ACON Digital speaks with dialogue mixer, editor and supervising sound professional DeLaVanta Tabor about the realities of daily mixing on CBS Studios’ Beyond the Gates, the ongoing challenges of production audio, and how Extract:Dialogue 2 has become a practical tool in both routine repairs and creative shaping of scenes.
DeLaVanta’s workload is substantial. When you mix seven episodes a week, there is no room for theory or over-analysis. You either have tools that help you move quickly while keeping performances intact, or you fall behind. His perspective on Extract:Dialogue 2 comes directly from that environment.
“When you’re mixing seven episodes a week, you need tools that keep up — not tools that slow you down.”
Inside A Working Week On A Fast-Turnaround Show
AD: You’re deep into Beyond the Gates at the moment. What does a typical week look like for you?
DeLaVanta Tabor: It moves fast. We’re mixing new material daily. Everything is shot on a stage, so you do get consistency, but you also get limitations. They try to run two booms where possible, but a lot of sets just don’t allow it. So most scenes rely on one boom plus lavs on every actor. You quickly learn the personality of each room. You know where reflections build up, where a boom is likely to get blocked by a wall, and which corners always give you a little more noise than you’d like.
AD: Does that familiarity help or does the pace still create pressure?
DeLaVanta: Both. It helps you make decisions faster because you understand the space, but the schedule doesn’t give you any breathing room. You’re constantly solving little problems. A clothing rustle that lands right on a key word. A lav that shifted under a jacket. A boom that had to be a foot further back than ideal because of camera movement. It keeps you very present.
“You’re constantly solving little problems — it keeps you very present.”
Working Beyond A Single Format
AD: Even with that workload, you still take on other projects. What does that give you?
DeLaVanta: Variety keeps your ears honest. I recently mixed a pilot for an action show, which was filmed in a much more traditional single-camera style with a more chaotic sound. Before that I worked on a documentary. Those jobs remind you how wildly different production sound can be. You go from a controlled stage one day to an echoey hallway or a windy exterior the next. I also supervise when needed, which gives me another layer of perspective about how things are recorded and how early decisions ripple into post.
The Problems That Never Go Away
AD: What are the main recurring challenges that follow you from project to project?
DeLaVanta: The biggest by far is signal to noise. People get excited about new recording formats and dynamic range, but none of that removes the basic physics. If the noise floor is sitting right under the performance, especially a soft performance, no amount of technology is going to separate it cleanly. That becomes very obvious on quiet dialogue or whispers.
“If the noise floor sits right under the performance, no technology is going to separate it cleanly.”
After that, mic placement is the everyday battle. Lavs get buried under layers of fabric, rotated sideways, or pushed into a fold. Booms can only move as fast as the scene lets them. You might have a perfect boom position for rehearsal, then an actor leans back for a single line and everything changes. These issues aren’t mistakes, just realities you work around.
First Impressions Of Extract:Dialogue 2
AD: Let’s talk about Extract:Dialogue 2. You already had a lot of plugins and tools to help you fix audio. What made this one stand out?
DeLaVanta: The CPU load surprised me straight away. It’s extremely light. That means I can leave it inserted on my dialogue bus without worrying about the session slowing down. If something is heavy on the system, you’re not going to use it as an everyday tool.
The second thing that stood out was realtime separation of voice, noise and reverb into individual faders. That sounds simple, but it changes how you work because you’re not tied to balancing everything at the same time. You can make intentional moves instead of broad strokes.
“Realtime voice, noise and reverb faders change how you work — you can make intentional moves instead of broad strokes.”
Whispering, Clip Gain And A Better Way To Lift A Line
AD: Can you give an example of something that became easier or faster?
DeLaVanta: Whispering is the best example. Normally, if someone whispers a line, I would go in with Clip Gain, raise it, and immediately the noise rises with it. Then I’d have to revisit noise reduction to clean up what I just introduced. It’s the standard workflow, but it’s slow and you end up chasing your own adjustments.
