#201: What If Your De-esser Plugin Could Do More Than Fix Sibilance?

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Hey folks , welcome back to Inside the Mix , or welcome if you are a new listener or watcher . Today I am joined again by my good friend from Watch it , tim Benson , aka Aisle9 . And we are answering a question from one of you folks how to use de-essers creatively . But before we dive into that , tim , how are you ? And welcome .

Indeed , we have this available to us Folks before we dive into this . So again , just to recap , we are talking about how to use DSs creatively . If you do have a question you'd like us to talk about , click the SpeakPipe link in the episode description to submit your questions and also share your social media handles or your website .

And if you're releasing anything as well you've got something coming up you can also stick that in there as well , and we will endeavor to answer or at least talk about your question on the podcast . And one lucky person each month will win a coffee voucher . So again , as I mentioned , we in this episode we're talking about the creative use of ds's .

So ideally , we're going to be discussing beyond vocals and we're breaking down how to this one plugin can fix problems and be used creatively . But I think it's probably quite important to chat about what a dsa is . So we are attenuating or we're we're controlling , we are simulant frequency .

So s is sounds , sounds which I find when I edit the podcast I get a lot of those sounds , basically trying to get rid of any snakes you could say in a recording . But that's what we're doing with ds's . But maybe it'd be quite interesting to start with the history behind ds's .

So we were discussing this before we started recording about what we or not necessarily myself , because I think I've always been , I guess , blessed that I've used DSs in plug-in format , so I've never actually had to daisy chain or side chain a compressor to an EQ to create a DS .

Have you had to do that yourself or have you just ever done it out of interest ?

a you're in a more sort of old-school conventional studio with an analog compressor , you would some of them have got built-in filters in in in in them that you can switch in . I had one that had a built-in set of filters that you could switch in to the path of the EQ .

Or you could , as you say , you could sort of insert into the compressor an eq off your desk or an outboard eq and then essentially , yeah , you're , you sort of using the side chain on the compressor . You set the compressor to sort of be triggered by a certain frequency range . That's what you're trying to do when you're de-essing .

So you say to the compressor right , when , say , the sound's between 4k and 6k , when you get a lot of energy in this band above the threshold level that you set on your compressor , trigger the compressor . The compressor reduces the gay ads applies gain reduction to the signal when that goes over the threshold .

But you use your EQ to sort of key in that that frequency band so you might roll off all the bottom , roll off all the top and end up , you know , with a narrow band in the middle .

So you're singing along and you make an s sound and the overall volume of the vocal will just dip at that point and then come back up , so it won't actually selectively reduce the s sound .

In that instance , using the analog compressor and an eq , which is conventionally what I think they had to start off using in studios to do this , but as you said you could . You know there are . Then other options became available , like multiband compressors or like dynamic EQs and other things , and now we have so many options .

You know your standard de-essing plug-in in a DAW can do many things , a lot of which we don't even know what it's doing so .

I mean , ultimately , if you have the studio time , you possibly go back and think about your mic choice and where you're recording the vocal to try , and yeah yeah , yeah , yeah . And then think , actually , you know what ?

I'm going to solve this now , rather than have to rely on um , cobbling together an eq and a compressor further down the line , but now like having these available to us and just the ability to actually , with an EQ sorry , with a de-esser plug-in , the ability to be able to just listen to the results , the attenuation of the sibilant sounds I can't remember what

it's called now Isolate , and in some way it changes in plug-ins .

I personally I use the iZotope De-esser plugin and you can switch between standard , which might not be the correct name for it , or classic I think it's called classic , which is like the easy version of using it , and then it goes into a more sort of like granular controls of De-essing , much like you said there about like there's a lot you can do with the

de-esser that you probably don't ever dig into . I certainly don't . I mean , when I was putting the notes together for this episode , I was thinking , actually , how creative am I with a de-esser ? Probably not that creative and I probably reach for other tools first . But I use the iZ , isotope de-esser , um and I put it and I I say it routinely .

I read online trying to look okay . Well , what are people doing with de-essers ? Are they putting them at the end of the signal chain of a vocal or they put them at the beginning ? I tend to put them at the beginning , but sometimes I also have them at the end as well .

