Logic Pro X - #67 - Mixing (part9): DeEsser Plug-in; Reducing Sibilance Video Lecture | Logic Pro X: A Practical Hands-on Course - Music

hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to episode 67 of my Logic Pro 10
video tutorial series in this episode
we're going to take a look at the
de-esser plugin i know i said in the
previous video we're going to talk about
reverb but I actually just remembered
there's a few extra plugins I want to
get into before we get into time-based
plugins but I wanted to go over the
de-esser plugin so we can get sort of
some of the sibilants in our our vocal
recording what a de-esser is it's
essentially sort of a fast-acting
compressor but only for usually used for
a specific frequency range usually for
hot the high frequency range and
specifically usually stuff above you
know 3k above 2k because that's where
the where most of your siblings comes
from siblings is essentially just
high-end hiss produced from s's even FS
and T's as well and the de-esser is a
great way to sort of reduce that and
especially female vocals now the amount
of sibilance you actually have in a
recording is going to be determined by
the singer themselves or the singer
themself I should say as well as the
distance that they're recording or the
distance they're standing from the mic
they're really up on the micro close
you're probably going to pick up more
s's and F's and even T's as they stand
further away you're going to probably
get less less s's and also the way you
angle the mic if you angle the mic sort
of slightly away from their mouth you're
going to get less sibling stand if you
aim it right at their mouth um so what
I'm going to do is on my vocal tract I'm
just going on the lead vocals here I'm
just going to solo that out I've just
looped sort of a part of the first verse
in the first part of the pre-chorus and
I moved the compressor down because I'm
going to put the de-esser after the EQ
but before the compressor you can
actually put it before the EQ as well
but if you boost the the EQ up and high
range at all you're sort of undoing
somewhat uh you know your your your your
de-esser so so I'm gonna click on this
it's under dynamics because technically
the DSR
is a compressor there we go I'm going to
start just with the preset that is the
female voice de-esser so let's talk
about what we have here it's pretty
simple plug-in you have a detector you
have a suppressor just a visualizer and
then a smoothing option and then some
monitor options the detector is
basically where the where the DSR is
going to detect s is where it's going to
detect siblings generally I like to put
this way up in the high range like above
5k you're not going to get much civilan
spoke a least not bad sounding siblings
um
the sensitivity is basically V obviously
how sensitive it is to siblings as you
pull the the sensitivity up you're going
to get more and more sounds coming
through more and more sounds are going
to end up being suppressed as you pull
it down less and less they're going to
be suppressed so I'm just going to put
this sort of toward the middle here the
suppressor is actually where you know
what frequencies are being suppressed
and also by how much are they being
suppressed you don't want to overdo it
because you're going to sort of hear you
sort of hear vocals cut in and out every
single time she says an s a word with an
S or an F for a T in it so you want to
be careful not to pull the strength up
too much so I'll pull it about half way
again I'm going to put the the
suppressor frequency somewhere within
the range of 2 to 20 K where I've got
the detector app let's go in the upper
the upper regions here up in the five
six seven thousand Hertz range and then
the smoothing is essentially how fast
the de-esser is going to sort of come in
and then and then come out you don't
want it real short because it's going to
sort of immediately take the SOA which
can make it sort of sound choppy you
also don't want it to slow because then
it's not going to react fast enough so I
usually find it works pretty good
between about you know seven and twenty
milliseconds so I'll put it like on
there you go put it on ten milliseconds
um and then the monitor is actually
showing
what you it's a it's a way to hear just
certain things like on/off we're
actually hearing the signal after it's
been des so let me play this before so
I'm just going to bypass the plug in
there we don't have to look too far to
see the face of destruction you ruin
life you ruin life for me pray for death
to take me quickly living life and alone
it's actually not too bad siblings wives
I have a feeling that I probably already
put a de-esser on this like referee
recorded or after I edit it you'll also
notice that there's a couple little pops
in there we're going to go back we're
going to come back and fix those later
with automation so don't worry about
that for now but sibilance can be caused
by cesses F's even th's even T's so um
what I'm gonna do is let's let's listen
to this with my DSR setting on now we
don't have to look too far to see the
face of destruction you ruin life you
ruin life for me pray for death to take
me quickly living life in alone
let's listen that one more time and look
where the activity about here flashes we
don't have to look too far to see the
face of destruction you ruin so seems to
me that it's not reacting fast enough so
I'll pull this down a bit and maybe not
reacting enough so let's pull the
sensitivity up and let's pull the
strength that's keep about the same
we don't have to look too far to see the
face of destruction you brew it now you
got to be really careful about how much
you turn the sensitivity up as well as
how much you pull the strength up
because if you use too much you're s's
are gonna start to sound like a lisp you
know your s sounds start to sound like
th sounds instead so it's be careful how
much you how much you use that I kind of
like that setting the way it is but let
me show you what the monitor options do
if you put it on Det that's the detector
it's basically just going to play you
the detection frequency up here or the
detection band I should say so you can
sort of sweep through that and sort of
find where the vast majority of the
siblings you want to get rid of is so
you can actually sort of isolate the
upper bands to sort of see where the
vast majority of the siblings is if you
go to suppressor this is going to play
just the suppression band we don't have
to look too far to see the face of
destruction again I just go in I put
that where I'm hearing the most s's and
then the sensitivity
well actually it's actually the yes the
sensitivity basically what it's doing is
it's showing you just it's actually play
instead of ducking out the siblings it's
actually playing you what what's being
cut out
so just showing you where the sibilance
is being taken out obviously you
wouldn't want to use these bottom three
monitors actually in the mix you want to
put turn the monitor off that's just a
way to sort of monitor what's actually
being cut in a way to sort of detect
where the sibilance actually is so what
I'm going to do is go into my mixer here
show my audio tracks again I had them
hidden before um but there we go and I'm
just going to move the de-esser onto
both my lead and both of my lead vocal
tracks just going to hold option to copy
it over there we go I'm not gonna use it
in the backing vocals just because I've
already got a lot of the high-end
scooped out anyway and they're so far
back in the mix it's not really going to
matter too much all right so that's the
DSR in a nutshell once again if you want
to purchase this session for mixed
practice it's available I'll put a link
to the payloads website where you can
download it from in the video
description below so once again I hope
you enjoyed the video and thanks for
watching