FabFilter

Hi,

I'm in Reaper and trying to send my strings into my bass Q4 to persuade the bass to duck a little when some of the cellos etc. are being masked.

The internet hasn't resolved my confusion here, so this is what I'm doing - wrong?

I have some confusion over the controls also. I have a spectral dynamic cut lined up at around 260k, on the bottom of the plugin on the Bass track. I hover over Analyser tab and the pop-up appears and here I select from the Ext dropdown > Strings.

I click the external sidechain button and it turns blue, but no eq cuts appear in my dynamic eq, I click again and I the cuts show. Which is off and which on? blue?

If I select Strings Bus from the Ext dropdown does that mean Pro Q4 is actually channelling that folder/sound into my Bass EQ for analysis?

I read somewhere online that you actually have to send the Strings signal to the Bass track, not just click the dropdown - is this correct?

Does any of this make any sense at all...?