Ducking
Automatically lowering one track when another plays. Music ducks under VO so dialogue stays legible.
- COINED
- 1970s
- TAXONOMY
- AUDIO
- RELATED
- 4
- TEMPLATES
- 0
Ducking is automatically lowering the volume of one track when another plays. Music ducks under voiceover so the dialogue stays legible. Background ambience ducks under foreground audio. Ducking is the reason your viewer can actually hear what's being said.
Modern editing software does this with sidechain compression - the dialogue track triggers a compressor on the music bus, which lowers the music's volume whenever the dialogue is loud enough. As soon as the dialogue stops, the music comes back up. The viewer doesn't consciously notice; they just experience a clean mix.
Set the duck depth - how much the music drops - between -8 and -16 dB depending on the energy of the music and the loudness of the dialogue. Too shallow and you can't hear the VO. Too deep and the music feels like it's switching on and off.
Any video with both spoken-word and music. Voiceover-led content. Podcasts. Commercials.
Pure-music content. Some narrative film where the music and dialogue are intentionally in tension.
Terms next to this one.
One track triggers a processor on another. Music ducks via sidechain from the VO bus.
Reduces the dynamic range so loud bits get quieter relative to soft bits. Glue, not loudness.
Low-volume background music under dialogue. Sets tone without competing for attention.
Off-screen narration recorded in post. Documentary, ad, tutorial - all live or die here.