Devious Machines has announced an update to its sidechain-style ducking plugin Duck, adding three new features to help with simple volume-shaping tasks.

With Grouping, you can now put as many Ducks as you like in up to four groups and edit curve shapes across all instances simultaneously. You can use MIDI Filtering so Duck is only triggered by MIDI notes in set range, which is perfect for ducking bass to a kick drum that’s part of a drum rack or similar. Additionally, you can now fine-tune the crossover point between high and low bands with Band Soloing, easily auditioning how the split sounds at different points.

Ducking, or sidechain compression is one of the defining effects of modern music. From classic house to modern EDM, tracks by Daft Punk, Noisia and Eric Prydz ooze that pumping, ducking effect.

So, whether you’re producing pumping house or broken beats, Duck delivers in seconds.

Duck features

  • Instant sidechain pumping as soon as you load the plugin.
  • Cleaner, louder and more exciting mixes.
  • Choose from 8 preset curves or 58 creative and useful Duck patches.
  • Draw your own curves and rhythms to use now, or save them later.
  • Group as many Ducks as you like and edit curves across up to four groups simultaneously.
  • Set the overall pump, or apply to low and high bands with adjustable crossover.
  • Solo the high or low bands for accurate fine tuning.
  • Run Duck in Repeat mode, or use sidechained audio or MIDI signals to trigger, with optional lookahead for glitch free audio.
  • Trigger sidechaining with external MIDI. Filter the MIDI so only notes in a set range trigger Duck.
  • Smoothing control to remove clicks: including super-accurate pre-smoothing algorithm when in LFO mode.
  • Run on individual tracks, groups or your master bus for different pump effects.
  • Low CPU usage means you can run Duck on loads of tracks.
  • Mac and Windows: VST/AU/AAX plugin.

The update is free for existing users. New users can purchase the plugin for £20 GBP / 25 EUR / $27 USD at the Devious Machines store and from distributor Plugin Boutique.