Clock Ducker

A clock-triggered sidechain ducker that pumps your stereo signal in time with a patched clock — no kick detection, no envelope follower. Every clock pulse dips the mix, giving you the classic "kick punches through, everything else breathes" gesture locked exactly to the beat.

How it works

Instead of ducking the whole signal, Clock Ducker splits it at a crossover you set — 250 Hz by default. The low band — kick, sub, body — passes through untouched, while only the high band is attenuated on each clock edge. The result reads as rhythmic pumping that keeps its low-end punch instead of going limp. Each rising clock edge fires a trigger envelope whose attack, hold, and release you shape, and the crossover runs independently per channel so stereo width survives the duck.

Controls

  • Depth — how hard the high band dips on each pulse. A quarter up trims about 6 dB; from noon onward the high band drops to silence at the peak of every duck. Fully down is transparent.
  • Split — the crossover that decides what ducks and what punches through, sweeping 60 Hz-2 kHz (default 250 Hz). Everything above it dips; everything below passes clean. Drop it to protect more of the low end, raise it to duck only the airy top.
  • Attack — how fast the duck snaps in on each clock edge, from a near-instant 0.1 ms gate to a 50 ms softer onset. Quick attacks chop; slower ones breathe.
  • Hold — how long the duck sits at full depth before release takes over, from 0 to 200 ms. Short is a snappy dip-and-recover; stretch it for a sustained, gated dip.
  • Rel — how long the duck takes to recover, from a tight 50 ms snap to a slow 1 s swell. This sets the feel of the pump.
  • Mix — blends ducked against dry. Full wet is the pure effect; back it off to keep the pump subtle.

Inputs & outputs

  • In L / In R — the stereo signal to duck; patch a full mix, a pad, or a loop.
  • Clock — the trigger. Each rising edge fires one duck, so the pump follows whatever tempo you feed it. Leave it unpatched and the module passes audio cleanly.
  • Depth / Split / Attack / Hold / Rel / Mix CV — voltage control over each knob; patch an LFO or envelope for crossover sweeps, shifting duck shapes, and evolving, less mechanical pumping.
  • Out L / Out R — the ducked stereo result.

Tips

  • Feed it the same clock that drives your kick for a tight, in-the-pocket pump — the low band keeps the kick solid while everything above it ducks out of the way.
  • Slow the Rel down and run a steady clock for a smooth breathing swell rather than a sharp gate.