# Ducking music volume to make way for voice narration - is there a better way than side-chaining ?



## ManicMiner (Jun 19, 2019)

I have some voice narration over a music bed.
I'd like to lower the volume a touch when the voice is active and have it return to its normal Db when its not active.

I know that you can do this using side-chaining (as they do on radio stations), but is there any other way, or is there a plugin that can look ahead and say, "voice is coming in 2 seconds, lower volume a fraction of a second before it comes in..."

(I have Reaper, I am sure there might be an action around somewhere that might do it, but can't find it... anyway...)


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## NekujaK (Jun 19, 2019)

Aside from a sidechained dynamic EQ or compressor, I'm not aware of any shortcut method. You need the sidechain to inform the music track when the dialog is active. If I recall correctly, you can slap Fabfilter ProQ on both tracks, and then simply tell it to use one of them as a sidechain to a dynamic EQ node... But maybe I'm dreaming (not in front of my rig right now).

If you don't want to sidechain, then another approach would be to aggressively EQ the music track, carving out the primary frequencies in the dialog. That way, both can co-exist reasonably well, and provided you set the levels right at the outset, you won't need to adjust the volume of the music track.

But that's really a workaround. I'd love to hear about a plugin that can do it without sidechaining.


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## SchnookyPants (Jun 19, 2019)

Stagger the tracks a bit, so the voice actually _is_ a second or two ahead. Do your sidechain thing and print the music that way. Realign the v/o track and Bob's yer' uncle. At least I always _thought_ he was...


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## hawpri (Jun 19, 2019)

Similar to sidechaining by the product description, but the Trackspacer plugin sounds really useful to carve out room for a voiceover or whatever else you need to stay on top.

https://www.wavesfactory.com/trackspacer/


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## jneebz (Jun 19, 2019)

Waves Vocal Rider can be fast and effective...
https://www.waves.com/plugins/vocal-rider


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## pderbidge (Jun 19, 2019)

hawpri said:


> Similar to sidechaining by the product description, but the Trackspacer plugin sounds really useful to carve out room for a voiceover or whatever else you need to stay on top.
> 
> https://www.wavesfactory.com/trackspacer/



This! Great plugin. Instead of compression it uses eq curves to duck those frequencies that might interfere with the vocal frequency and therefore keeps all the other frequencies of the composition in tact. I would say, however, that if you have drums overpowering the vocal then you would still want some type of volume automation to duck the low frequencies a bit "if" they are distracting from the vocal even though they don't overlap in frequency. Just use your ears to decide.

Edit: Since this is Voice narration, if I understand correctly, then I think tradition side chain ducking with a compressor might be the best approach. If you're trying to get a second of ducking in early, before speaking, I think you'll need to manually do some volume automation at those point before the speaking, perhaps in combination with side chaining so it's not automatic but I always do what I think is best for the track and not always the easiest/quickest.


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## brek (Jun 19, 2019)

SchnookyPants said:


> Stagger the tracks a bit, so the voice actually _is_ a second or two ahead. Do your sidechain thing and print the music that way. Realign the v/o track and Bob's yer' uncle. At least I always _thought_ he was...


Was going to suggest similar. Duplicate VO track, shift it earlier two seconds, bring the fader all the way down, and use that as the side chain. Turn the attack and release up a good bit so you get gradual fades. Im not a mixer, so not sure if this works. I like your idea though - might be a good middle ground between a "real" mix and auto ducking the way they do on the radio.


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## k4music (Jun 19, 2019)

I use Peak controller in flstudio. and some times did this in Audacity which is easy.


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## ManicMiner (Jun 20, 2019)

brek said:


> Was going to suggest similar. Duplicate VO track, shift it earlier two seconds, bring the fader all the way down, and use that as the side chain. Turn the attack and release up a good bit so you get gradual fades. Im not a mixer, so not sure if this works. I like your idea though - might be a good middle ground between a "real" mix and auto ducking the way they do on the radio.


