After reading the thread I'm realizing my issue may not be solveable, and may actually be an issue with the sidechain/ducking algorithm or something. but here's a video explaining the issue i'm running into
in summary: it seems as though the spectralizer is automatically "normalizing" itself, or trying to automatically adjust the intensity of the spectralizer. Since I use the spectralizer and image masking to make an owl character talk on my OBS scenes, this "normalizing" effect tends to make the character's mouth close as the intensity of the spectralizer is reduced. This also means after about 30 seconds of silence (which could come up during stream during AFK/break periods, moments of concentration, remaining silent while watching a video etc.) the spectralizer will intensify to such a degree that the extremely quiet hum of the audio device will affect the spectralizer.
EDIT: I cannot stress enough how happy I already am with the fact that I can do this at all. It's only a slight annoyance (the irritation in my voice comes out of the fact that this was my
16th attempt at recording this video) and while this also affects all other users, it isn't as big an issue for those users since they don't need the same pinpoint accuracy I do. If a fix/change/setting cannot be made, I can probably continue fiddling with settings until something works for me. This is an amazing plugin that has surprising flexibility if you know how to use filters and shaders correctly, so
thank you very much for making this plugin exist in the first place. <3 <3 <3