# Crowd system and expanding

**URL:** https://qa.fmod.com/t/crowd-system-and-expanding/20726
**Category:** FMOD Studio
**Created:** [October 3, 2023, 2:17pm UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/crowd-system-and-expanding/20726 "2023-10-03T14:17:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![trjaudio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea666f/32.png) [@trjaudio](https://qa.fmod.com/u/trjaudio)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2023, 2:17pm UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/crowd-system-and-expanding/20726/1 "2023-10-03T14:17:27Z")

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Hi. I have a crowd that says specific words. Behind the “specific word crowd”, I have a layer of generic crowd (almost noise like) playing a the same time. In order for the “specific word crowd” to blend in more, I would like to have the “generic wordless crowd” follow the volume envelope of the “specific words crowd”.

I can achieve the opposite via sidechain and compression, but I would like to get expanding behaviour instead.  
The reason I don’t do parameter modulation (volume) via the sidechain is that it’s resolution is too low and I can hear volume jumps.

Any good ideas?  
Thanks

EDIT: I ended up doing the parameter modulation via sidechain. Basically modulating a parameter by the volume of the speak crowd track and then getting a nested event of the generic crowd and controlling the volume of that by the crowd.  
If i fiddled around enough, I could get by with no volume artifacts.  
I do wish FMOD was running as fast as unreal metasounds though. When doing fast pitch and volume change you can clearly hear steps. Not the case with metasounds.

Cheers

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### Author: ![joseph](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/joseph/32/264_2.png) [@joseph](https://qa.fmod.com/u/joseph)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2023, 3:39am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/crowd-system-and-expanding/20726/2 "2023-10-04T03:39:15Z")

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I’m glad to hear you were able to achieve the behavior you wanted.

Thanks for mentioning Unreal Metasounds to us; we’ll investigate its documentation to see if there’s anything we can learn that could be applied to our own pitch and volume adjustment methods.

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### Author: ![trjaudio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea666f/32.png) [@trjaudio](https://qa.fmod.com/u/trjaudio)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2023, 5:42am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/crowd-system-and-expanding/20726/3 "2023-10-04T05:42:54Z")

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You are welcome.  
Basically, it updates at audio rate speed it seems. So you can have drastic changes to anything and it still sounds smooth.