Prior to adopting VMIX as our standard live production tool, our standard audio mixer of choice was the hugely successful Yamaha O1V96v2 digital workstation. One of the reasons for using this mixer was its ability to provide and auto audio ducking feature, which was particularly useful for lowing the 'gain' of an atmosphere microphone (the roar of the crowd) against a commentary microphone. Obviously a product like VMIX could benefit greatly from a feature like this, especially as VMIX is well suited to single operator use, as one doesn't have to try juggling half a dozen audio gains whilst simultaneously trying to vision switch.

On the O1V96v2 this feature was simply implemented by allowing the trigger to the compressor of the 'atmosphere' input to be controlled by the post fade input signal level of the commentators microphone input. Once consideration is that that the compressor should be able to be triggered from multiple inputs as quiet often there is more than one commentator for an event.

Maybe a simple solution would be to allow either the signal level of either the A or B bus to act as the trigger for the compressor input of any given audio input channel. Although in my case I actually already use the A & B busses for commentators monitoring and stadium public address. Maybe the addition of a third 'Virtual' audio bus 'C' or 'FX' could be implemented for use as a trigger.

For this to be 'elegant' and effective, the compressor would also need to implement a user variable 'release' time, so the operator could set the amount of time after the commentator stopped talking for the atmosphere microphone to return to full gain.

Best Regards

Keith