Um , but then again I might switch around the other way , but I was interested in what your thoughts are . Generally , my thought process is , if I put it at the

beginning , I'm attenuating the sibilant frequency , so I'm not then sending those frequencies or that frequency content , that sonic content , into the next plug-in in the chain , but others say differently and they'll put it at the end .

Yeah , um , particularly if you think , if you're going to sort of put a saturation plug-in in there because if you're going to put a saturation plug-in in you're going to increase the harmonic content you are likely to push up some of that sibilance in the in a vocal like with some saturation .

So you might want to then cut that a little bit , like with um , attenuate it with a de-esser on the end . Um , I like the waves de-esser . By the way , I like that one quite a lot and that seems good and I I use cubase has got an inbuilt one which I find quite good , and I use a T-Rex one as well , which I like .

But they yeah , I think all of mine are doing things in a fairly conventional sort of way . I think the Waze one gives me a few more options , sort of EQ wise sort of you know , to select the bands and stuff .

I mean now there's even AI , I think , coming into this , because of course you can imagine how AI could sort of recognize sibilance in a voice and actually , you know , remove it in a much more sort of , you know , exacting way , because it literally recognizes the s sounds within the vocal rather than , you know , it just being a sort of more eq based and volume

based sort of thing . But , um , yeah , I , I . I also find a really good tip , I think , is to ds your reverb returns . I was just going to ask you about I was just going to say I do I ds .

So , yeah , depends on the delay you're using , maybe on a very sort of open digital sounding delay , that's very sort of full frequency . On the repeats you might find it useful to ds so that the s sounds don't interrupt . But often they're at quite a low level , aren't they ? So it depends on the level I suppose in the mix .

This goes back to what I said just now the the fact that I haven't used it on the delay probably suggests I don't need to , but I wonder if there is a cause for it there . But I think this goes back again to what I said earlier about re-recording the vocal if I've got a crash .

that is inherently like that sort of sound yeah , I would probably just choose a different sample choose a different crash unless it was like the the perfect one . Other than that , I'd probably get a different one if you're recording live drums .

But you could use them and this was , I think I started doing this when I didn't really have a dynamic EQ plug-in . It just wasn't something I had . But I had a de-esser and you could use it to sort of reduce crashes in the overheads or sort of harshness in the overheads on a drum recording .

So if you've got overheads and you're getting sizzle from your cymbals , you could set the de-esser to just sort of reduce that a little bit , those frequencies that were annoying you . And you could do that with anything . As you said , I think , boxiness or harshness in a recording .

You can set your de-esser to kind of listen to that sort of part of the frequency spectrum and just basically duck it a little bit when it gets too loud .

Is it because , if we're using , does it come down to processing power and the colour Colour , quote unquote . When I say colour , I mean obviously , if we're using the plug-in , it's going to have some effect on the sound , not colour , as in warmth .

yeah , yeah .

It can do all kinds's . Meant to be a sort of vocoder but sort of it's way more complicated than that . It can do all kinds of stuff . And I just nearly always give up because it's just just too complicated in the gui and um and I I just end up not being able to do what I want to do in it .

But like , here's a point to this in the sense of vocoding might be a good use for a ds .

So you , you think vocoding can make really quite sibilant sounds like kind of really push the harshness up , um , when you're doing vocoding so you could use a de-esser after that on a vocoder to reduce the sort of you know harshness and get a smoother sounding vocoder sound .

So there are quite a lot of things where you can use your de-esser to make an a better creative sound . You know a better sort of use of something .

Maybe in itself it's not creative , but , like we're saying , with reverbs , with coders , with all kinds of other things , like you know saturation , all sorts of things that you might be using creatively use a de-esser as well and you might get a slightly better result yeah , interesting what you mentioned about the vocoder .

If I go to a restaurant and then there's a menu and it's got three starters , four mains , three desserts , I'm like , ah , easy , it's easy , I'm gonna find out why I want easy . Alternatively , I'm gonna decide actually , no , this isn't for me , and I can make a quick decision . Um , and I think that's .

That's the kind of the uh , the way I live my life with most things , I want it nice and simple and sometimes as well .

I always remember behringer used to make some classic sort of hardware that had a billion options on it , like their compressor . They made a behringer composer compressor , which was a cheap compressor . Everyone had that um , and I'm sure people tell me they got amazing sounds out of it .

Every time I used it I gave up and just found my DBX one that had two buttons over , easy job done and sounded lovely . But the Behringer always sounded pretty shit , no matter what I did with it All the controls and all the extra bits .

