FabFilter

Pro-C 2 is an awesome compressor. Just like all FabFilter plugins, there is so much to love.

However, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but this plugin doesn't seem to accept sidechaining midi. In other words, if I have a midi instrument on a track, and Pro-C 2 on top of it, and I want to duck it using a kick from another track, it wont work unless I bounce the midi information to audio first. There are a number of other compressors out there, even free ones, that will do this easily. Why can't Pro-C 2?

Never heard of a compressor working on MIDI material. MIDI data is a "control signal", it doesn't contain audio information. Could you please give me an example of such a free plugin?

You need a synth first, getting triggered by MIDI and converting it to actual sound. Pro-C2 needs to be put on this synth track then to actually doing some work.

Or am I missunderstanding something?

As long as you have an instrument loaded on the track, midi information is turned into audio information at some point, because when you hit play, even though its midi, you hear audio right? And yet, Pro-C 2 wont work unless the actual midi is bounced to audio. Yet other plugins work just fine without needing to bounce to audio. One free plugin that does this is RoughRider 3. No need to bounce the midi to audio, it still sidechains.

A paid plugin that easily does this is DMG's TrackComp2. For the moment, both of these have replaced Pro-C 2 for sidechaining because of this. I really liked the visual aspect of ProC 2 though, so I wish they could make it work.

I'm thinking something goes wrong, because of course it does that :) Whether it's a track with a MIDI instrument or audio really doesn't matter. I use it all the time like that.

I assume you know how to route it in your DAW, have you opened the Sidechain panel in Pro-C2 and set it to Ext sidechain? If I'm not mistaken, you should leave the panel open for the settings there to have effect.

BTW, Pro-C2 actually -can- respond to MIDI information (note on/note off), just route actual MIDI to it, and it will respond to the MIDI notes :))

As a matter of fact, it may be that it already receives MIDI notes and that this is why it doesn't respond the way you expect. Could you try disabling MIDI in Pro-C2 in the lower left corner? ("Enable MIDI")

I am actually so dumb lol! Ok so sorry, so sorry, I think I got myself confused. You guys are right, it totally does this! But I think what I was originally trying to do before I got myself all confused was to trigger the Pro C2 compression off of midi from another track.

WHICH I ALSO GOT WORKING! So yay, I do distinctly remember trying this and I couldn't get it working, not sure what I did different, but yeah its now sidechaining using midi from another track. So thats awesome!

I'm so sorry for wasting peoples time haha, Pro-C 2 is pretty awesome. Perhaps it was an update within Reaper that fixed it? I swear it wasn't working before. At any rate, thank you so much for the help!

No problems! Glad you got a working!