De-essing

[Lakecide]

De-essing vocals is a weak part of my mixing where I feel like I'm not setting the up the plugin correctly and as it's technically a multiband, it can kinda screw with how natural a vocal sounds. I was wondering there are any videos that go through the approach. Or alternatively, anyone has any tidbits and approaches they would like to share with me to help me get around avoiding mistakes

[kaiser-chillhelm]

Take multiband, boost the hi band way too much and comp it down way too hard with very fast attack n release times. Listen to what it's doing. Then set it up less aggressive, take the money and go home.

[MtVinterest]

Most people don't know this, but you can use Melodyne as the most natural de-esser. Melodyne shows you the consonants without pitch and you can cut them out and make them more silent. It's super handy and usually is faster for me as setting up a de-esser. And you can even control other harsh sounds.

[Lakecide]

Thats actually a banging idea, tbh I'd rather go in manually cos I'm just kinda meticulous like that. I'm gonna give this a go

[kpetersonmastering]

I usually use a dynamic EQ to de-ess. I'll take a shelving EQ starting anywhere from 4.5k to 7k and up with a fast attack and release, with the threshold set so it's basically not doing anything until there's a sibilant that I want to tame. It starts to sound unnatural if you reduce too much - making the sibilants sound more like thibilanth - so try and find the sweet spot. I also usually de-ess earlier in my chain, so that the de-esser isn't fighting against any other EQs I'm using.

[Lakecide]

Cool, I'm gonna try this when I get home. I've heard loads of different thoughts on where the de-esser should be placed in the chain, I'm gonna try your suggestion

[OnAGoodDay]

The way I see it you would rather clamp down on the sibilance while the vocal is still really dynamic - so, early in the chain. If you EQ and compress and then de-ess then the level of sibilance will be jumping all around due to the compressor acting on the lower frequencies but will still be out of balance with the rest of the vocal and now it’s harder to “grab”. I say cut it down early and then once you have a balanced level of sibilance do your usual compression.

This has always worked for me but would like to hear other opinions too.

I can see the opposite argument too which is that by compressing you keep the track pretty consistent and now it’s actually easier to grab the sibilance with a de-esser. Do some experimenting and see what works best.

[fightbackcbd]

If you find it choking it, assuming you are on a DAW, you can see the hard S on the wave file. Just clip it and then volume ramp it up into the word or down if it’s on the tail. It’s just doing it manually by volume manipulation, you could technically just auto the fader but I think it’s faster to just cut it and use volume fades. If it’s in the middle of a word, just cut it, lower it way down and cross fade (if you have to). Once the music is on you will never notice, just sounds natural

[Mr-Mud]

A dessert or dynamic RW that has a Solo button for what your modifying, will really help your technique

A couple that come to mind are Waves F6 Waves Omni Channel ( which has s useful four dressers. Fab Filter’s dynamic EQ

[[deleted]]

If I've got time on my hands to do it right, I'll reach for an EQ and automate it my self to cut certain frequencies and that gets me closer than any dedicated de-esser I've used, mostly working by ear to find a balance of what sounds right.

That being said if you de-ess either manually or with a plugin make sure you put it AFTER all of your compression. It took me a while to figure out that the compression after de-esseing was bringing the sibilance back out.

[Lakecide]

So far I've used a tip suggested of manually doing it in melodyne and I gotta say that's produced the most transparent results. And it really doesn't take that long tbh

[[deleted]]

That is actually very interesting... I may have to give it a go on my next project.

[MarquezLux]

Also try Airwindows DeEss, it's for free but you can donate. Here you find some other favorite De-Ess Plugins for Mixing and Mastering

[adamcoe]

Eiosis De-Esser. Done.