. In this video, we’ll continue to explore the Virtual View of AVX Architect and look at the Ducker object. The Ducker object is found in the virtual view, under the “Dynamics” section of the audio processing objects. The Ducker object will reduce the level of an audio signal depending on the level of a different control signal. A common application is to reduce the level of background music as a paging microphone is making an announcement. It features an exponential attack and linear recovery for natural sounding fades.
The default block will have one input for the main audio source, one for the control audio source labeled MicIn, and one output. Let’s look at the Factory panel for the Ducker. The enable button will turn the Ducker processing on and off, acting as a bypass. The Threshold control adjusts the threshold level where the ducking will occur. The level reduction to the main audio source occurs when the control signal level gets above this threshold level. Range is how “deeply” or how much gain reduction occurs to the music signal. Duck Time adjusts the time it takes for the music to come down when the mic is above the threshold, and Hold is additional time the music will remain ducked in order to prevent rapid volume fluctuations. Recover time is the time that it takes for the music to fade back to its original level. Remember that like compressors, the ducker can cause distortion if attack and release times are too fast, so set these to reasonable values. This gain reduction meter will display the amount of gain reduction being applied.
At the top of the Factory panel, we have our usual object name, lock button, and selection mode switch. On the right, the “Properties” window has the usual naming, workspace location, and DSP allocation options. The “Options” section contains the usual channel count of the object block. Remember that dynamics processing objects like the ducker are limited to 128 channels. When using a multi-channel ducker, the panel controls and processing affects all channels. Finally, this “Mic feed to output” button will send the mic signal directly to the output of the block. When this is off, the mic will trigger the gain reduction of the music input, but will not be heard on the output of the object.