Question

Hi! For my band we used to have a reverse gate set up on the talkback mics of the band members. We play on IEMs to for talkback it's great and it prevents drums from coming through as soon as the clicktrack starts playing (clicktrack is the key source). I can't find a way to set this up on the 32R, only a regular gate that mutes when the click hits, while we need the reverse scenario. Any ideas or alternative solutions?

Answer 1

Hi. I don't have an SL desk but I looked at the manual. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you'll  know, unlike Studio One, the mixer doesn't have a sidechain ducking feature on the gate (which is what you're after). The work-around (and this is in the manual) is to use the compressor with a sidechain. So, you'd use the channel your click is on as the feed to the compressor. The compressor will be inserted on whatever channels or buses are feeding your IEMs. I've just tried it in Studio One and it works a treat. I was able to completely silence a track with some music on it when a click on another track was present. When the click was not present, the music returned. Should work for you too. It was easy to find the right settings on the compressor to make this happen. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Hi. Could you clarify your situation a little more:  It's not fully clear what you are saying. Cheers.

Answer 3

Hi Colin, sure! The situation is that we're in a rehearsal space playing on IEMs and want the mics for the non-singing members to get muted whenever we start a song. We play on click so there's always something playing when we start a song that I could key on. These members use their mics just for talkback purposes, so with regular speech volume. If we leave them on all the time there's constant drum bleed in our IEMs, using a gate doesn't work because small rehearsal spaces get drum bleed that's as loud or louder than regular relaxed speech volume. I'd love to automate this again as I did before, where I had a gate that listened to the clicktrack but was inverted so input signal from the click channel meant the gate closed and talkbacks wouldn't feed to our IEMs.