What does the side-chain actually do?

Quad Cortex
1

Hello everyone, could someone more knowledgeable explain what exactly the side chain does?

Neural gave this example: you could sidechain an input to the adaptive gate, but position the gate at the end of a chain to reduce noise created by effects in the loop.

In practice, what does this actually mean? What would be the difference between:

Input → adaptive gate (just the old one) → amp → effects
vs
Input → amp → effects → adaptive gate (just the old one)
vs
Input → amp → effects → adaptive gate (sidechained to input)

Thanks!

2

This would gate any excess noise from your guitar’s pickups before going to the amp. Simple enough.

In this instance the gate triggering is at the mercy of any kind of noise (typically high frequency hiss) that may be introduced from the amp. Not ideal.

In this instance the sidechain feature allows the gate to trigger based on the input alone, but it’s cleaning up noise after the amp. Best of both worlds.

Likewise for the sidechain compressors–this is a huge win.

2 Likes
3

I can’t find it mentioned in the new 3.0 manual…anyone find the documentation?

4

I understand the Side-chaining on Gate and Comp, but what is it doing on the Doubler?

2 Likes
6

Tracking better as it’s using a DI signal instead of one affected by amps and effects already

1 Like
7

My guess is it’s doubling the sound of the amp output rather than doubling the sound of the guitar going into/through the amp, which might end up less focussed?