So yeah , sometimes I really do go for the same as you simple and sometimes that one slider de-esser where you bring it down the threshold , the S sounds start going and job done .

When you put it in classic mode , you've got the threshold and you drag it down and then it starts to attenuate those sibilant sounds and then obviously , like I said earlier , you can just flip it so you can just hear the sonics that are being attenuated , and just being able to do that that's all I wanted to do , and then I think , with logics , you can

sweep around , which is pretty useful . You can sweep around to find that particular frequency . That's that's sticking out . So those are the two key ones .

For me really is that is the threshold and then just being able to sweep around , if I , if I want to , to find those frequencies , because , like you mentioned earlier , but if I actually want to use it on a boxiness of a kick , I'm gonna have to go the other end of the uh , the frequency spectrum to find that in the low mids or what have you , rather

than the um , the high mids and whatnot .

You might want to use them sort of one after the other , so you use one to sort of catch a particular frequency and then one to catch a slightly higher frequency , maybe like in a vocal , where because vocals could be funny like that you can be catching the sort of like upper mids , and then there's sometimes , maybe in a female vocal , a really higher sort of

sibilance in the top sort of frequencies , so you might not just just be able to attenuate it all with one one de-esser .

I mean I I find as well , like backing vocals is a really good use for de-essers , because like I'm often put on a backing vocal group , like you have your group bus or whatever of backing vocals and I will essentially sort of compress them quite hard , the backing vocals , because you want them to sit behind the vocal , but then I might well ds them quite hard

, because there's nothing worse than when you've got Ten vocals all making an s sound at the same time and that that starts to really pop on mixes really badly .

Uh , obviously we've got vocals . We can use it on effect sends as well . So you talked about possibly on delays vocodas as well . Uh , boxing us in kick reverbs , possibly on delays Vocoders as well , boxiness in kick drums . So we can use it there we're sweeping around . Remember folks to find these ? Sizzle on cymbals ? Yeah , sizzle on cymbals as well .

String noise on an acoustic guitar . Yeah definitely Squeaks and things like that . All things you can use a dynamic EQ for if you wanted to , rather than using a de-esser , but pick whatever you want to use , ultimately mastering . I've never used a de-esser in mastering , have you ?

You can really , you know , I mean , in mastering , I always think , like you know , if you're attenuating those sort of um , you've got some s sounds that are popping out in a , in a vocal , in a , in the final mix , um , ideally it's better to go back to the mix and sort them before the mastering stage .

You don't really want to have them in the mastering stage , but obviously some of the things you might be adding in the mastering might be bringing them out a bit more as well . If you're adding saturation , you're adding compression , you're adding limiting

. So , yes , a little bit of de-sing can just sort of help , but it's got to be really subtle so that you don't swallow the brightness and detail in the in the mix . Yeah , yeah , that's the key with mastering , isn't it ?

It's not something I often use .

Um , I think I I definitely use it on things like um vocals , the sort of when you get that sort of uh , lower resonance when someone's coming a bit too close to the mic and they're getting proximity effects or you know the kind of low the low mids are getting sort of up and down a little bit .

I will maybe sort of set a dynamic eq on that to sort of reduce some of the resonance , so that I mean , I think you don't want to .

That's because you don't want to take all of that warmth away from the end of the vocal with eq , but you do want to attenuate it a little bit when the proximity effect kicks in , because it can start to sound too sort of boomy in the mix .

I mean , I think I don't tend to use it a lot in something like synth stuff , but then again you might sometimes find that I think a certain range , then again you might sometimes find that I think a certain range in a sound feels resonant and the overall balance of that sound sounds nice , but those resonances are creeping in every now and again .

So I find it useful to tame those . I mean , something like Soothe is very useful , like that , isn't it ? And I've used soothe a surprising amount recently .

Um , you know well , something like soothe , um , like a sort of similar kind of you know um , plug-in , but like those , those are , those are great , um , uh , but you have to be very careful because they can be very heavy-handed and I find that it's , uh , I use yeah , I use um , isotopes , uh , nectar , and it's got , uh , it's got unmask and it's got sculptor

and like you've got to be so , so careful with it .

