Ducking and Sidekick 3 (VST Plugin)

Thanks for that info Steve I've often thought about trying that Sidekick but was dubious about its effectiveness

Actually if you add a delay after Sidekick on the voice channel, it does delay the voice but doesn't delay the send to the music bed.  So the music bed level can be set to drop just before the voice is heard.

I haven't tried the Reaper sidechaining compressor in Audition as without a sidechain input I don't see how it would work - I don't think there's a way of sending it the necessary input from the other track.  Of course it can be used as a normal compressor in any event.  That's the cunning thing about Sidekick - it combines the two functions of compressor and sidechaining in one effect.  But that does mean the the compression is no better than Sidechain provides.

Actually if you add a delay after Sidekick on the voice channel, it does delay the voice but doesn't delay the send to the music bed.  So the music bed level can be set to drop just before the voice is heard.

It's quite interesting to do it like that - you have to extend the attack time of the ducking quite a bit to get an acceptable fade on the music, and the delay time you choose is quite critical too (I used about 100ms) - but it works fine.