Wave Rider

Controlling dynamics in audio is a combination of musicianship or vocal mic technique and most commonly, compression and/or fader riding. Compression and riding faders however are very different techniques: fader riding usually considered as more natural. Your ear acts as a look-ahead compressor and if you are familiar with the material you can accurately ride the faders to lower and raise gain at key points. Compression can of course do this automatically but it is fundamentally less natural even with auto-release and auto-gain settings.

The side-effects of compression are often desirable, but riding faders is still commonly performed - particularly on vocal takes. But in this age of mixer-less project-studios if you don't have a hardware controller you are left struggling with a mouse to ride virtual faders in your DAW. This is quite tricky. Hence my excitement at the announcement of a new RTAS plug-in for Pro Tools called Wave Rider. It analyses audio and instead of controlling dynamics using compression, it will write volume data automation to your session. Great idea! This can of course then be fine-tuned. It also provides "ducking" - great for radio show voice-overs, and fader "parking" - which handily lowers faders when no audio is present to minimize mic bleed for example.

More info available at: Wave Rider

LOL: I've just noticed the date... no this isn't a lame April Fools joke!