VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

D Voice · Been Here Awhile Joined: 26 Jun 2010 Posts: 232

My sibilance seems to be much lower than normal:
in the 3500-4000 Hz range(!).

Many plugins and de-essers don't even go down that far. That also suxss because it seems that's just about where a lot of engineers (or EQ presets), like to give things a boost to make the voice stand out.

When I record dry it doesn't seem to be much of an issue. But when compression or EQing are added, they can really pop up. Maybe I am too sensitive about it, but it certainly bugs me.

Any body else with this problem or suggestions?
I have played a bit with mic placement, etc. (smiling on the ss's seems to raise the frequency range slightly, but not a lot). Any EQing tips or (preferably free/cheap) plugins, etc. to address this, without sucking the life out of the performance?

vkuehn · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 6:44 am Post subject:

Maybe this could turn out to be a very interesting thread. I am trying to figure out the pattern in which some of my sibilants deliver a nasty bit of static.

If you zoom in on most audio, you see the classic waveforms that look life the Rockettes from Radio City Music Hall dancing in lockstep. Sibilants when zoomed in on look like a centipede doing the dance line.

My noisy, nasty sibilants look like... like... well years ago when I had the bug to be a fisherman, I had a casting reel and if you didn't handle it right all the fishing line ended up in a nasty backlash!!! On screen, these nasty, static filled sibilants look like my old Shakespeare reel after a backlash hit by a bolt of lightning. I'm still searching for a software fix for those. I normally end up having to re-record. Maybe we can find answers to each others problems here.

Frank F · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 10:22 am Post subject:

One of the things both of you have forgotten is: What mics are you using?

Are they Chinese mics or are the mods or are they .... what?

INFORMATION please.

FF
_________________
Be thankful for the bad things in life. They opened your eyes to the good things you weren't paying attention to before. email: thevoice@usa.com

vkuehn · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 11:39 am Post subject:

Ed Fisher · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 1:04 pm Post subject: Re: sssibilance (lower range)

Bill Campbell · DC Joined: 09 Mar 2007 Posts: 621

We all have sibilants in our voices, some more than others. It's a naturally occurring thing. Unless its breaking up your mic real bad, I wouldn't worry about it.

If your audio is heard in broadcast, the station's processing will handle most of it. If it's on the web, it'll sound ok on computer speakers.
_________________
www.asapaudio.com

chrisvoco · Club 300 Joined: 14 Mar 2014 Posts: 380 Location: Local

Keyed ducking / sidechain compression will give you additional control. I've found that multiband compressors and de-esser plugins that do this fairly automatically don't give me quite the result I want - the de-esser plugin that comes with Reaper, for instance, never quite sounds just right to me, even when I carefully dial in my frequency range and flip its switch to monitor and verify what's triggering it: it alwayssch schounds to me like I'm schquished too much.

Had been thinking about how to manually do this to see if it works any better - and behold, the new issue of Electronic Musician arrived yesterday, with an article *precisely about this very thing*. It's worth a read. Looking online, though, darned if I can find a transcript of it.

So, try:

Sidechain discussion on sound.stackexchange.com with good explanation - the first answer on the page, with the diagram, gives a good idea of how it works, though the discussion is actually about dance music (ignore that part Smile

)

Also,

Frequency Selective Dynamics - specifically, the part in the "Links" section, at the bottom of the page, about "DIY Multi-band Processing"

Hope that helps a little. I'm going to devote some time to testing whether a dedicated plugin or a customized fx chain does the trick better - I really don't know which I think will be the winner.
_________________
Finally, Ford stops starting to say things and starts.

georgethetech · Posted: Thu May 01, 2014 4:55 pm Post subject:

I found a carefully placed EQ notch or two does the trick in all but the worst cases... The Adobe Audition CS6 de-esser does nicely, which is just a portion of the multiband compressor anyhow.
_________________
If it sounds good, it is good.
George Whittam
GeorgeThe.Tech
424-226-8528
VOBS.TV Co-host
TheProAudioSuite.com Co-host
TriBooth.com Co-founder

chrisvoco · Club 300 Joined: 14 Mar 2014 Posts: 380 Location: Local

I think I may be at least close to the worst case. It wasn't a problem for me until dentures. The frequencies are strange. Experimenting, I find I need to span quite a lot to be effective, and that's when it crosses the threshold of unusable. Just being able to notch would be welcome - but in my case you'd need several and it would be more like a comb.

Physical positioning and learning how to make the sound differently reduce the problem and, when I'm alert, lubricated and warmed up, pretty much eliminate it altogether.

But if we're soon going to be at the singularity, I feel entitled to automate the process. Smile

_________________
Finally, Ford stops starting to say things and starts.