Waves Vocal Rider

[John Rofrano]

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski] “John, I found your post where you mention about using Waves Vocal Rider to smooth vocals. What is your workflow?”

I use Vocal Rider for dialog tracks to keep the levels with broadcast specs. It does a great job of making the vocals consistent.

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski] “Can you use this plugin also to set background music levels automatically?”

Not with Vegas Pro because it doesn’t support side-chaining so there is no way for the vocal track and the music track to interact. Vocal Rider still does a good job of keeping your vocal track within the limits you set but it cannot respond to any background music in Vegas Pro. You would need to use Pro Tools or SONAR to do that.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski]

1. Do you send all vocals to an audio bus and apply vocal rider there?

2. Using free Sony Track Compressor wouldn’t do the same job?

3. There is a post on Sony’s forum about pseudo-sidechaining using Wave Hammer. What do you think about it?

https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/Forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=19&MessageID=756086

thanks

[Eddie Macarthur]

it can be done. dave brown plugins make sidechain compressor, a vst plugin. it is not 64 bit, so you would need to use jbridge if using with 64 bit vegas. the concept is that you insert an instance into the music track, and one into the vocal track. with the correct setting, (i.e. one set to trigger the other) the music is ducked when the voice speaks. you can control by how much and how quickly the music level rises and falls. when you get it right it sounds very professional. I used to use it in vegas 10 and 11. right now I don’t have it installed but will give it a go. sidechain comp is about $40 and jbridge around $15. ps. for most jobs I prefer manual control, even though it takes longer. ed

System; intel i72600k 3.4GHZ, 16GB RAM, Win 7 64 bit. Vegas Pro 11 latest build, Neat Video 3.01. EVGA GTX460 SC graphics

Stealth Recording Studio, Glasgow, Scotland UK
http://www.stealthrecordingstudio.com

[Eddie Macarthur]

https://www.db-audioware.com/sidechain-compressor.html price is higher than when I got it! ed

System; intel i72600k 3.4GHZ, 16GB RAM, Win 7 64 bit. Vegas Pro 11 latest build, Neat Video 3.01. EVGA GTX460 SC graphics

Stealth Recording Studio, Glasgow, Scotland UK
http://www.stealthrecordingstudio.com

[John Rofrano]

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski] “1. Do you send all vocals to an audio bus and apply vocal rider there?”

I usually apply it at the track level but you could apply it to a bus if you wanted all of the tracks routed to that bus to be controlled in the same way.

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski] “2. Using free Sony Track Compressor wouldn’t do the same job?”

Not really. Vocal Rider raises and lowers the volume. It does not compress (i.e., limit the dynamic range). I agree that you could “control” vocals by either changing the volume or using a compressor so in that sense they both accomplish the same goal, they just do it in a different way.

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski] “3. There is a post on Sony’s forum about pseudo-sidechaining using Wave Hammer. What do you think about it?”

I haven’t used that technique but it looks interesting. I’ll have to check it out when I get time.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Scott Francis]

I usually put a compressor on the channel and the wave rider on a bus. I use it a lot for plays and such where individual voctals vary GREATLY. It helps with a good overall level…
ALL the Wsves stuff is really good, I like the C1 for a basic compressor and RChannel works great for vocals as well, so decent presets to start with…

Good luck

Scott

Scott Francis
Mind’s Eye Audio/Video Productions

[Eddie Macarthur]

yes, vocal rider is excellent. I use it on all my audio productions. you can get it at a crazy low price for the next couple of days at waves.com. ed

System; intel i72600k 3.4GHZ, 16GB RAM, Win 7 64 bit. Vegas Pro 11 latest build, Neat Video 3.01. EVGA GTX460 SC graphics

Stealth Recording Studio, Glasgow, Scotland UK
http://www.stealthrecordingstudio.com

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski]

Eddie, I’ll try to use Dave Brown plugin you mentioned. I would love to speed up editing long TV episodes and stop levelling audio manually.

[Eddie Macarthur]

bad news ; been trying to get sidechain compressor to work in vegas 12 pro 64 bit via jbridge. interface opens but there are errors reported and no audio processing. must be a jbridge issue. it might work in 32 bit but I see no 32 bit download… I used to use it in earlier versions of vegas 32 bit so if you can get demos of sidechain and jbridge, try before buying. ed

System; intel i72600k 3.4GHZ, 16GB RAM, Win 7 64 bit. Vegas Pro 11 latest build, Neat Video 3.01. EVGA GTX460 SC graphics

Stealth Recording Studio, Glasgow, Scotland UK
http://www.stealthrecordingstudio.com

[John Rofrano]

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski] “I would love to speed up editing long TV episodes and stop levelling audio manually.”

I would definitely not be doing it manually. At a minimum use the Track Compressor in conjunction with Wave Hammer on the master bus to smooth out your audio.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com