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Post by rowmat on Mar 22, 2016 9:01:39 GMT -6
^^ All true - I've been aware that most of the time the s snippets contain little in the way of pitch information outside of the target frequency - I'm just wondering how critical it is to be persnickety about these things. My guess is that unless you have a growly gravely singer, taming the lower frequencies probably isn't that critical, but higher frequencies include the "air" in the room (when you're capturing the space in any way - intentionally or not) will be sucked out along with the bath water and could potentially cause unwanted breathing, right? The only parts of the vocal track that are affected in any way are those parts you choose to include in the de-essing track, which of course are the 'esses' and generally ONLY the 'esses'. No other area of the vocal is filtered, processed or manipulated at all. All parts of the de-essing track that are set at zero amplitude have no affect on the original vocal. The 'de-ssed esses' are not EQ'd as such, or traditionally compressed etc. they are just smaller versions of themselves. Their tonality and even harmonic content is not altered. They are just reduced in loudness. If you over 'de-ess' then the 'esses' will of course appear unnaturally quiet along with any 'air' that occurred with the 's'. I find adding some 16khz shelving (LDC's) gives some 'air' back to the sibilance but without it getting nasty as the original excessive 6-8khz sibilance is not a factor anymore. For ribbon mics the high shelving frequency could be lowered to 12khz or even 10khz to compensate for a typical ribbon's high frequency roll off. Try this... Find a nice bright plate verb. Duplicate another version of the de-essed vocal tracks to use only as a reverb send. De-ess this vocal reverb send track more aggressively than the main vocal and don't boost the high end. Using this second smoother darker vocal as a dedicated reverb send allows the original 'air' EQ'd vocal to sit out front of the verb with far more perceived intimacy. By keeping the reverb send smooth and free of barely a hint of sibilance the main vocal will stay in focus as the return will also be smooth and free of any high frequency splashy artefacts... which I dislike profusely!
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Post by Ward on Mar 22, 2016 9:18:53 GMT -6
I generally EQ before compressing. EQ'ing the 'woof' out of an acoustic guitar BEFORE the compressor is a no brainer unless you want the compressor working overtime trying to clampdown the low end while hardly touching anything else. Funny you should mention that... I just remixed a song for a broadcast company, and after listening to the results in a variety of contexts, wondered what I had done 'right' this time that was so different to what I had done before... Apparently I had "Re-woofed" the acoustic guitars and WOW, the fullness in the mix was fantastic.
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Post by rowmat on Mar 22, 2016 9:39:47 GMT -6
I generally EQ before compressing. EQ'ing the 'woof' out of an acoustic guitar BEFORE the compressor is a no brainer unless you want the compressor working overtime trying to clampdown the low end while hardly touching anything else. Funny you should mention that... I just remixed a song for a broadcast company, and after listening to the results in a variety of contexts, wondered what I had done 'right' this time that was so different to what I had done before... Apparently I had "Re-woofed" the acoustic guitars and WOW, the fullness in the mix was fantastic. Yep it work both ways. Although being able to target and flatten the objectionable 'woof' so you can then add some overall body and weight is often the goal.
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Post by geoff738 on Mar 22, 2016 14:45:24 GMT -6
^^ All true - I've been aware that most of the time the s snippets contain little in the way of pitch information outside of the target frequency - I'm just wondering how critical it is to be persnickety about these things. My guess is that unless you have a growly gravely singer, taming the lower frequencies probably isn't that critical, but higher frequencies include the "air" in the room (when you're capturing the space in any way - intentionally or not) will be sucked out along with the bath water and could potentially cause unwanted breathing, right? The only parts of the vocal track that are affected in any way are those parts you choose to include in the de-essing track, which of course are the 'esses' and generally ONLY the 'esses'. No other area of the vocal is filtered, processed or manipulated at all. All parts of the de-essing track that are set at zero amplitude have no affect on the original vocal. The 'de-ssed esses' are not EQ'd as such, or traditionally compressed etc. they are just smaller versions of themselves. Their tonality and even harmonic content is not altered. They are just reduced in loudness. If you over 'de-ess' then the 'esses' will of course appear unnaturally quiet along with any 'air' that occurred with the 's'. I find adding some 16khz shelving (LDC's) gives some 'air' back to the sibilance but without it getting nasty as the original excessive 6-8khz sibilance is not a factor anymore. For ribbon mics the high shelving frequency could be lowered to 12khz or even 10khz to compensate for a typical ribbon's high frequency roll off. Try this... Find a nice bright plate verb. Duplicate another version of the de-essed vocal tracks to use only as a reverb send. De-ess this vocal reverb send track more aggressively than the main vocal and don't boost the high end. Using this second smoother darker vocal as a dedicated reverb send allows the original 'air' EQ'd vocal to sit out front of the verb with far more perceived intimacy. By keeping the reverb send smooth and free of barely a hint of sibilance the main vocal will stay in focus as the return will also be smooth and free of any high frequency splashy artefacts... which I dislike profusely! This is good stuff. Real world techniques that many of us haven't tried or even were aware of. Are there any applications other than vox that work with your de-essing method? I would think that the reverb send technique you outlined above could be very useful in other applications. Did I mention good stuff? Cheers, Geoff
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2016 2:54:13 GMT -6
I've watched his MWTM vids and they're pretty interesting, I still don't like eqing vocals into compression
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Post by mjheck on Mar 24, 2016 7:12:46 GMT -6
I'm now committing the term "re-woof" to my vocabulary.
MJH
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