De-Essing

Hey i remember you said that you dont like to use a De-Esser and was wondering if you had any tips for controlling the S’ in a vocal. Im not too familiar with recording vocals but is it a case of just getting your vocalist to not go too mad on the pronunciation of the S’ ?



All help appreciated.

If you have everything setup properly you shouldn’t need to de-esse. Sometimes you will have to EQ up a warm vocal though… thsi is where you might want to consider using it.



another use is on the reverb send channel before the reverb so the reverb isnt just pumping out esses.



do lots of comparison to other tunes and vocals… its very easy to get really focused in and remove too much.

What do you mean when you say set up properly? Are you talking about nthe mic placement and things? I currently have a Rode NT1A with popshield in a shockmount, with an SE electronics Reflexion filter pro attached on it. Then behind where the vocalist stands i have an old bed sheet covering the wall. I mean the vocals ive done myself sound clean just the S’ are a bit explicit if that makes sense…

do the esses sound bad with no processing on?





some people just have a tendency to be more essseesy… you just have to keep comparing and listening.



If you solo the side chain of the deesser you can hear better what frequencies the esses are at so you can fine tune so you aren’t taking too much unnecessary stuff out of the vocals.



If "S"s start sounding Like "F"s youve gone way to far. :wink:

Errmm i managed to sort it à bit i think it was just à bit too much emphasis on the Ses need to be controlled a bit I think. I managed to get a nice clean vocal take but still had a bit of volume editing to do like in between where there’s no singing, the mic is super sensitive so it really picks up the room noise a bit. But with the volume editing I got a really clean vocal and I’m not really getting much reverberation from the room which is nice. Unfortunately I’m no singer lol but I got a vocalist coming on Monday so we shall see how it goes. Any final tips for vocal recording, I made a chain like you used in the peak time trance tutorial I really like the delayed trancy vocal sound I think it suits dance music the best.