How to use automation to change the impact a parametric EQ has on a music track?

[Richard van den Boogaard]

Hi,

As some of you may know, it's good practice to use a parametric EQ effect on a music track to duck frequencies that are usually part of speech. That way you create more "room" for a voiceover, while you can still boost the volume of frequencies that are not touched by speech (read: bass and treble).

I have been diving into the use of track automation. However, what I can discover is adjustment of either the volume or the panner of the effect OR the individual sub parameters of the effect through Track Fx Slot 1, with a whopping number of variables to automate: from Low shelf frequency to EQ Band 5 bandwidth.

However automating individual frequencies is time consuming. Basically, you want to adjust those parameters once and ONLY adjust the overall level to which these effects are impacting the original audio track. You can use Bypass as an automation option, but that is binary only: meaning the effect is either on or off, no gradual change from one state to the other. I want the original frequencies to return gradually whenever the voiceover stops and then changed back to the chosen setting when voice returns again.

Any ideas on how to achieve this?

[Richard van den Boogaard]

I have now automated the parameter "EQ Band 3 Gain", which basically lowers middle frequencies, depending on how wide you set the bandwidth (I chose 1, where the default is 2). This works, but if you want to push the EQ Band 1/2 and Band 4/5 Gains you need to adjust another set of track lanes. Doing that for each duck of speech is too time consuming...

There just does not seem to be an option to gradually adjust the overall impact an audio effect has on your track with track automation... or am I missing something?

[Rag and Bone]

Have a look at side-chain dynamics processing in Audition.

[Richard van den Boogaard]

So there's no way to do this in PPro? You *have* to use Audition for this?

[Rag and Bone]

I don't know if there's a way to do it in Premiere. For my part, I find working on sound in Auditon is so much easier that I've never been inclined to dig too deeply.