@SchnookyPants & brek- yes this is a great solution. I never thought of this, but it makes perfect sense.
I'll also check out the Trackspacer , there's a demo of it.


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## brenneisen (Jun 20, 2019)

maybe

mid volume automation
trackspacer
sidechain

since you take a lot of mid signal and carve out some frequencies you may even sidechain less (more volume yay) 

transient designer with negative attack, perhaps?


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## Fredeke (Jun 20, 2019)

Usually, dimming the freqs around 2khz in the music makes room for clarity of speech to come through. That way, you don't need to duck the music so much. (If you have a way of sidechain ducking just that band - I never tried but I'd be curious to know how it goes)


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## David Cuny (Jun 20, 2019)

As someone suggested, you can move the audio forward if you want it to trigger the sidechaining early. The simplest thing to do is copy and shift the audio track, and sum it and the original audio to different track, and use that track to sidechain the music.

Check out *this video *for details on how to duck using ReaComp.

As someone else suggested, you can duck using EQ - see* this video* for details of how to do it using ReaEQ.

Obviously, it's not an either/or thing - you can duck using the compressor _and_ the EQ if that works best for you.


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## Jerry Growl (Jun 20, 2019)

Adding to the list of suggestions:

Dyn Eq in sidechain instead of a compressor
Parallel compression on the music bus (this restores some of the prowess the music looses when mixed at low volume)
When ducking, don't use autogain


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## brek (Jun 20, 2019)

Just for hits and giggles:




Set the music and VO tracks out different busses. Duplicated the VO track and shifted the duplicate ahead 1 second. Sent that to the side chain on a compressor on the music bus. Set the attack at 100ms (the max on the default Cubase one), hold at 1500ms, and release at 1000ms. I think I'd like this more if I could make the attack longer. 
Sorry for not preparing a better script or working with finished music.


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## ManicMiner (Jun 20, 2019)

brek said:


> Just for hits and giggles:
> Set the music and VO tracks out different busses. Duplicated the VO track and shifted the duplicate ahead 1 second. Sent that to the side chain on a compressor on the music bus. Set the attack at 100ms (the max on the default Cubase one), hold at 1500ms, and release at 1000ms. I think I'd like this more if I could make the attack longer.
> Sorry for not preparing a better script or working with finished music.


This sounds great, and it was over music that was fairly busy too. The 1 sec release was good. thanks.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 20, 2019)

You know, it can become very obtrusive if you duck the music every time someone talks and then raise it up again in between sentences. Often, it's more subtle if you only bring the music up during long pauses in the speech, and then sneak it in at the beginnings of phrases so it's not so obvious.

Of course I'm not saying *always*, just often. Or maybe usually.

And then there's the other big part - writing music that works under VO.


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## ManicMiner (Jun 20, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> You know, it can become very obtrusive if you duck the music every time someone talks and then raise it up again in between sentences.
> And then there's the other big part - writing music that works under VO.


true. the long attack and release times help smooth any jumps out. And the trick might also to be not to duck the volume by a huge amount.
I posted another thread yesterday on what Spitfire Evolution - type libraries would work as a music bed, so I also agree that the music itself needs to be appropriate.
Some of the Evo type libs are screechy / edgy, I am looking for something a bit softer and warmer. I thin I have a few examples in eDNA in A1... Looking at Symphonic strings Evo as well as Olafur Arnolds..


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## robgb (Jun 20, 2019)

pderbidge said:


> This! Great plugin. Instead of compression it uses eq curves to duck those frequencies that might interfere with the vocal frequency and therefore keeps all the other frequencies of the composition in tact. I would say, however, that if you have drums overpowering the vocal then you would still want some type of volume automation to duck the low frequencies a bit "if" they are distracting from the vocal even though they don't overlap in frequency. Just use your ears to decide.


