There are definitely musical advantages to it, and it adds a nice drive to the track when done right. That said, sidechaining absolutely everything bar the kick is unnecessary, and in a lot of cases, detrimental to the core dynamic and rhythm of the track.

Whoa, what an offer. Thank you mate!

Basically a duplicate audio source mixed in together: one with compression, the other without.

There's a fair few advantages to this. Say for example your material has a lot of quick peaks and transient hits - like a percussion loop - and you want to bring the floor up and beef up the percussion itself, but without the compressor bringing the peaks down. Attack timings can only get you so far in this case. Instead, duplicate the loop, compress one copy quite heavily to bring the body out, and then mix it together with the old copy that still has the peaks. You end up getting the best of both worlds this way.

On a lot of newer software compressors, they now include a 'Dry Mix' knob that helps do this for you. It's great for making dynamic material more 'beefy' without compromising it's attack too much.

In some tutorials and guides, they often refer to this as 'New York Compression', if that also helps!

It's a problem that arises for a lot of people, and there's actually a fairly straightforward explanation for it.

So long as you're using an ASIO driver in your DAW, either as a software driver or via an audio interface, if you drag the rendered track back into the DAW and play it, it should sound the same as before you exported it. I'ts because your on-board sound driver included in the computer's motherboard will often be taking over from the ASIO drivers when playing tracks back in iTunes/VLC/media players, and these drivers (especially RealTek High Definition Audio ones) will colour the sound with their own broad EQ settings.

To quickly check, right-click the volume control in the notifications tray and hit Playback Devices. Right-click the current sound device and hit Properties. Check the Enhancements tab, and un-check every option there. It'll be stuff like Room Correction, Low Frequency Adjustments, Dynamic Equalisation, etc. Once it's all unchecked, play the track again. It should be much closer to what came out of your DAW.

To wrap it up, what you're hearing in the DAW pre-render is what you should end up with in the end. If you haven't, chances are, its the PC's own audio drivers causing havoc.

Hey Matthew,
Early days, but solid effort so far! Sounds themselves are polished and sounding neat in the composition.

Your biggest issue with this track is the kick and percussion. It's nowhere near prominent enough in the mix, and what that does is creates a strange kind of empty space in the drum sections where the percussion almost non-existent. There are hi-hats in there, for example, but barely audible. These higher elements such as hi-hats and cymbals are crucial for creating energy, vibrance, and sheen, so they definitely need to come up in volume and stand out more. The synthesized snares also need that edge and vibrance to sit forwards in the mix, so that they really 'strike'.

The kickdrum itself does an OK job of the low end, but like the other percussion, it's not loud or prominent enough to carry energy forward.

Credit most definitely due for the overall synthesis and melodic work, which is really polished sounding and well-crafted!

Sylenth1, JP6K, and Harmor. Every track, every time!

Really good idea, this one. Helps to get you into the habit of meticulously checking tracks before declaring them 'done'.
I've lost count of how many uploads I've heard from producers who really could have taken 10 minutes to check some of these steps