Advanced methods for getting rid of vocal sibilance.
Hello guys,
This is a question relating to the universe of vocal sibilance. First off: 1. in the recording stage does compression on the way in make things better, worse, or the same? Secondly, 2. Does a pop filter help at all with containing sibilance? Thirdly, 3. If I am getting sibilance with different mics and different singers could it be an acoustic issue with my room? Or does everybody just get sibilance all the time and that's the way it is? Is there any special microphone technique to not get so much sibilance? In the mix: 1. What can be better than just slapping a de-esser on the vocal track? I ultimately resorted to automation of an eq plus volume automation on the esses. Could it be that getting better compression plugins could help with minimizing essing or that's probably not it?
I know that's a lot but I think it's better to cover the entire topic. Hope you're with me.
Thanks,
João
Comments
Since a recent project demanded that I manually edit practically
Pro Tools (among others) has a great feature for this, Clip Gain Line editing. It's like any normal automation line but it affects the audio clip upstream of the channel processing like inserts, pan and volume, and it modifies the waveform display accordingly.
Sibilance can be sourced in several factors... The first is the
Most traditional de-essers were a form of side-chain gain reduction - in its most basic form, a compressor with its detection circuit being triggered by a specific frequency range.
The downside to traditional de-essers is that they also tended to attenuate high frequencies that weren't at the source of the problem, so often they would take good things away, too, such as the "sparkle" and "silk" of a vocal track.
So far, the best way I've found to reduce sibilance is to actually go into the wave form itself, and to manually edit sibilance - either bringing down the volume, or by fading in from a section of the waveform which always identifies it...it has a very distinct look to it - it looks like a football -(an American football, I mean, LOL), sort of oval looking, with a "even" symmetrical spacing of its inner waves... After you identify it once, your eyes will seek it out and recognize it easily afterwards:
https://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/data/Journals/JSLHR/929530/1260fig1.jpeg
At first, manually editing it can seem tedious, but you get to a point where you get an entire track manually de-essed in about five minutes, no more than ten for longer tracks.
This isn't a to say you can't use plugs designed for this purpose; newer versions use a form of spectral editing... And this type of editing range is used to attenuate all sorts of problematic frequency based issues, such as " squeaks" that happen when fingers move over strings on acoustic guitars, clicks, pops, and other mouth noises, even crackle and static from vinyl records.
Most are available for full functioning trials. The best "auto" de-esser I've heard yet us from Fabrice Gabriel, who makes the Eiosis De-Esser, ( Fabrice does a lot of plug in modeling for Slate Digital).
You can try switching up mics at the source, but if the vocalist happens to have heavier sibilance naturally, that's not an easy thing to correct, because it can be caused by things like air gaps in between the teeth, or even the way someone just naturally speaks or sings. You might try backing them off the mic a bit, but then you're chancing a tonal change somewhere else in the spectrum which may - or may not sound good.
Thus far, manual editing has worked the best for me.
YMMV, though. Ñ;)
D.