r/Reaper • u/penguinfac3 • 1d ago

help request Track priority volume wise?

Hi hi. Is there anyway I can "prioritize" a track so that all other tracks lower in volume anytime the prioritized one is "speaking"? by speaking I mean if theres sound happening in the priority track(s) (above a certain dbs)

In case all that was confusing, basically what I'm trying to do is make a commentary track and I want whatever I'm commenting on to become quiter when Im speaking but I wanna do all that with as little editing as possible and hence don't wanna do it manually.

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u/Bred_Slippy 37 1d ago

Yes, it's called sidechain compression. Watch this tutorial   https://youtu.be/8Tt5yWOxB2E

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u/penguinfac3 1d ago

Thank youuuuu 💋🤌

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u/aSingleHelix 2 17h ago

A plugin called The Masker does this very well (and for free)

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u/radian_ 92 1d ago

The terms you need to look up are using a sidechain to duck the other tracks. 

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u/penguinfac3 1d ago

Thank you!!

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u/omeeomai 1 21h ago

Sidechain compression is what you're looking for, but just to add on there are plugins that do basically sidechain compression but only on the frequencies that are conflicting, as opposed to normal sidechaining which ducks the volume of the whole frequency spectrum.

This one even allows you to arrange your tracks in tiers, so you can prioritize 1 or more tracks as you asked:

https://www.sonible.com/smarteq4/

Some others are Trackspacer, Neutron, MSpectralDynamics, and Soothe. I'm sure there are many others

https://deviousmachines.com/product/duck/

Here's a discussion of the many options:

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=595399

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u/penguinfac3 1h ago

Oh this is really neat thank you!

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u/Logical_Classroom_90 2 1h ago

it's ducking, you can do it with a sidechain compressor on the background track or folder, or with volume automation also