With Extract:Dialogue 2, I can just raise the voice fader. Nothing else changes. The noise stays down. The reverb stays stable. It gives you precision without having to do the same job twice. That one difference alone has saved time every day.
“With Extract:Dialogue 2, I can lift a whisper without lifting the noise — it’s precision without rework.”
Bringing Detail And Space Back Into A Scene
AD: You’ve mentioned that not all noise is bad. How does the plugin help with those moments where you want realism back?
DeLaVanta: Plenty of scenes feel more believable with a bit of natural life left in them. Clothing movement, subtle room tone, or that slight energy of a space. If you clean everything too aggressively, you lose that connection to the environment. With Extract:Dialogue 2, I can automate the noise fader back up for specific words or moments. It’s a clean, precise way to bring life back without rebuilding layers or doing track-based workarounds.
Shaping Perspective Using Reverb
AD: How about distance work? Making someone sound further back or closer to the camera.
DeLaVanta: The reverb control is great for that. If someone is speaking from the far end of a set, I can make the reverb slightly wetter to match the perspective. When they walk forward, I can dry the reverb down. Because I’m shaping the natural production reverb instead of replacing it with an artificial one, it stays believable. And it’s quick. I can automate the move rather than juggling sends and inserts.
I’ve always preferred using the room’s natural reverb where possible, and this lets me work with it rather than against it.
EQ That Does More Than Tidy Up
AD: The built-in EQ is something people talk about a lot. How does it fit into your workflow?
DeLaVanta: It’s very useful. Sometimes you want to clean something up just a little, and you don’t want to pull up a separate EQ plugin. For example, taking low-end buildup out of a scene, or giving the mids a slight lift to help an actor cut through.
But the real trick for me has been using the noise EQ for hiss. I made a preset where I boost the noise band around 12k using the shelf, then pull the noise fader down a few points. That removes hiss without touching the dialogue. A standard EQ can’t do that because it affects the whole signal. Here, the hiss lives in the noise component, so you can target it directly.
EUCON Mapping And Why It Changes The Workflow
AD: You’re a heavy EUCON user. How does Extract:Dialogue 2 behave on a control surface?
DeLaVanta: It behaves exactly how you want a dialogue tool to behave. It is fully mapped to EUCON straight away. Nothing hidden, nothing rearranged, nothing fighting you. What you see on the plugin is what you get on the surface. Voice, noise and reverb land exactly where you expect them on the faders.
I rely on my control surface because mixing all day with a mouse slows everything down. If a plugin isn’t mapped well, it becomes something you use only when absolutely necessary. With Extract:Dialogue 2, it feels like a real, tactile part of the mix. I can ride the voice fader, bring the noise up or down, or adjust the reverb perspective without ever taking my hands off the surface. That alone changes how you work during a fast pass.
Why Extract:Dialogue 2 Belongs In A Modern Dialogue Toolkit
AD: For someone who already has a folder full of dialogue tools, what does Extract:Dialogue 2 actually add?
DeLaVanta: Freedom. That’s the best way I can describe it. It lets you make decisions without committing too early or creating new problems to fix later. You can automate everything in real time because of the low CPU load. You can shape the scene as you mix rather than working in stages. And if you want deeper control, you can even split the components onto separate tracks and treat them individually.
It doesn’t try to replace everything. It just gives you very intentional control in places that used to require several tools. That is why it is staying in my mix template.
“It doesn’t try to replace everything — it just gives you intentional control where it matters most.”
In summary
In the end, Tabor’s approach reflects the broader shift happening in modern dialogue post-production: tools must be fast, transparent, and flexible enough to keep up with real-world workflows. Extract:Dialogue 2 fits that reality not by replacing technique, but by giving mixers the headroom to make better creative choices under pressure. Whether it’s rescuing a delicate whisper, restoring the life of a room, or shaping perspective with intention, the plugin has become a quiet but powerful constant in his daily mix process — and a clear sign of where dialogue tools are headed.
Why not get a free trial and take Extract:Dialogue 2 for a spin today!