The Case for Manual De-essing

One thing I notice when working on masters is the prominence of sibilants in final mixes. This isn’t to say that engineers aren’t using de-essers. I also use de-essers in my vocal chain, but sometimes it isn’t enough. I absolutely feel like my mixes are so much smoother when I clip gain the esses in words.

It’s not enough to just de-ess the lead vocals. When there is a stack of backgrounds, harmonies, ad-libs, etc. - it truly makes a difference to clean up the esses in every vocal part. It allows for the vocals to be a source of clarity and not a distraction. I also like to de-ess my reverbs and delays. A tail of esses takes away from any upcoming lead vocals.

Another reason to do this manually is because de-essers might only look for one harsh frequency, but there are actually a few phonic sounds that should be attenuated. I tend to look out for:

“esses”

“chas”

“shhs”

“ffffss”

“thhh”

These phonic sounds tend to be harsh and truly can poke out in a mix. It is easy to tune out or forget about these minor details when tweaking other sounds like 808s. That is why I recommend adding this to your to-do list when prepping your sessions. I tend to do a manually de-essing pass when prepping my sessions for mixing. That way I don’t have to stop when balancing instruments or creating effects to go back and do these minor edits. It might sound like I’m being a obsessive, but it is this level of detail that can make a mix sonically good to enjoyable to listen to.