Ideas for ducking music track?
 

My wife uses a Pro Tools 001 on a daily basis for voice-over work. She needs to have a music track duck down in level about a second before the voice over comes in & back up after the voice over is through. This happens numerous times throughout each production.
I figured a decent way to do it by cloning the vo & moving it ahead by 1 second, triggering a Drawmer ducker with the cloned VO track, while the Drawmer has been sent the music track to be ducked.
It's worked great for years & is much quicker than drawing the levels up & down on the music track.
However, we're trying to figure out an alternative to this setup that might be done strictly within the DAW, rather than having to send all of this out to the Drawmer & mixing the result through her analog board, as she's been doing at the moment.
Any ideas for an alternative way of doing this? Also - are there any ducker plug-ins that will do a similar thing?

Re: Ideas for ducking music track?
 

You can use the limiter plug-in,just insert it on the music track(or aux)and use the voice track as key(at the right of the little key symbol).Enable the External Key option, and that's all [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

Re: Ideas for ducking music track?
 

-The previous reply is another excellent idea, but you could also automate the volume (level). Just write volume automation to the music track(s) when you want adjustments. [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

Re: Ideas for ducking music track?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by soundboy69:
-The previous reply is another excellent idea, but you could also automate the volume (level). Just write volume automation to the music track(s) when you want adjustments. [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly. Why smash your dynamics with a limiter, or comp for that matter, when it's easy to DRAW A LINE and get the EXACT results you want. Plus, if it's not the way you want it, RE-DRAW the line.

Automation is one of the biggest selling points of PT, yet I always see suggestions to compress the hell out of it , or slather it with 3 plugins of similar function, before using a simple volume automation. If it's a volume change you're after, well, a dip in volume is what you need, not a sidechain compressor. Sorry to bitch a little much, but I hate to see compression abused and automation ignored.

Re: Ideas for ducking music track?
 

ReniuR,

I agree about your "bitching" about the "easy way". But i think if you use a compressor or a limiter for ducking purposes, you wont get that squashed out dynamics if you set your settings the way they should. Then they only resulty in a lower volume while you hear the voice over. Also...i think its a good thing to have the dynamics smoothed out a bit while you hear a voice over. The voice over can be lower in volume this way and become more part of the audio rather then just lying on top of it...

Re: Ideas for ducking music track?
 

True. I forgot to add the safety net "but if it sounds good to you..."