Advanced Podcast Gating...

[Panu Pentikäinen]

I've got a typical scneraio in podcast recording: there are 3 tracks of speech, recorded by large diagram condensers. My studio has good acoustics but I still prefer to get as dry sound as possible. 

Each track has Sonitus:Gate. Settings are quite mild as I do now want to cut anything off accidentally. I have used to clean up tracks manually but it may get too time-consuming if the recording is long and guests speak over each other.

I started thinking about using gates with sidechains. Has anyone used this in podcast mixing? How do you do that?  I thought something like this:

Gate = Sonitus:Gate with Sidechain input in use, duck mode

1. Track1 - Gate1, Gate2
2. Track2 - Gate3, Gate4
3. Track3 - Gate5, Gate6

Sidechains:

1. Track2 => Gate1
2. Track3 =>Gate2
3. Track1 => Gate3
4. Track3 => Gate4
5. Track1 => Gate5
6. Track2 => Gate6

As a result each track ducks other tracks. But what happens if two or more guests speak over each other? Does this work IRL? What settings to use..?

[Colin Nicholls]

Try it and see... it's non-destructive, right? You still have the audio from each speaker even if they were all talking at the same time.

[bitflipper]

Don't know why that wouldn't work. The only reservation I'd have is that the Sonitus gate can be finicky if levels are too variable. Make sure you compress the tracks before the send.

[Gswitz]

Idk if that makes any sense to me, but maybe i don't get it yet.

On lots of radio shows, the host's Mic triggers hard side chain compressors on the guests'. This guarantees the host will win a shouting match. It also trains the host to not accidentally talk over guests.

You mention gating though. Gating and expansion are useful for suppressing noise when mics aren't actively engaged. To me, i would not side chain expanders. The gate should be 100% out of the way for the quietest syllable the user of the Mic speaks. I wouldn't want the gate off because someone else was speaking.

Edited October 5, 2019 by Gswitz

[Panu Pentikäinen]

Gswitz:
> The gate should be 100% out of the way for the quietest syllable the user of the Mic speaks.

That's why I'm very careful when applying gating on speech.
In normal situations I can keep all mics on but sometimes guests speak on wastly different volumes and it may cause too much bleed on the other mics.

Just for clarification: "Gating" in my case is Sonitus:Gate set to reduce ~6 dB.

 

 

Edited October 5, 2019 by panup

[chuckebaby]

Have you tried eliminating the sidechain and just roll with gates on each channel ? As long as gates aren't chattering while 2 or more people are speaking than it should work fine. You might even be able to experiment with phase polarity if bleeding is too overbearing (TBH though, a little bleeding sounds more realistic in these situations).

I do use ducking myself, but only for simple talk over narration with music backings.

[Gswitz]

I prefer expanders to gates. That way, if the threshold is a tiny bit less than perfect the sound isn't cut, only reduced a little depending on how high the volume got.

This is more important with bands probably that are performing with the effect on. Still, it allows for a more forgiving mix... Easier to not include audible mistakes. Basically, you set a zero attack with compression applied when you are below a threshold rather than above.

Might be worth exploring. It can also be applied live so the speakers hear it in their headphones... No look ahead required.

 

[Gswitz]

21 hours ago, Chuck E Baby said:

You might even be able to experiment with phase polarity if bleeding is too overbearing (TBH though, a little bleeding sounds more realistic in these situations).

I use Melda MAutoAlign for this purpose.

You can calculate an array of different off-sets to see which you like the best. This is the plugin I use most (maybe).