Audio Ducking/Sidechaining in Adobe Audition

Have you ever seen a movie where the music overpowers the dialog and you do not know what the actors are saying?  I am sure that has happened from time to time.

I am going to show you how they should have done it with Adobe Audition.

Some say it is audio ducking or or side-chaining.  Toe - may - toe, toe - mah - toe right?

Free Stock Music
Voice Clips from Movies

I provided a couple of links if you do not have any equipment. If you were to use the links, for voice clips, try downloading something with no background music already in it.

Launch Adobe Audition (I am using the CC version, I believe this works for CS6 as well).

Create a New Multi-track Session

Then add two mono audio track sessions (preferably. If you are doing stereo; let me know if the tutorial does not work.  I will change it.)

Import the two audio files.  Assuming one is a music track and the other is a voice track.  Name the tracks "music" and "voice".

Now the fun part.

Go to the "Mixer" tab in the main window.

Then click on the triangle in the FX panel in the music, select amplitude and compression, then click on dynamics processing.

A window will pop up with a straight blue line, there is a white dot in the middle of the line.  Try to line the middle dot to -40db on input and output. (horizontal is input levels, vertical is output).  The last dot that is in the upper right hand corner, drag it down to make it parallel with the middle dot. 

Now lastly, go to the voice track and highlight over the send menu (by default the tooltip will way "Send: None"). Select Side Chain, Create then Dynamics Processing.

At this point, you are done.  If it works, the music will quiet down when the voice comes in.