Couldn't the same thing be done with multi-band compression, which is built into most DAWs?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 20, 2019)

ManicMiner said:


> true. the long attack and release times help smooth any jumps out. And the trick might also to be not to duck the volume by a huge amount



Slow release is okay, because the maximum settings are measured in seconds (I think my hardware comp's max is 3 seconds). But attacks are measured in milliseconds.

If I were automating brek's passage, I'd only automate the ducking a small amount, so you're probably not aware of it unless you focus on that (which you wouldn't be doing if you're listening to the voice). Then I'd do longer-term changes manually.


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## Dietz (Jun 20, 2019)

brek said:


> Duplicated the VO track and shifted the duplicate ahead 1 second


I was about to suggest the same approach, just with 250 ms look-ahead time.


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## Dietz (Jun 20, 2019)

PS: I also had great success with a "reverb only" version of the VO track as a much smoother side-chain. Makes the ducker react less nervous to single syllables.


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## pderbidge (Jun 20, 2019)

robgb said:


> Couldn't the same thing be done with multi-band compression, which is built into most DAWs?


Yep, or a dynamic eq like the TDR Nova which has a free version but I think a multi band compressor would work better in this case since a dynamic eq would need some broad eq curves that might be hard to dial in without messing with the audio. Always more than one way to skin a cat but you're right multiband should've been my first suggestion as it makes the most sense for this scenario.


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## Fredeke (Jun 21, 2019)

Fredeke said:


> Usually, dimming the freqs around 2khz in the music makes room for clarity of speech to come through. That way, you don't need to duck the music so much. (If you have a way of sidechain ducking just that band - I never tried but I'd be curious to know how it goes)


(answering myself )
In addition, it could be worth trying reducing the bass and/or low-mids in the speech, so that music and speeck are each prominent in different parts of the spectrum.


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## Jerry Growl (Jun 21, 2019)

There are of course several reasons why audio engineers in post-production just don't leave it at ducking for mixing VO:
(besides the fact that it's just plain lazy):

It's predictable and boring and sounds mechanical
Ducking does not relate to the loudness of the music
Especially in longer productions this method sounds cheap, inapt and unprofessional
Best results and most natural transitions are usually drawn with a fader (no not your mouse), in a process called fader riding. You don't need an array of 64 motorized faders to achieve this, just any one simple fader controller will do.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 21, 2019)

Jerry Growl said:


> Best results and most natural transitions are usually drawn with a fader (no not your mouse), in a process called fader riding.



What you're saying about ducking is what I wrote above, only you're saying it better and with more feeling. 

However, after having a HUI for years, as well as a digital mixer that spoke HUI protocol to DAWs... that is, years of having them and never bothering to use them when I was in the throes of an actual project... I had to admit that the mouse is my weapon.

Faders are great, no question. They come from consoles, which are musical instruments for a lot of people. It's amazing watching a great engineer play one, and it was even more amazing back in the pre-DAW days when they would do all kinds of interesting stuff with the SSL automation.

But for me, at my speed, it's mouses.


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## shawnsingh (Jun 21, 2019)

Dietz said:


> PS: I also had great success with a "reverb only" version of the VO track as a much smoother side-chain. Makes the ducker react less nervous on single syllables.



This is brilliant!


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## GtrString (Jun 22, 2019)

Try looking into the Hornet autogain plugins. Cheap and well made https://www.hornetplugins.com/plugins/


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## Dietz (Jun 22, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I had to admit that the mouse is my weapon.



+1!


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## benmrx (Jun 22, 2019)

FWIW, I do more audio post than composition work and my day job is working at a multi room facility with 3 PTHDX rooms. We do tons of tv, radio, web, film, etc. 99.99% of the time I’m not using any kind of side chain/ducking etc. to duck music. It’s just faster, and more accurate to ride a fader (or use the mouse) because it all depends on the tempo of the VO, the tempo of the music, the length of gaps, what the VO is currently ‘talking about’, lyrics/vocals, music edits, where ‘the beat is’ when the VO starts/stops, SFX, etc.

