Ok..here's the prob..
I have a female vocal across a dance track.In certian places her voice is lost under the pads & main lead synth.I've compressed it but i'm still having probs.On my desser(waves) there is a side chain.I understand that if i feed the vocal into it,it will 'duck' the volume of the offending instrument,allowing the vocal to sit better in the mix.
Can anyone tell me how i would go about setting it up or point me in the direction of a tutorial?
Cheers
Steve

Someone on here must know??

Not me.

Hello

If you have to do such a processing, like ducking a pad, or other strange things NOT for creative purposes, there must be a basic problem in your mix. A common mistake is to set too loud some background or constant sounds like pads or strings.
You must let breathe the vocals in your mix.

fgfab
http://www.fabricegabriel.com/

Here are some really interesting (links) articles on Compression / EQ.

http://www.studiocovers.com/articles6.htm
and
http://www.studiocovers.com/articles3.htm

TIA (thanks in advance).

Thanks for ypur help guys..

RTFM - the waves ones are very good

EQ / wrong volume-settings of the synths/vocalz is the conclusion here.. try to use an EQ with decreasing the mids around 1250Hz (Q 1-2, just experiment what value is best).. by decreasing the pads / instruments around 1250Hz you give more space for the vocalz to breath as especially this frequency-range is critical for clear vocalz.. more frequency-ranges you can find on the studiocovers-page for example here:

http://www.recordingeq.com/Subscribe/tip/tascam.htm

http://www.digitalprosound.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/mixing_excerpt1.h tm

Again,thanks guys..

Vocal is the Ducker, Pad is the Duckee.

You can simulate ducking by -

1) Set the relative levels of the Ducker and Duckee to be good when playing together (while "ducking" is on).

2) Send them both to their own bus.

3) Put a compressor on the bus with threshold set to just above the level of the Duckee when it is playing on it's own - that is, there is no compression when there's no Ducker, but it kicks in as soon as both are playing. Set the ratio as high as posible, attack fast, release slow (about 500ms maybe).

4) Dance like a jive turkey.

Forever,




Kim.