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Post by the other mark williams on May 30, 2024 13:43:23 GMT -6
For my vocals, crazy as it is, I still manually de-ess - that way I can achieve perfection  For other singers, I've had success with Melodyne which has a function to pick out the offending fricative also, Fabfilter is not too shabby. Yeah, Arbiter is the closest I've ever heard to manually automating things - seriously. I do like Fabfilter sometimes. Sometimes it beats DMG, sometimes it doesn't. But Arbiter really is on a different level at least IME so far. |
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Post by bossanova on May 30, 2024 13:54:24 GMT -6
For my vocals, crazy as it is, I still manually de-ess - that way I can achieve perfection For other singers, I've had success with Melodyne which has a function to pick out the offending fricative also, Fabfilter is not too shabby. Yeah, Arbiter is the closest I've ever heard to manually automating things - seriously. I do like Fabfilter sometimes. Sometimes it beats DMG, sometimes it doesn't. But Arbiter really is on a different level at least IME so far. De-Essers are also interesting in that their individual implementation tends to make some of them better on certain cases and less so with others. The better ones just tend to work on a wider range. |
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Post by bossanova on May 30, 2024 14:05:33 GMT -6
If I wasn't adverse to the time involved I would use the trick where you take one or two really good S's and replace the bad ones with them where needed.
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Post by thehightenor on May 30, 2024 14:30:44 GMT -6
For my vocals, crazy as it is, I still manually de-ess - that way I can achieve perfection For other singers, I've had success with Melodyne which has a function to pick out the offending fricative also, Fabfilter is not too shabby. Yeah, Arbiter is the closest I've ever heard to manually automating things - seriously. I do like Fabfilter sometimes. Sometimes it beats DMG, sometimes it doesn't. But Arbiter really is on a different level at least IME so far. Actually THE best de-esser I ever bought is my Retro STA level  Thinking about it now, since I started tracking with that particular tube comp (and the Coil CA-70 pre) I don't really have an issue with excessively loud S'es Some combinations of mic, pre and comp can be like ice picks at dawn! It pays to get it as smooth as possible at the tracking stage. |
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Post by Johnkenn on May 30, 2024 15:05:47 GMT -6
So I bought the whole TDR Special Filters Bundle when it came out last year, but I honestly just hadn't used it much: a combination of less music work overall in 2024 and using tools I was already familiar (and faster) with when I did have something I could've used them on. That's the preamble. Here's the body: Holy hell. Arbiter might be the best de-esser I've ever tried, and I've tried A LOT of them. I was working on some spoken word dialogue last week and none of my de-essers were quite doing it for me (Waves Ren, Waves Sibilance, DMG Track DS, FabFilter Pro-DS, whatever that Eiosis one is called, the one in iZ RX, Soothe2 -- I feel like there were a couple more I tried, too). I demoed (and ended up buying) the Softube Weiss one and it did a better job than any of the others. But the next day I suddenly remembered TDR Arbiter and gave it a shot. MY GOSH. It absolutely, unquestionably, unflinchingly destroyed everything else by a long, long ways. I am beyond impressed. Oh, and it's like $40 when NOT on sale. Anyways, maybe it'll work for some of you, maybe it won't. But I am honestly wowed by this thing so far. Give it a demo if you haven't. OK...this I gotta try. I'm a struggler with sibilance too...although, I've gotten to where I've figured out it's some resonance in the 5-9khz region...so I can usually sweep around and find it and notch it to a degree. Then a standard deesser seems to work better if that notch didn't do it. But yeah - I'm tired of deessers not working. |
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Post by bossanova on May 30, 2024 17:27:17 GMT -6
I have...
SSL Vocalstrip
Waves R-DeEsser
Fabfilter
Waves Sibilance
The original PA one...SPL?
HorNet DeEsser
Nectar 3
Nova GE
Soothe 2
The new WA one.
Some of those were free or bundled in with other plugs, some have wider uses, some were bought because I have a bad whistle on certain sounds and I was trying to see if anything could target it without completely nuking the S in those words (none can so far). Unfortunately it's not a minor dental fix and it's not worth the time and cost me to go back to the orthodontist as an adult.
They all work to a certain extent but I use R-DeEsser and Fabfilter the most for specific problem areas, Sibilance for completely killing problem sounds/harshness on sends, and Soothe for wider de-harsh-ing.
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Post by copperx on May 30, 2024 18:36:45 GMT -6
If I wasn't adverse to the time involved I would use the trick where you take one or two really good S's and replace the bad ones with them where needed.
This should be doable automatically in theory with spectral analysis and ARA for instant results. Someone should write the code for this.
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Post by bossanova on May 30, 2024 18:40:41 GMT -6
If I wasn't adverse to the time involved I would use the trick where you take one or two really good S's and replace the bad ones with them where needed.
This should be doable automatically in theory with spectral analysis and ARA for instant results. Someone should write the code for this.
