Intelligent adjustment that preserves the dynamics of you music
Every day, even the best engineers struggle to find the perfect balance between enough and too much compression. You need to use some compression, but how much? The textbook way to address this is to use just enough compression to smooth out the tone, but not so much that you crush the life out of your music. Then you take the mildly compressed audio and use automation to preserve the dynamic range. Waves knows that this takes a great deal of diligence, and sometimes even professional engineers end up cutting corners and smothering the dynamic range of their vocals. That's where Vocal Rider comes in. Unlike conventional compression, Vocal Rider doesn't reduce the dynamic range of your tracks or color them at all. This is extremely useful when you consider the further uses of Vocal Rider as a tool for leveling out ungainly instrument tracks — like bass — that become completely incoherent if compressed too much.

Save time achieving the automation you would otherwise have to program manually
Don't throw out your compressors just yet! Some compression is absolutely necessary to achieve the smooth, polished, and professional-quality vocals found in most modern music. That's why it's so important Waves made sure that Vocal Rider responds to audio, and doesn't just look at the recorded track's wave form. By "listening" to the incoming signal including those processors instantiated ahead of itself, Vocal Rider lets you add the right touch of compression before takes control of the automation. That means you don't have to commit to the amount of compression by bouncing down the vocal track before using Vocal Rider to level out the volume. And since you would need to automate your compressed (but not crushed) vocals by hand normally, Vocal Rider acts as a sort of assistant by saving you time by getting the results you need quickly.

Writes automatic volume adjustments as tack automation for future fine tuning
With Vocal Rider, you get the best of both a hands-off automation tool, and the ability to fine tune the results. Unlike most dynamics plug-ins that respond to track automation, Vocal Ride writes automation. Once you have made all of the basic adjustments to your mix and you've achieved the general balance you want, you can write Vocal Rider's automatic volume adjustments as track automation. That way you can make fine adjustments by hand, giving you all of the control of conventional automation, while still benefitting from Vocal Rider's time-saving ease of use.

Controls:

• Target sets the reference range for vocal mix positioning.
• Vocal Sensitivity differentiates vocal content from noise floor and ambience.
• Vocal Activity LED indicates when vocal activity is detected.
• Attack sets the vocal detection attack behavior.
• Music Sensitivity determines the amount Vocal Rider adapts to instrumental levels.
• Music Sensitivity LED indicates Vocal Rider’s response to instrumental levels.
• Range Min/Max set the boundaries of the Rider Fader movement range.
• Effective Range displays the total gain range available for automatic riding.
• Idle Arrow sets the Rider Fader value when there is no vocal activity.
• Rider Fader is Vocal Rider’s automatic control.
• Automation Mode controls the Rider Fader operation.
• Output trims the vocal output gain, post-auto riding.
• Clip LED shows when output is clipping.

Manual