July 1, 2025 • 35 mins
What if your go-to vocal de-esser plugin could do so much more?
In this episode, Marc Matthews and Tim Benson break down the creative power of de-essers and why they might be the secret weapon missing from your mix.
We kick things off with how de-essers work (spoiler: it’s more than just “s” sounds), before diving into smart, non-traditional de-esser techniques—like taming harsh cymbals, controlling boxy kick drums, and even smoothing out reverb tails and delay returns.
Can you use a de-esser on backing vocal buses? Is a de-esser better than dynamic EQ for harsh instruments? We answer these, share real-world wins (and mixing mistakes), and explain when less control = better results
If you've ever asked, “Should I use a de-esser on something other than vocals?” or “How do I stop overprocessing my mix?”—this one’s for you.
Whether you’re producing electronic vocals or mixing acoustic drums, you’ll leave this episode with actionable tricks to clean up harsh frequencies without killing vibe or tone.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Listen to 'Darklight' on Spotify
Listen to 'Future No More' on Spotify
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Marc Matthews (00:00):
You've probably used a de-acetatame harsh S
sounds on vocals.
But what if we told you thistool can fix harsh cymbals and
possibly even control kick drumboxiness?
Are we all underusing one ofmixing's most powerful secret
weapons?
Who knows?
You're listening to the Insidethe Mix podcast with your host,
(00:22):
mark Matthews.
Welcome to Inside the Mix, yourgo-to podcast for music
creation and production.
Whether you're crafting yourfirst track or refining your
mixing skills, join me each weekfor expert interviews,
practical tutorials and insightsto help you level up your music
and smash it in the musicindustry.
Let's dive in.
(00:42):
Hey folks, welcome back toInside the Mix, or welcome if
you are a new listener orwatcher.
Today I am joined again by mygood friend from Watch it, tim
Benson, aka Aisle9.
And we are answering a questionfrom one of you folks how to
use de-essers creatively.
But before we dive into that,tim, how are you?
(01:04):
And welcome.
Tim Benson (01:06):
Thanks, de-essers creatively.
But before we dive into that,uh, tim, how are you?
And welcome?
Um, thanks, yeah, I'm good.
Thanks, yeah, I've been uhenjoying the uh lovely sunshine
by the sea and uh not doing muchmusic over the weekend, just uh
barbecuing and seeing family.
Marc Matthews (01:15):
So I'm pretty good, pretty rested yeah, you
know what I'm jealous man?
Barbecues.
I love a barbecue and nothaving a garden, I I routinely
have to go to the beach to havea barbecue, which is not a bad
thing to do, but you do have totravel there.
So I'm jealous in that respect.
But we are blessed that we liveso close to the coast.
Indeed, we have this availableto us Folks before we dive into
(01:39):
this.
So again, just to recap, we aretalking about how to use DSs
creatively.
If you do have a question you'dlike us to talk about, click
the SpeakPipe link in theepisode description to submit
your questions and also shareyour social media handles or
your website.
And if you're releasinganything as well you've got
something coming up you can alsostick that in there as well,
(02:00):
and we will endeavor to answeror at least talk about your
question on the podcast.
And one lucky person each monthwill win a coffee voucher.
So again, as I mentioned, we inthis episode we're talking
about the creative use of ds's.
So ideally, we're going to bediscussing beyond vocals and
we're breaking down how to thisone plugin can fix problems and
(02:22):
be used creatively.
But I think it's probably quiteimportant to chat about what a
dsa is.
So we are attenuating or we'rewe're controlling, we are
simulant frequency.
So s is sounds, sounds which Ifind when I edit the podcast I
get a lot of those sounds,basically trying to get rid of
any snakes you could say in arecording.
(02:45):
But that's what we're doingwith ds's.
But maybe it'd be quiteinteresting to start with the
history behind ds's.
So we were discussing thisbefore we started recording
about what we or not necessarilymyself, because I think I've
always been, I guess, blessedthat I've used DSs in plug-in
format, so I've never actuallyhad to daisy chain or side chain
(03:10):
a compressor to an EQ to createa DS.
Have you had to do thatyourself or have you just ever
done it out of interest?
Tim Benson (03:15):
Yeah, I have.
Yeah, I mean so sort of.
If you've got a you're in amore sort of old-school
conventional studio with ananalog compressor, you would
some of them have got built-infilters in in in in them that
you can switch in.
I had one that had a built-inset of filters that you could
(03:37):
switch in to the path of the EQ.
Or you could, as you say, youcould sort of insert into the
compressor an eq off your deskor an outboard eq and then
essentially, yeah, you're, yousort of using the side chain on
the compressor.
(03:57):
You set the compressor to sortof be triggered by a certain
frequency range.
That's what you're trying to dowhen you're de-essing.
So you say to the compressorright, when, say, the sound's
between 4k and 6k, when you geta lot of energy in this band
(04:19):
above the threshold level thatyou set on your compressor,
trigger the compressor.