Plus, usually there’s more than one spot to work on, so you’re attack/release times might work for the 15sec. spot, but not the 30, etc.

And..., just my opinion, but you don’t want the music to duck/raise the same amount and at the same speed each time as it can sound repetitive and predictable.

Sometimes I’ll have ‘heads/tails’ track for the music at the very beginning and end of a spot so I can treat the music during the main body of the spot more drastically.


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## ManicMiner (Jun 23, 2019)

I did go for a _very subtle_ side-chain dynamic EQ-ing, and I generally EQ'd the music with a node around the 1k mark with a generous Q (see image below). I think 1k is the middle of where the voice frequency sits and the EQ made a nice subtle hole for it.
I'm happy with the result of how it sounds for my particular project. My music is not busy music that needs definition, its a soft warm bed.
I might start to look into learning to fade with the mouse or an external fader to see if I can get even better results.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 23, 2019)

ManicMiner said:


> I think 1k is the middle of where the voice frequency sits and the EQ made a nice subtle hole for it.



Spoken voice? Usually female vowels are somewhere around A and E below and above middle C, and males are maybe a 5th lower - and that's where you have to be careful under dialog/narration. Consonants/plosives are in the 4K range, and that's where the intelligibility is. (4 - 8K is also where a lot of people, I believe especially men, lose hearing as they age and why older people can have a hard time understanding speech.)

I haven't heard your project, of course, but my guess is that your wide Q caught the area an octave below 1K while removing some harshness in the 1-2K area.


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## Dietz (Jun 24, 2019)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Usually female vowels are somewhere around A and E below and above middle C, and males are maybe a 5th lower


Good point - but keep in mind that this is also a socially shaped phenomenon. Especially in an Anglo-american environment it seems to be social expectation that men have markedly virile, deep voices, while women there usually tend to have a decisively higher-pitched fundamental. This difference might be less pronounced in other cultures and languages. (... I read the abstract of a scientific study some time ago which underpinned this thesis, but I don't have the citation at hand, sorry.)

... but I digress. 8-)


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## Fredeke (Jun 24, 2019)

Dietz said:


> Good point - but keep in mind that this is also a socially shaped phenomenon. Especially in an Anglo-american environment it seems to be social expectation that men have markedly virile, deep voices, while women there usually tend to have a decisively higher-pitched fundamental. This difference might be less pronounced in other cultures and languages. (... I read the abstract of a scientific study some time ago which underpinned this thesis, but I don't have the citation at hand, sorry.)
> 
> ... but I digress. 8-)


Sure. Once I lamented than French movies don't telephone-eq dialogs like American ones do, and it makes French dialogs more difficult to fit into a busy soundtrack. (The problem usually arises when dubbing Hollywood films in French, and the worst solution is sometimes taken, which consists in lowering the international track's volume as a whole.) But I was answered by a colleague that that was probably due to a difference in how the languages sound: American English (especially Californian) is more nasal than most French accents, and can probably benefit from narrower EQing.

...but I digress too.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 24, 2019)

Dietz said:


> Good point - but keep in mind that this is also a socially shaped phenomenon. Especially in an Anglo-american environment it seems to be social expectation that men have markedly virile, deep voices, while women there usually tend to have a decisively higher-pitched fundamental. This difference might be less pronounced in other cultures and languages. (... I read the abstract of a scientific study some time ago which underpinned this thesis, but I don't have the citation at hand, sorry.)
> 
> ... but I digress. 8-)



Oh, I like virile women and higher-pitched men too.

I've actually plonked out where people's voices are on the piano before writing music under them.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jun 24, 2019)

Fredeke said:


> American English (especially Californian) is more nasal than most French accents



Really? Did you take Canyon View to San Vincente to the 405 north and get off at Mulholland?


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