Audio interview — auto-supress quiter mic to clean leakage.

[justified]

I have an interview recorded with two persons with separate mic and an audio track for each person. Do you know how to automatically lower the volume of the person who don't speak at the moment?

I now have the idea to use two side chain compressors. Any other dedicated option anyone know of?

[justified]

Well in my case double side chain worked, although it didn't do any good, because the difference between direct sound and leaked is about 20 dB and the most audible effect (unpleasant) my set up had was when both speakers were talking at the same time.

[Mathematics]

Easy...use a gate.

[justified]

Easy...use a gate.

Indeed! That's what I ended up using. Though it doesn't work perfectly: sometimes leakage is above the threshold and sometimes direct voice is below.

[Mathematics]

Try using a second gate with hysteresis control.

[BertKoor]

Forget gating or mess with dynamics. Pan them slightly apart.

[justified]

Forget gating or mess with dynamics. Pan them slightly apart.

Thanks! In fact I've already panned them really slightly apart.

But I chose to leave gating, it works. Yep sometimes there's a leakage going on or current speaker goes below the threshold. I've cured this with volume envelopes and set gating not to silence but to about -12dB. Also I've used Acon Dereverb on the mix, not to kill but to reduce the reverb by the same 12 dB.

Thankfully the recording is good and the leakage wasn't terrible to start with.

Thank you for you replies. It seems there's no magic trick here yet. Perhaps in the future some ai will decide who is speaking not just by volume or rough spectrum data but by combination of factors including voice, reverb amount etc. We'll see.

[__Karlo__]

How long is the interview? I’d just Automate the volume in the daw… or cut up the stems.

[justified]

It's about 30 minutes. Yep, in my case gating with occasional volume automation (about 5 times) where leakage passed through gate worked pretty well.

Thanks!