I'm putting together a weekly radio show (a glorified podcast, really, for the local lpfm station), and I'm trying to figure out how to get a sort of "ducking" effect for when I'm speaking & have background music....setting the track level is tedious, I figure I can use a compressor's sidechaining, connected to the vocal track audio, but...um...I don't exactly GET the side chaining. Cuz I'm a doofus.
help?
Radio ducking, side chaining
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rbmonosylabik
- Posts: 2659
- Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:27 am
A normal compressor has two circuits, and sends the same signal to both. The first one reads the signal's amplitude and lets the 2nd circuit know when the signal goes over the Treshold. The 2nd circuit raises and lowers the signal amplitude according to what the 1st circuit tells it.
What you do with a sidechain compressor is simply wire a different signal to the 1st circuit. That way, when it realizes that your voice is going over the Treshold, it will tell the 2nd circuit to lower the amplitude of the original signal (the music).
One thing you could try is building a rack that divides the music into Lows, Mids, and Highs, and just applying the Sidechaining to the Mids, opening up space for the voice without it sounding like the music level is jumping all over the place.
What you do with a sidechain compressor is simply wire a different signal to the 1st circuit. That way, when it realizes that your voice is going over the Treshold, it will tell the 2nd circuit to lower the amplitude of the original signal (the music).
One thing you could try is building a rack that divides the music into Lows, Mids, and Highs, and just applying the Sidechaining to the Mids, opening up space for the voice without it sounding like the music level is jumping all over the place.
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