I know that Sibilance and maybe RX have some language in there claiming that they can resynthesize the S sound in some way, but neither of them does anything like outright replacing a bad S sound from what I can tell. That would be amazing. |
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Post by copperx on May 30, 2024 18:41:45 GMT -6
For my vocals, crazy as it is, I still manually de-ess - that way I can achieve perfection For other singers, I've had success with Melodyne which has a function to pick out the offending fricative also, Fabfilter is not too shabby. Yeah, Arbiter is the closest I've ever heard to manually automating things - seriously. I do like Fabfilter sometimes. Sometimes it beats DMG, sometimes it doesn't. But Arbiter really is on a different level at least IME so far.
After some testing I'm afraid you're right. I was tired of software deessers so I bought a DBX unit, which has worked in every case I've thrown at it. As a bonus, it works great on taming cymbals. This Arbiter thing appears to be at least as good as my DBX. For those testing it -- try the most extreme settings. The Arbiter plugin, instead of creating lispy-sounding vocals, magically lowers the volume of the entire S as if you were automating. Crazy.
I'm no optimist, so I'm sure there must be an edge case this thing doesn't catch. But it's an insta-buy for me.
Thanks for bringing this plugin to my attention.
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Post by bossanova on May 30, 2024 18:51:40 GMT -6
I just saw that there was a sale 3 weeks ago. Dang Edit: on the bright side, I'm really liking what Vocal Shaper is doing at 10:00 or so. |
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Post by ragan on May 30, 2024 19:20:14 GMT -6
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Post by bgrotto on May 30, 2024 23:45:12 GMT -6
and now I'm playing with this thing to replicate what the Tight Arse presets I made for that other thread were doing. And...I'm liking it. It's WAY cleaner, though the action is a bit different so I'm on the fence there.
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Post by theshea on May 31, 2024 0:10:23 GMT -6
and now I'm playing with this thing to replicate what the Tight Arse presets I made for that other thread were doing. And...I'm liking it. It's WAY cleaner, though the action is a bit different so I'm on the fence there. i always have the impression that TDR‘s code are way cleaner (but not in a sterile digital meaning) than others, even their saturation functions are way cleaner. if you know what i mean … |
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Post by bossanova on May 31, 2024 12:17:49 GMT -6
and now I'm playing with this thing to replicate what the Tight Arse presets I made for that other thread were doing. And...I'm liking it. It's WAY cleaner, though the action is a bit different so I'm on the fence there. i always have the impression that TDR‘s code are way cleaner (but not in a sterile digital meaning) than others, even their saturation functions are way cleaner. if you know what i mean … Generally when they put something out they're playing on a different level. I even love their old, free Proximity plug. |
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Post by Johnkenn on May 31, 2024 12:45:28 GMT -6
I can’t imagine a deesser that actually works…
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Post by gravesnumber9 on May 31, 2024 13:22:57 GMT -6
I can’t imagine a deesser that actually works… This is why I'm moving my operation to Barcelona. No more "esses", I'm done with it. |
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Post by ragan on May 31, 2024 13:58:35 GMT -6
I can’t imagine a deesser that actually works… Try this thing, see what you think |
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Post by copperx on May 31, 2024 14:07:36 GMT -6
I can’t imagine a deesser that actually works… Try this thing, see what you think Also be sure to try wideband mode |
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Post by Johnkenn on May 31, 2024 14:43:11 GMT -6
Why can’t they do some kind of machine learning using the waveforms? All sibilance looks different than other waveforms…you’d think they could identify it by that and reduce that way.
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Post by ragan on May 31, 2024 15:09:13 GMT -6
I don’t typically like the Just Lower The Volume method (when I’ve done it manually). I usually like some frequency dependent clamping.
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Post by Johnkenn on May 31, 2024 15:13:07 GMT -6
The best one I’ve used so far is the one in vocal shaper…which I think is doing the same thing this thing does.
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Post by rowmat on May 31, 2024 19:00:20 GMT -6
While I haven’t used the Tokyo Dawn Arbiter the best de-esser I found bar none was to to duplicate the vocal track, cut and delete everything from the duplicated track except for the esses, then reglue the track, invert the phase and then mix it back with the original track using the fader of esses only track to control the amount of reverse phase cancellation and thus sibilance reduction.
Okay it requires some time to edit the track but the sibilance is easy to see especially in a waveform editor.
If you have a big problem with vocal sibilance on a particular track and can’t find a de-esser that seems to work well enough short of leaving lispy artifacts I can thoroughly recommend this method.
I typically used it during the final mix before any final EQ so I could balance the amount of de-essing against the EQ I applied.
The advantage of this method is it doesn’t create audible non linear EQ related phase shifts which often cause those lispy artifacts because it’s using an exact copy of the sibilance in opposite phase to the main track so it acts purely as gain reduction.
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Post by antipodesjosh on May 31, 2024 19:17:42 GMT -6
The best way to de-ess is simply to avoid writing songs with any hard consonants in them.
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Post by rowmat on May 31, 2024 19:24:02 GMT -6
The best way to de-ess is simply to avoid writing songs with any hard consonants in them. Okay… *ix *illy *i*ter* *at upon the *ea *hore |
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Post by Johnkenn on May 31, 2024 23:24:26 GMT -6
Didn’t get to use it as a deesser yet, but I was trying to take a little hair out of a vocal and this did the trick super quick and easy. Gonna buy. It’s $49 and I was gonna ask when they have sales…
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