de-essing ??

[cjacek]

Hi,

ok ... i have a tascam 414 mk2, a condenser mic with pop screen and art tube mp, an RNC (got it today ) and a nanoverb (don't laugh) and i have a question ... i have no problems with my voice "sitting" nicely in the mix but i seem to have too much high frequencies happening in the vocal (i sing to pre-recorded background music by the way). see, the background vocalists seem to have a de-emphasized "s" sound and other higher frequency sounds. I really have no problem with having my vocal be very "crisp" but i think it detracts from the overall mix and the listener is not really convinced that i am recording "live". i heard about de-essing but what is it and does the RNC have this feature ? any help re this will be appreciated. thanks again.

dan

ps thanks to all who responded to my other posts

 

[regebro]

De-essing is usually done by compressing the vocals based only on the offending frequencies you want removed. What happens is basically that a parametric bandpass filter is used to filter out most of the voice, so you almost only hear the s and f sounds. (I've been told these frequencies change with different people, ad could be anywhere between 3kHz and 12khz. I don't really know.)
You then use that sound to control the compression of a compressor (instead of using the unaffected sound). That way it will lower the volume when the s and f sounds comes.

De-essers do all this in one unit, but you should be able to use a parametric EQ plus any compressor that has a separate control sound input, to use one sound to control another sound. The RNC "sidechain" input does this, and if you have a parametric EQ, you can connect that so that the RNC runs the vocal through this EQ, and so effectively works as a de-esser also.

I don't have much sibilance muself, and don't think it's a problem for me, so I haven't tried to get rid of it, maybe there are other tricks to make it sound less?

 

[cjacek]

Thanks for the info.

Dan