In fact, it turns out that I most often end up creating a submix of everything except vocals and ducking that, which is how this month’s examples are set up.

Wanting to treat a number of tracks at once, I turned to submixing through bus channels, something I do extensively in my mixes anyway. More often, several tracks make contributions at different times and to different degrees. I have found, in practice, that only occasionally is there a single culprit causing the problem. The first, obviously, is what the target signal(s) might be. If the aim is to improve intelligibility, there are several considerations that need to be taken into account. The core idea of ducking is to trigger gain reduction of one or more target signals whenever a source signal (in this case, the vocal) is present. This month, I discuss different ducking techniques, how they can be set up within Studio One, and how they can be stored as presets. When other methods fail, I frequently turn to ducking, something I have written about before in this column.

Automating the vocal level to sit it on top of the mix, adding brightness with EQ, and beefing up the compression are all options, but none of them is a silver bullet that works in all situations. Your drums, guitars, synth pads, organ tracks and brass samples are all nicely balanced, but the vocals keep getting lost in places. Get your Studio One ducking techniques in a row as we explore different ways to improve vocal intelligibility. Bass, drums and guitars are all routed to a ‘music sub’ bus to be ducked by the vocal submix.

Sidechain studio one 3