Selig De-Esser

[Creativemind]

Hi All!

So I purchased Selig De-Esser today.

Got several guitar tracks with vocals in them that this will come in extremely handy for.

Any tips on how to use it? and also if there's any techniques I should know. One thing I noticed is that it's hard to tell how much improvement to the vocal it has made. Wish Reason had a good A/B method of 2 audio clips that was quick and easy. May have to use Pongasoft A/B Switch Re here and separate the 2 vocals, un-de-essed and de-essed to then switch between the 2 to hear the difference.

Just found the manual on Selig's website. It suddenly came back to me that I'd gone onto that site to download the Gain manual about 18 months ago. Anyway, will be reading that very shortly.

Also, how do I know if a vocal needs de-essing or when and where to apply.

Thanks!

[Gorgon]

Any tips on how to use it? and also if there's any techniques I should know. One thing I noticed is that it's hard to tell how much improvement to the vocal it has made. Wish Reason had a good A/B method of 2 audio clips that was quick and easy.

Lolwut? Make a seperate audio track, one with de-esser and one without. Duh.

[EnochLight]

Hi All!

So I purchased Selig De-Esser today.

Got several guitar tracks with vocals in them that this will come in extremely handy for.

Any tips on how to use it? and also if there's any techniques I should know. One thing I noticed is that it's hard to tell how much improvement to the vocal it has made. Wish Reason had a good A/B method of 2 audio clips that was quick and easy. May have to use Pongasoft A/B Switch Re here and separate the 2 vocals, un-de-essed and de-essed to then switch between the 2 to hear the difference.

Just found the manual on Selig's website. It suddenly came back to me that I'd gone onto that site to download the Gain manual about 18 months ago. Anyway, will be reading that very shortly.

Also, how do I know if a vocal needs de-essing or when and where to apply.

Thanks!

Selig's De-Esser is one of my favorite RE's, even now that I can use VST in Reason. The best tutorial on how to use it most effectively is demonstrated in the launch video, IMHO, as everyone's voice, sibilance, recording method, mic, etc - will affect just what needs to be done:

[O1B]

EnochLight is right about Selig's video. Perfect explanation.
You'll see how to 'listen/ to the sibilance or listen w/o on a sep. mix channel.

Selig's is awesome because it isn't volume dependent.
So, if your gain staging sucks, you can't blame it on Selig's RE.
Use two in stereo if you vocals are in stereo for independent leveling.

Unless you're recording through a telephone, or your singer whistles when tthey sing, I'd use them real sparingly - and, near the end...

I don't know of a better VST - not even Pro-DS - although it has more bells.

Hi All!

So I purchased Selig De-Esser today.

Got several guitar tracks with vocals in them that this will come in extremely handy for.

Any tips on how to use it? and also if there's any techniques I should know. One thing I noticed is that it's hard to tell how much improvement to the vocal it has made. Wish Reason had a good A/B method of 2 audio clips that was quick and easy. May have to use Pongasoft A/B Switch Re here and separate the 2 vocals, un-de-essed and de-essed to then switch between the 2 to hear the difference.

Just found the manual on Selig's website. It suddenly came back to me that I'd gone onto that site to download the Gain manual about 18 months ago. Anyway, will be reading that very shortly.

Also, how do I know if a vocal needs de-essing or when and where to apply.

Thanks!

[mbfrancis]

How to use:
1) Insert De-esser into your vocal chain.
2) Insert compressor *after* and dial in compression setting for the vocal.
3) Adjust "Reduction" knob to taste given a) sibilance of recording and b) amount of compression

That's it. Usually I just turn it down a bit. Don;t overdo. Important to hear how compression will affect it as you may need more de-ess than you think if you're heavily compressing.

There are other cool features but that's the basic function.

[Creativemind]

Any tips on how to use it? and also if there's any techniques I should know. One thing I noticed is that it's hard to tell how much improvement to the vocal it has made. Wish Reason had a good A/B method of 2 audio clips that was quick and easy.

Lolwut? Make a seperate audio track, one with de-esser and one without. Duh.

That was what I meant but I wanna hear one track with no de-essing and one de-essed and switch between the two on the fly. Before you say mute one, this won't work as you'll hear one muted then both together. I want one or the other on the fly...so probably need A/B Switch.

[WongoTheSane]

Lolwut? Make a seperate audio track, one with de-esser and one without. Duh.

That was what I meant but I wanna hear one track with no de-essing and one de-essed and switch between the two on the fly. Before you say mute one, this won't work as you'll hear one muted then both together. I want one or the other on the fly...so probably need A/B Switch.

You could also simply bypass the De-Esser. If you use it together with a compressor, drop both in the insert FX section of the channel and use the "Bypass FX" of the channel.

