Syntrillium Backup Forums :: View topic - Voice Ducking

BENEFACTOR · Posted - Mon Sep 03, 2001 6:01 pm

Hi to you all,

I'll have to produce a news bulletin with music "under" my voice and I want the music to "be a little more quiet" when talking.

On track one, there's my voice, track two is the music. Now I tried to use the envelope follower - but the result is more than bad.

The loudness of the music in fact is lowered, but it doesn't follow the amplitude of my voice at all.

Does anybody know, which settings to do in the envelope follower to get a fine result? I don't have any idea, which curve in the graph would fit.

Thanks for any suggestions how to handle the problem.

... D I R K :-)

younglove · Posted - Mon Sep 03, 2001 7:22 pm

Here's an old post I made on vocal ducking
a couple of years ago. I guess it still works:

--------------------------------------------

How to do vocal ducking
-----------------------

(Well, one way, anyway.)

1. Insert your music track into Multitrack.
This is your "Process" wave.

2. Insert your vocal track into Multitrack.
This is your "Analysis" wave.

3. Highlight both waves by starting at the
beginning of one wave with the mouse, and
dragging down to the second wave and to the
end.

4. Multitrack: Transforms\Envelope Follower.
Choose the Process and Analysis waves. For
the graph, use the usual diagonal line from
lower left to upper right. Choose other
settings (I have no advice on that). OK.
This creates a new wave, such as "New Track
3".

5. New Track 3 (or whatever it's called)
represents the sound that you want to duck
(decrease) from the
original Process wave. Go to the Edit view
and New Track 3 (you can double click on New
Track 3 in the Multitrack View), and copy
the wave into a clipboard.

6. Go to your music (Process) wave, and do a
Mix Paste Overlap Inverted, using the
clipboard that has New Track 3 in it. The
volume percentage that you specify in the
Mix Paste determines how much ducking you
want: 0% means "no ducking" (the original
music wave is untouched); the maximum
ducking amount will vary with your original
music and vocal waves, and may be around
500%. Be careful in choosing this
percentage. There is a point of diminishing
returns. For example, if 500% is maximum
ducking (silence in the music where the
vocal is maximal; the actual maximal
percentage will almost certainly be a non-
round number, like 543.13%) then mix pasting
at 600% will give the same level of ducking
as 400%, with ducking sounds inverted.

I tried to find a way to normalize the
percentages so that the mix paste
percentages are always between 0%
(for no ducking) and 100% (for maximal
ducking) but all I managed was to get it
between 0-120 or 0-150 or
so, variably, which is no better than no
normalizing at 0-500% or so.

--younglove

resistor man · Posted - Mon Sep 03, 2001 8:34 pm

Interesting. all the years I've used CEP, I've never played with this transform.

BENEFACTOR · Posted - Tue Sep 04, 2001 3:06 pm

Hi Young Love,

thanks for your very detailed reply upon my voice-ducking problems.

I will try it out and let you know about the results soon.

Have a fine week, best regards,

BENE:-)

BENEFACTOR · Posted - Tue Sep 04, 2001 5:31 pm

Hi younglove,

thanks to your information, I managed to cope with the envelope follower, especially in doing better adjustments to get the effect that I wanted.

The problem still is that I'm too unexperienced with switching between the multitrack view and the edit view windows.

So here's my question: In point 6 you mention: "Go to your music (process wave), and do a Mix Paste Overlap Inverted, using the clipboard that has track 3 in it.

Well, I tried to do that but I must have made a mistake.

- Can you explain exactly what to do ? After I copied New Track 3 into the clipboard, what does "Go to your music (Process) wave ..." mean: Switching back to multitrack view ? Double-clicking on the music to get it back into edit view ?

Would be nice, if you could explain this special topic again.

Thanks in advance, regards,

BENE:-)

younglove · Posted - Tue Sep 04, 2001 9:28 pm

All three waves should be opened now in edit
view (you will only see one at a time). To
switch between open files, use Ctrl-Shift-Tab
in edit view until your music (process) wave
is visible. Or you can switch back to multitrack view after copying New Track 3 into the clipboard then double-click on your
process wave which will take you to edit view with that process wave visible.