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M
Mere Development
Participant
July 21, 2017
Answered

Peak limiting a bus, two voices. Advice needed.

  • July 21, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 312 views

Hi, I run/edit a podcast called Relative Paths. I always struggle with a certain situation and after 50 episodes I thought I better ask for some help/advice!

Hopefully you can see the screeny below.

We have 'Mark' my co-host on track 1, me on track 2. Both these are routed to 'Hosts' Bus on track 3. Track 3 sends to a Dynamic Processing effect on Track 4 to provide some voice ducking. 

Both voice recordings have been processed with 'Match Loudness' -20 LUFS / -1 dBTP and neither peaks when playing individually.

As you can see from Track 3 though, I get summing / peaking on the Bus output.

What would you recommend for making sure I don't get nasty peaky distorty (tech terms ) horribleness when both Mark and I laugh at something (He's a funny guy). I've played with 'Speech Volume Leveller' effect on individual tracks or on the Bus but that also does some amplification. Should I be investigating hard limiting, or compression?

If there's a totally different / better way to set this up I'm all ears.

Thanks!

Ben

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer ryclark

Not necessarily Hard Limiting but certainly something to act as a safety limit. Just use a separate Compressor/Limiter in the FX Rack on each of your voice tracks. Try the Tube-Modeled Compressor with the Voice Leveler preset. You may have to adjust the Threshold a bit so that it only effects your tracks when the levels suddenly jump over your normal peak levels.

1 reply

ryclark
ryclarkCorrect answer
Participating Frequently
July 21, 2017

Not necessarily Hard Limiting but certainly something to act as a safety limit. Just use a separate Compressor/Limiter in the FX Rack on each of your voice tracks. Try the Tube-Modeled Compressor with the Voice Leveler preset. You may have to adjust the Threshold a bit so that it only effects your tracks when the levels suddenly jump over your normal peak levels.

M
Mere DevelopmentAuthor
Participant
July 21, 2017

Ah! That compressor is brilliant! Never seen it before. I use about 3% of this application I'm sure.

Thanks a lot, I'm going to carry on editing and see how it works out but initial tests sound way better.

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