Four classic sidechain compressor plugins
Sidechain compression is the process of using an external signal to trigger the threshold of a compressor. The rise in the popularity of French house in the noughties thrust the technique into the spotlight, and you can clearly hear the effect being used in tracks such as Eric Prydz’s classic track Call On Me: the music and vocal drop in volume when the keying signal (in Prydz’s case, the kick drum) plays, creating a pumping effect that not only gives the kick more room to be heard but psychoacoustically tricks us into thinking it’s louder than it actually is.