Top 5 Essential Dynamic Ducking Tools for Studio Sound Engineers (2023 Edition)

Best 5 Audio Ducking Software You Should Know

Benjamin Arango

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Have you ever been into an event or an emcee session where the background music drops and rises based on the person’s speech or talk? Well, it is the audio ducking action. So, if this concept terms out to be new for you, you are on the right page.

Audio ducking is an off-screen hidden vital phenomenon. It is no more challenging to pick yourself the best audio ducking software to do wonders in editing the audios we have brought the best five audio ducking software that you should know of 2020!

• Part 1: What is Audio Ducking?
• Part 2: Top 5 Audio Ducking Software

What is Audio Ducking?

Do you wish to go live with beautiful background music, interactive sessions, or a fun party time? Many of you would have heard of this audio ducking mechanism as video creators and audio spectators. But, let me introduce it for better understanding.

Audio ducking is a mechanism where the background audio is ducked anytime or compressed temporally if any dual audio is detected or present. Especially in a live session like an emcee, this method helps lower the music when the person starts speaking and rises again when the person finishes. Beyond live sessions, ducking is in narrations, translations, and podcasts as well.

Source: pro.harman.com

In technical terms, ducking is a sidechain compression where the secondary audio channel takes control over or compresses another channel. If the control channel threshold exceeds, the audio channel lowers, leaving no trace of background audio, and when the point drops, the background audio levels up again. Such chains or compression is a manual job using signal compressors, portable PAs, and Ui24R.

Top 5 Audio Ducking Software

While much audio ducking software promises seamless and efficient usage, we picked the five best that do a great job. We have listed the tools in this session, so make sure you stick until the end.

1. Adobe Premium Pro

The first audio ducking software is Adobe Premium Pro that exhilarates video editing to a cut level above. Adobe’s latest version comes packed with pro features and a premiere rush app giving your video a distinctive look anywhere that keeps your creation stand unique in the crowd. Comprising overall smart tools required for storytelling, support over any camera & platform, all-in-one editing app, Adobe Premium Pro helps one to stay in a creative flow.

Premium Pro from Adobe has marked its place in the list because of its support over audio and video editing integration to various creative cloud apps like Photoshop, After Effects, Audition, in-built Adobe Sensei technology, and Character Animator.

Pros

• It has an integrated “Audition” application that helps bring life stories with audio.
• Premium Pro offers various tools to edit, fine-tune, and perfect the audio as per the video’s needs.

Cons

• Users lookout for a Lite version to carry audio & video editing in a faster way.

2. Wondershare Filmora

Are you an inspired video creator or a vlogger looking out for perfect audio ducking software that could do wonders for you? Filmora from Wondershare is the best choice that offers a simple interface, intuitive design, standard, and high-quality audio/video editing options well suited for professionals and newbies. Filmora has countless video editing options like overlays, filters, motion elements, and still a lot more.

If you are confused about why Filmora is then on the roll, the answer is simple. It offers royalty-free music, outstanding auto-ducking features, tools like split audio, trim audio clip, adjust audio, audio denoise, and still a lot more.

Pros

• It offers a readily available royalty-free music library that can be added as background music to change your video tone.
• You can add recorded voiceover, replace/detach the video’s original audio, split, and adjust audio that suits the video.
• Get access to varied options like audio fade in/out, audio equalizer (EQ), and audio mixer with Filmora from Wondershare.

Cons

• Not as much.

3. KineMaster

KineMaster is a video editor app that can be readily downloaded from the App Store or Google Play to be accessed anywhere on your device. It is compatible audio ducking software with handy editing functions that are easy-to-use, simple, and fun.

KineMaster supports three-phases: Create, Edit, and Share, where you can transform your video with a diverse feature-set like blending modes, video layers, Chroma key, and still a lot more.

Pros

• You can add background audio to the videos to improve the tone of the video.
• KineMaster supports audio editing over the latest operating system and multiple platforms as well.

Cons

• The system crashes at times leading to the repetition of the process again.

4. LumaFusion

If you are a mobile journalist, filmmaker, or a professional video producer searching for a powerful multi-track video editor, here is LumaFusion from the house of LumaTouch. It is a premier professional solution embedded with a media library, video editing tools, titler, audio editing, effects, share options, and project management.

You can add keyframe audio levels to the audio editing phase, panning perfect mixers, adding audio filters, EQ, and auto-ducking action.

Pros

• Preview and listen to your edit while adjusting the audio track levels.
• For dual-mono audio captures, get access to fill-from-left and fill-from-right options.

Cons

• LumaFusion never allows iCloud sync between devices.

5. OBS

OBS studio is our final audio ducking software, an open-source platform developed especially for live-streaming and recording purposes. With reliability over Windows, Linux, and macOS, one can utilize multiple sources, record audio, add video clips, and streamline settings panels.

Powered with powerful API technology, real-time video/audio capturing, and high-performance audio mixing, OBS Studio uses native plug-ins and customization schemes for high-performance output deliverance. Thus, it is one of our listings.

Pros

• OBS supports an intuitive audio mixer, per-source filters, noise gate, gain, and noise suppression.
• With OBS, you can take full control over the VST plug-in support for audio.

Cons

• The process of installing the plug-in associated with audio & video needs improvement.

Conclusion

Each audio ducking software in this article proved their expertise. Adobe Premium Pro is good-to-go for Photoshop for professional video editing, KineMaster, a friendly handy mobile application, and LumaFusion, apt for filmmakers & journalists. However, if you are new to video edit, Filmora will be the best choice for you with all the above features in one tool. Also, we found that Filmora from Wondershare, our recommendation surpasses all others, making it the smartest pick as best audio ducking software.

Benjamin Arango

Benjamin Arango is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Benjamin Arango

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