Ducking is a common technique used in radio and television broadcasting: When the DJ or announcer speaks while music is playing, the music level is automatically reduced. When the announcement has finished, the music is automatically raised to its original volume level.
Ducker provides a simple means of achieving this result with existing recordings. It does not work in real time.
Note: For technical reasons, Ducker can only be inserted in output and aux channel strips.
The Ducker has the following parameters:
This value also controls whether or not the signal level is reduced before the threshold is reached. The earlier this occurs, the more latency is introduced.
Note: This only works if the ducking signal is not live—the ducking signal must be an existing recording. The host application needs to analyze the signal level before it is played back in order to predefine the point where ducking begins.
The steps below show how to use the Ducker on existing recordings.
Note: For technical reasons, the Ducker plug-in can be inserted only in output and aux channel strips.
Insert the plug-in into an aux channel strip.
Assign all channel strip outputs that are supposed to “duck” (dynamically lower the volume of the mix) to a bus—the aux channel strip chosen in step 1.
Choose the bus that carries the ducking (vocal) signal in the Side Chain menu of the Ducker plug-in.
Note: Unlike all other side-chain-capable plug-ins, the Ducker side chain is mixed with the output signal after passing through the plug-in. This ensures that the ducking side-chain signal—the voice-over—is heard at the output.
Adjust the Ducker parameters.