It was just it was sucking the life out the snare and at some point , for whatever reason I hadn't gone in and properly checked , but it was because I was using that , I was keying it to the vocal and every time the vocal was coming in it was just sucking the life out the snare .

So I learned the hard way when I , when I was using these , that you've got to be so . I think you've got to be very precise in what it is the frequency range that you're trying to attenuate or want to attenuate , and also the amount .

The amount , because it shouldn't be that much , really , really it shouldn't , it shouldn't be a huge amount I use track spacer quite a lot which is , I've heard , track spacer . I've not used it , but I've heard of it .

So you know , I mean like I'll have , I mean you can do it with like all kinds of things , but you might have like , uh , say you've got , I mean you could do it with a kick drum and a bass drum .

You could have it that every time the kick drum comes through it attenuates , but not the whole of the bass drum , but just certain frequencies yeah , yeah , they're like the fundamental of the kick . Yeah , yeah rather than maybe sort of side chaining , like as heavily as you might do otherwise , like just with a standard compressor .

But there again , I don't know , sometimes one works , sometimes the other works . Depends what you're aiming for , doesn't it ? So I , I definitely use it quite a lot that that plug-in , but like sparingly , yes .

I think I was using it on a drum bus , I think , and I was listening to it and this might be my own ignorance and not saying it up correctly , because I'm still playing around with it . But I was just like why are my claps ? Why ? Because I'm still playing around with it . But I was just like why are my claps ?

Why is that clap pulling so far to the left ? And then I was listening . I was like why is it doing that ? And then you do that thing where you just disable plugins until you get to the root cause of what it is . And it was that and I couldn't figure out why .

Probably should have gone in soon and figure out why Somebody listening or watching this will probably be able to tell was doing that . Um , but it's another one of those , again like you get these , you get these . Fantastic this .

We may have digressed a bit , but ds's , ds's and um sort of intelligent plugins , uh that abound now are sort of a lot of those are based in some way on dynamic processing , that sort of dynamic eq . And dynamic eq is some form of frequency conscious compression .

So you know , um , yeah , I think that's the thing you get with the dynamic eq , which might be better suited to whatever you're trying to do than just using a de-esser , is . You've got q width , so you can . You know , and I mean you may well have on some of them , you get attack and decay and release , sort of . You know , um , you get .

You get kind of more control over the sort of the envelope of the compressor , but it depends , some of them don't really give you that control , but like , yeah , so you're not going to get that on most DSs they're kind of preset , but that can be a good thing if what you're doing is DSing something and you don't want to sit there faffing with all that .

You just want to go . I want to get rid of the S sound .

. I wanted it to be straightforward , I know what I want to do , so I'm going to go with that , rather than have to go to a dynamic EQ and then , as you , a lot of them . Now you've got your envelope controls , you've got you need to to set the queue and whatnot , rather , you know what .

Sorry , I'm just going to use ds and go down that route , um , but I think I think that's . That's 30 minutes . Now talking about ds's , which is , which is longer than I thought .

So hopefully , folks listening , there are some examples there , uh , that you can take away and possibly using your own .

Now , we haven't explicitly said how to use them in those scenarios , but maybe it's one of those ones where you think , okay , well , I'll give it a try and I'll experiment , which is it's an advice buffet , buffet , buffet , buffet , um , for you to take away . But before we finish this episode , any releases Tim .

I have released quite a few vocal ones before , but I haven't released one for a while . So it's a track that I was doing a collab with someone and they kind of disappeared and the track never happened , and so I revisited it myself and sort of rewritten it . But like , yeah , so it's good to have that coming out .

So this should be out when you get to listen to this , hopefully it will be when this episode drops .

I'm collaborating with a singer that I've worked with before called Indigo , so give that a spin , folks . Dystopian EDM with haunting melodic vocals and whatnot .

So , um , yeah , and yeah , yeah . So I had to smooth it out with lots of DSs . So there we go , there we go .

You don't need an account , you don't need a mic , we do . You need your phone , uh , but you don't need a special setup . It's just like sending an audio message record your question and we'll we'll have a chat about it on the podcast and give you a shout out . And you can also mention if you've got some release or something coming up .

And and if you do not want to use speak pop , you can just send me an email or dm me on instagram at inside the mix podcast . So until next time , folks , stay inspired , keep creating and don't be afraid to experiment inside the mix . Goodbye , Tim , I'll catch up with you soon , buddy .