Audition 3 Tube modeled Compression settings

Audio Production
1

My show is an 80s retro show, and my voice is compressed heavily. I’m using Audition 3 with these settings. Thresh -20.0 Gain: 17.0 Ratio 10:1 Attack 1.0 ms Release 5.0 ms and generally I’m pleased. The waveform before I compress generally peaks out at 0 db (I often will normalize it to 0 db before compression). Before compression I have ambient room noise of about -39db with an occasional stay artifact during silence of -36 db. (see first screen print - capture1.jpg)

Capture1
Capture11920×960 313 KB

Now, after compressing with the above settings the ambient room noise is a problem, as high as -20db. The spoken parts are compressed to a level that’s generally pleasing enough, but there needs to be a way to keep the ambient room noise down to -38 to -40db, right?
The second screen print, shows the post compression waveform. capture2-.jpg

Capture2
Capture21917×1034 305 KB

Any help, most appreciated!

2

A couple of things to help here.

First, clean up the background noise issues before compression and you’ll be golden. Otherwise, like you show in your example, compression will boost background noise.

Set up a noise gate using this effect (available in AA3):

The second thing is to maybe ease back that ratio. 10 is high for voice processing. I’d suggest between 3-5 for ratio and that’ll mean you’ll need to also bring down the gain value too.

3

That’s great. Thanks. Even without the preview being available, I was able to set up the noise gate fairly painlessly.