a hell lot of ducking going on, which wouldn’t have been possible if the presenters did not switch themselves on and off when not interpreting.
I will suggest this topic in the feature suggestions. If this board provides ducking this is a key element missing.
…or is this being planned upon.. – Keith..?

Thanks.

[KeithJ A&H]

@MityVee –
Please do add this to the feature suggestions and we will look into it if the general consensus is that it can’t be used as-is.
As you say there are workarounds – in many speech+music applications where a ducker would be used there are multiple voices so a mix has to be used to create the single ducker side chain source anyway.
What you describe here obviously couldn’t use that solution, but would also be considered quite an extreme case!
Cheers,
Keith.

[MityVee]

Thanks, Keith.
It is true this might be considered an extreme case though in my opinion a “per channel ducking” is also a quite common thing.
I think coming from the Qu- Series i was rather surprised not having this feature implemented in the SQ system that I perceive superior to the Qu.

Cheers.

[Drew]

I see that this is a significantly old thread, so if this has had a resolution, someone please let me know. I would also like to chime in with the request to replicate the ducker on the QU over to the SQ platform. My company operates both platforms, and I use the ducker frequently on our QU16s. The way the interface is configured on the QU makes it very easy to operate, despite the fact that I do not consider myself an expert A1. I have to admit, I’m not familiar enough with side chain configuration to confidently dive into it. I don’t really care if it even needs to be a paid plug-in just to support the development cost. I would still buy it, simply because of how much it gets used. That said, trying to manage plug-in licenses when you have over a dozen consoles gets a little daunting, so a firmware update fix would me most appreciated. I’m in corporate AV, not in rock/touring, so this is really about the only “rack effect” that we use religiously. In most of our applications, console footprint can’t exceed rack width, so that rules out a QU24 to get a console with the channel count AND this feature. Generally, I run into this need because we will have a large conference room needing over 16 channels during the day, but for the evening receptions, we can turn on the lectern mic, activate the ducker on the music and essentially walk away until they’re done for the night.

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