The compressor reduces the gayads applies gain reduction to
the signal when that goes overthe threshold.
But you use your EQ to sort ofkey in that that frequency band
(04:42):
so you might roll off all thebottom, roll off all the top and
end up, you know, with a narrowband in the middle.
Marc Matthews (04:48):
Yeah, because there's a multi-band compressor,
isn't it right that is goinginto and then um no, so it's
just a, it's not a multi-band.
Tim Benson (04:55):
So yeah, yeah, that's what I meant.
Yeah, it's a, it's a broad bandcompressor.
Marc Matthews (04:59):
It's a broad band compressor, yeah so I'm going
into using.
Tim Benson (05:03):
That, of course, is different, because, which is
relevant, I think, to this isbecause you're just using a
broadband compressor.
It will key the compressor butall that will happen is it will.
It will affect all frequenciesthe same and it will just turn
down the volume.
So you're singing along and youmake an s sound and the overall
(05:25):
volume of the vocal will justdip at that point and then come
back up, so it won't actuallyselectively reduce the s sound.
In that instance, using theanalog compressor and an eq,
which is conventionally what Ithink they had to start off
using in studios to do this, butas you said you could.
(05:47):
You know there are.
Then other options becameavailable, like multiband
compressors or like dynamic EQsand other things, and now we
have so many options.
You know your standardde-essing plug-in in a DAW can
(06:08):
do many things, a lot of whichwe don't even know what it's
doing so.
Marc Matthews (06:13):
We're not quite sure I was going to say that's
the beauty, isn't it, of theplug-ins available to us now.
I think years, decades ago,when they would have had to
cobble all this together andthink creatively of how they're
going to control the siblings.
I mean, ultimately, if you havethe studio time, you possibly
go back and think about your micchoice and where you're
(06:33):
recording the vocal to try, andyeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then think, actually, youknow what?
I'm going to solve this now,rather than have to rely on um,
cobbling together an eq and acompressor further down the line
, but now like having theseavailable to us and just the
ability to actually, with an EQsorry, with a de-esser plug-in,
the ability to be able to justlisten to the results, the
(06:58):
attenuation of the sibilantsounds I can't remember what
it's called now Isolate, and insome way it changes in plug-ins.
I personally I use the iZotopeDe-esser plugin and you can
switch between standard, whichmight not be the correct name
for it, or classic I think it'scalled classic, which is like
the easy version of using it,and then it goes into a more
(07:20):
sort of like granular controlsof De-essing, much like you said
there about like there's a lotyou can do with the de-esser
that you probably don't ever diginto.
I certainly don't.
I mean, when I was putting thenotes together for this episode,
I was thinking, actually, howcreative am I with a de-esser?
Probably not that creative andI probably reach for other tools
(07:44):
first.
But I use the iZ, isotopede-esser, um and I put it and I
I say it routinely.
I read online trying to lookokay.
Well, what are people doingwith de-essers?
Are they putting them at theend of the signal chain of a
vocal or they put them at thebeginning?
I tend to put them at thebeginning, but sometimes I also
have them at the end as well.
Um, but then again I mightswitch around the other way, but
(08:06):
I was interested in what yourthoughts are.
Generally, my thought processis, if I put it at the beginning
, I'm attenuating the sibilantfrequency, so I'm not then
sending those frequencies orthat frequency content, that
sonic content, into the nextplug-in in the chain, but others
(08:30):
say differently and they'll putit at the end.
Tim Benson (08:31):
Which way around do you usually do, or does it
depend?
I sometimes even do it on both,both ends actually.
Yeah, that's what I was saying.
Yeah, um, particularly if youthink, if you're going to sort
of put a saturation plug-in inthere because if you're going to
put a saturation plug-in inyou're going to increase the
harmonic content you are likelyto push up some of that
sibilance in the in a vocal likewith some saturation.
So you might want to then cutthat a little bit, like with um,
(08:52):
attenuate it with a de-esser onthe end.
Um, I like the waves de-esser.
By the way, I like that onequite a lot and that seems good
and I I use cubase has got aninbuilt one which I find quite
good, and I use a T-Rex one aswell, which I like.
But they yeah, I think all ofmine are doing things in a
(09:13):
fairly conventional sort of way.
I think the Waze one gives me afew more options, sort of EQ
wise sort of you know, to selectthe bands and stuff.
I mean now there's even AI, Ithink, coming into this, because
of course you can imagine howAI could sort of recognize
sibilance in a voice andactually, you know, remove it in
(09:37):
a much more sort of, you know,exacting way, because it
literally recognizes the ssounds within the vocal rather
than, you know, it just being asort of more eq based and volume
based sort of thing.
But, um, yeah, I, I.
I also find a really good tip,I think, is to ds your reverb
(09:59):
returns.
I was just going to ask youabout I was just going to say I
do I ds.
Marc Matthews (10:03):
was just going to say I DS my reverb returns, Do
you?
Tim Benson (10:05):
do the same.
