Karaoke Forums

That is something I have never seen discussed here. The sidechain input on the back of compressors work with an external signal and limit the regular input to a level determined by the threshold & ratio. Also the attack and release times come into play here.

I like to duck the fill music with the announce mic and it really is handy when you are roaming and announcing with a wireless. I always used a stereo plug in the insert of the announce mic which was shorted so it wouldnt interrupt the signal. Sometimes during the first cup of coffee something will pop into your head and you sit there wondering why didnt I think of that before.

With a CFX12 I run mic 1&2 hard panned left assigned to sub1. Sub2 unused. OK. If I assign the announce mic channel to 1/2 but hard pan right. Then run sub2 out to the sidechain!!! Walla!!! if I want to use the Audio Technica wireless for announce I just run it into another channnel assign to sub 1/2 and hard pan right.. I am ducking with both mics...I have the choice of ducking with any channel on the board!!!

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That's one way to do it.

I use ducking on the house music just as you do. However I want it to duck when I talk, but I also use ducking to take out the house music all together when a karaoke track starts (this way I don't have to be at the board to take house music out or bring it back in). So what I've done is I use Aux 2 on my CFX12 to send the signal to the side-chain input on the compressor. I can then assign any channel I want to that side-chain just by bringing up the level on the Aux 2 send for that channel. So for my mic, the Aux 2 send is at a lower level than that of my Karaoke Music channel. This way when I talk on the mic it only reduces the house music volume, but when I start a Karaoke track it takes it out completely.

Now the only thing you have to be careful with when using the Karaoke music to duck the house music is that some songs have the lyrics start before the music, so you just have to know these songs and stay at the board. Also, many songs have stops (moments of silence) in the track. This is where using a long release time on the compressor helps. I also aid this further by sending the singer's mics out to Aux 2 as well so even if the music has a stop, the singing or ambient noise through the mic is enough to hold the house music down until the karaoke track comes back in.

It works out really nice, I have to say it is one of the cooler little features I've got going. When I first added it last year, I got a number of comments from folks about how cool it was, a more "professional" sound some said.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

More food for thought. My software auto fades both ways, however on the fill music it starts a new song each time which is annoying sometimes.

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Just out of curiosity, which software are you using. Right now I use the AutoKDJ plug in for Karaoke and then Sam Party DJ to run the house music. It just let it run on auto and fade back and forth to it. I might be interested in software that would handle that part for me.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Roxbox which has 2 players, one for karaoke one for fill. You can toggle on auto fade on each player but normal is only set to auto fade to player2 (fill). When you start the karaoke song it always fades to player1. Also you can set the fade delay from 1-30 seconds and highlight the song you want to auto fade to.

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I tried to use the automatic cross-fader in RoxBox and it ended up getting pretty screwed up. RoxBox kept setting the karaoke winamp to like 40% volume at the start of every track, and the cross-fader didn't always work. I gave up on it. Anyway, tons of karaoke tracks have like 30 seconds of silence at the start or end of the song, and I hate dead air.

Now I have RoxBox's winamp going to my USB audio card, and iTunes to the on-board audio card. I cross-fade manually. I did consider using a side-chain feed of the karaoke audio to duck the iTunes music, but basically I didn't because of the reasons said above, gaps in a song or whatever would cause me to have a really long release time and the cross-fade time would be huge, and I hate dead air.

I used to duck iTunes with my a subgroup fed from my mic, but I decided I would rather do it manually or simply shout through the music. I thought the ducking was really cool for about 2 weeks, then I was like eh .. why bother. If anyone is curious, though, I used a Behringer MDX2600.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

Something wasnt set right. I use the cheap imic usb converter on player2 for a separate fill music feed. Then I can duck it with a compressor. Also you have fill on a different fader.

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RoxBox wasn't right. I like it better than all the other karaoke programs I have tried, but it is not without its share of bugs.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

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