de-esser
I was fortunate to find a couple of posts in this forum related to de-essing a spoken word vocal track. I have to say that I found this particular post very helpful
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=767758&mpage=1&key=sibilance. By the way I am using Sonar 2 still - hey - it works fine!
At this point I have the following to report:
I've only treated my raw vocal with a EQ for the male voice - this raises the upper end and produces some mild hiss and sibilance - but I love the resonant edge and do not want to drop the EQ setting. I have played with cloning the raw vocal track and combing one with EQ adjusted and one raw - panned a little apart 16% - sounds a little OK but not as nice as a single track.
(1) downloaded the voxengo voxformer VST and digital fish (free) plug ins for de-essing. These work well but seem to dampen the entire track. ANd I'm not sure if this is any different than dampening the EQ on the vocal. Is it?
(2) I also found that removing a 'bright cathedral' reverb took away significant sibilance. Moved to a warm pad - that was nicer - but even still no reverb works fine for me at the moment.
(3) I also took away the compressor - as I do not fully understand it and as much as I play with it - it does just that - compresses the vocals - along the lines of dampening - again - wish I had a tutor to look over the shoulder.
(4) I'm aware of a renowned technique that involves a 'clip gain envelope'. Can anyone walk me through this technique in a 'how to ...' with step by step kind of way? I'd like to try it but am not sure how it would be any different from splitting a clip and reducing the gain on a section - - which I've done for some other sections that have clipped to high.
Thanks in advance for your consideration.