Welcome back! Thanks for joining us here at LoopGalaxy. Today, we’ll look at how to use sidechain compression on voice over projects. With sidechain compression you can ‘duck’ the beat when vocals kick in. Radio broadcasters use this technique a lot when they’re talking over background music.
When working with an instrumental for a voice over project, you may not have enough head room to include vocals without clipping. Therefore, we can employ this technique to get the job done.
Take a listen to our audio example:
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If you listened closely, you should have heard the beat get slightly quieter when the voice over kicked in, which is the effect we’re going for.
Getting Started…
Step 1 – Load up a Compressor on your instrumental track.
Activate your Sidechain and expand its parameters.
Set your Audio From drop-down menu to your vocal track. Leave your set source to Post FX.
Step 2 – Adjust your Attack and Release settings.
We want an extremely fast Attack so the compressor kicks in right away. The opposite is true for the Release. A longer release will ensure that the instrumental comes back in smoothly and not too abruptly. Set your Envelope to Opto.
Step 3 – Adjusting your Threshold and Ratio.
Drop your Threshold to -20 dB. Set your Ratio to about 4:1. A Knee setting of 11 – 13dB will also help get a smooth response from our compressor. Lastly, set your Lookahead to 10ms. This gives the compressor more time to read the incoming audio signal.
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If you can hear any pumping from your compressor then you might have to tweak your Release setting slightly.
We hope you found this article helpful! Be sure to check back regularly for more great info from LoopGalaxy.com!
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