[Gorgon]

That was what I meant but I wanna hear one track with no de-essing and one de-essed and switch between the two on the fly. Before you say mute one, this won't work as you'll hear one muted then both together. I want one or the other on the fly...so probably need A/B Switch.

Well gee, maybe a solo switch would do the trick?

[mcatalao]

I really like this one, pretty much as everything from Selig.

Remember as any other de-esser you have different frequency settings for different vocals. People's mouths are different and even the way they attack the palate and teeth are different from person to person. A good rule is that women have higher sibilants than men. So i tend to start with the 2 KHz crossover frequency and sweep it around up to check where the most offending frequencies are. Then i get down a little because other consonants tend to have some sss in them, like T's and F's can also be a bit offending in very similar frequencies. Most times the default crossover will work fine for male and i tend to get it up to 5 or 6 KHz for women.

The Sensitivity knob is also great so that if you don't want other consonants to be taken out so much. Also, it is great for more "creative" stuff. The V-S mode separates the "ss" section of a vocal and throws it to another channel. So you can create fun stuff like putting reverb or delay only on the sibilance part of a word.

[aeox]

Well gee, maybe a solo switch would do the trick?

[Gorgon]

Well gee, maybe a solo switch would do the trick?

I still think that his nickname on the forum is totally hilarious.

[Creativemind]

That was what I meant but I wanna hear one track with no de-essing and one de-essed and switch between the two on the fly. Before you say mute one, this won't work as you'll hear one muted then both together. I want one or the other on the fly...so probably need A/B Switch.

Well gee, maybe a solo switch would do the trick?

No I need to hear each track independently (on their own) but within the mix. If I have 1 track de-essed, then one that isn't, I wanna be able to listen to the whole song with the vocal de-essed, then switch to the one that isn't de-essed so I can try and hear what the de-esser is doing to hear whether it's better or worse.

Solo'ing the de-essed vocal or muting won't work here. Bypassing is probably the best option but was thinking of looping a section to see. Suppose it'd work the same in retrospect to the a/b'ing option if I was to loop a section.

[Gorgon]

Well gee, maybe a solo switch would do the trick?

No I need to hear each track independently (on their own) but within the mix. If I have 1 track de-essed, then one that isn't, I wanna be able to listen to the whole song with the vocal de-essed, then switch to the one that isn't de-essed so I can try and hear what the de-esser is doing to hear whether it's better or worse.

Dude, you are so fucking deluded, your nickname is an offense

[strangers]

Well gee, maybe a solo switch would do the trick?

No I need to hear each track independently (on their own) but within the mix. If I have 1 track de-essed, then one that isn't, I wanna be able to listen to the whole song with the vocal de-essed, then switch to the one that isn't de-essed so I can try and hear what the de-esser is doing to hear whether it's better or worse.

Solo'ing the de-essed vocal or muting won't work here. Bypassing is probably the best option but was thinking of looping a section to see. Suppose it'd work the same in retrospect to the a/b'ing option if I was to loop a section.

This method sounds like a hit to efficient vocal processing. If you're having trouble noticing a difference between the processed and unprocessed vocals, then maybe you don't need the de-esser on a specific track?

[madwurmz]

I like this RE very much! but I have a question.
lets say we have a background vocals bus, a collection of channels that are panned some left and some right. But then if I use the de-esser in the bus insert-fx, the stereo information is gone is there some alternative routing possible to keep it stereo?

I read the tip "Use two in stereo if you vocals are in stereo for independent leveling."
I dont really want independent leveling, or how does that work?
@selig

[selig]

I like this RE very much! but I have a question.
lets say we have a background vocals bus, a collection of channels that are panned some left and some right. But then if I use the de-esser in the bus insert-fx, the stereo information is gone is there some alternative routing possible to keep it stereo?

I read the tip "Use two in stereo if you vocals are in stereo for independent leveling."
I dont really want independent leveling, or how does that work?
@selig

I apologize for any confusion here, this device is in an odd place in that we designed it as a mono device in/out since that is how it works internally. But that was not allowed, so we had a choice: give it two ins/outs or make something different. We believe we made the best choice giving the options on the table.

Basically this device is designed to be used much earlier in the production workflow, long before multiple voices are mixed down to a stereo sub-mix/stem. It’s designed for for a single person recorded with a single microphone, but it will still work in other situations.

Background:
The tech behind this device doesn’t use a threshold based detector. It basically works by comparing the high frequency band to the low, and ‘detecting’ sibilance when there is energy in the high band but none in the low. So you can see that if there are two or more vocals, not always singing in perfect sync, it can no longer accurately detect sibilance. It does a pretty good job most of the time, so you may never notice. But it excels when used on a single voice, including the rare ability to separate the sibilance from the rest of the voice signal.

While it is still not ideal, there IS a stereo Combinator included with Selig DeEsser that can be used to keep the stereo signal from being converted to mono (look in the the Selig Audio folder under RE patches).