I do indeed.
Marc Matthews (10:08):
Yeah, I do, do that, yeah, I do do that Not
always but if it's yeah, verysubtly, very subtly, I do it.
Yeah.
What about delays?
I don't think I ever do it witha delay return.
Tim Benson (10:20):
Do I do it?
I don't think I have done witha delay that would suggest I
never needed to.
I guess it's probably aninteresting idea because you
could, you could need to attimes.
I mean, having said that, youmight just sort of sometimes you
sort of roll off the top of adelay or something, don't you?
So it becomes um darker as itgoes away.
(10:41):
So, yeah, depends on the delayyou're using, maybe on a very
sort of open digital soundingdelay, that's very sort of full
frequency.
On the repeats you might findit useful to ds so that the s
sounds don't interrupt.
But often they're at quite alow level, aren't they?
So it depends on the level Isuppose in the mix.
Marc Matthews (11:01):
Yeah, I was thinking then, because sometimes
and I've never done this, butit's got me thinking actually I
send a crash or something out toa delay just to get the
thereafter and I'm thinking,actually, is there again?
This goes back to what I saidjust now the the fact that I
haven't used it on the delayprobably suggests I don't need
to, but I wonder if there is acause for it there.
(11:24):
But I think this goes backagain to what I said earlier
about re-recording the vocal ifI've got a crash.
that is inherently like thatsort of sound yeah, I would
probably just choose a differentsample choose a different crash
unless it was like the theperfect one.
Other than that, I'd probablyget a different one if you're
recording live drums.
Tim Benson (11:44):
I've used ds's before on live drums.
I mean, I'm using them and thiscomes into something we'll
probably touch on about likethat.
You're often using these thingsalmost more like conventionally
.
Nowadays you probably use adynamic eq to do this, this.
But you could use them and thiswas, I think I started doing
(12:04):
this when I didn't really have adynamic EQ plug-in.
It just wasn't something I had.
But I had a de-esser and youcould use it to sort of reduce
crashes in the overheads or sortof harshness in the overheads
on a drum recording.
So if you've got overheads andyou're getting sizzle from your
(12:24):
cymbals, you could set thede-esser to just sort of reduce
that a little bit, thosefrequencies that were annoying
you.
And you could do that withanything.
As you said, I think, boxinessor harshness in a recording.
You can set your de-esser tokind of listen to that sort of
part of the frequency spectrumand just basically duck it a
(12:47):
little bit when it gets too loud.
Marc Matthews (12:51):
Yeah, for intensive purposes.
It's what you'd use a dynamicEQ for, isn't it?
Tim Benson (12:56):
Yeah, that's the bottom line.
Marc Matthews (12:58):
Yeah, go back right to the beginning, when I
said could we use it forcontrolling boxiness in a kick
drum?
Tim Benson (13:05):
Yeah, or in acoustic guitars or that boxiness you
get from the body or anyacoustic instrument where you
get that resonance, or liketwang twang noises, I don't know
why I clicked my tongue then,because that's not what it
sounds like, but um, but you'reprobably going to reach for a
dynamic eq.
Marc Matthews (13:21):
Now this got me thinking, racking my brains
again.
It's just like if, if, if we'vegot, because you can get free
dynamic eqs like the nova, novaeq uh is free to download and
it's a dynamic eq.
Why wouldn't we just go for adynamic eq over a de-esser?
Is it because, if we're using,does it come down to processing
power and the colour Colour,quote unquote.
(13:45):
When I say colour, I meanobviously, if we're using the
plug-in, it's going to have someeffect on the sound, not colour
, as in warmth.
Tim Benson (13:52):
Yeah, it wasn't the fact that the TD Nova was blue
and the de -esser was white,Although I say that, sometimes I
have been put off usingplug-ins purely on the basis
that the GUI is not present,because the GUI is horrible yeah
.
I genuinely yeah, yeah.
Marc Matthews (14:09):
I'm just like I should probably look beyond the
fact that this GUI looks bloodyhorrible and think, actually it
sounds really good, butsometimes I can't.
Tim Benson (14:19):
Do you know, I opened a waves plug-in ovox the
other day which has got I meanit looks really great on its gui
.
The trouble is, but I meanmaybe other people understand
that plug-in but every time Iopen it up it's bewildering in
the number of things it can do.
And it's meant to be a sort ofvocoder but sort of it's way
more complicated than that.
It can do all kinds's.
Meant to be a sort of vocoderbut sort of it's way more
(14:40):
complicated than that.
It can do all kinds of stuff.
And I just nearly always giveup because it's just just too
complicated in the gui and umand I I just end up not being
able to do what I want to do init.
But like, here's a point to thisin the sense of vocoding might
be a good use for a ds.
So you, you think vocoding canmake really quite sibilant
(15:02):
sounds like kind of really pushthe harshness up, um, when
you're doing vocoding so youcould use a de-esser after that
on a vocoder to reduce the sortof you know harshness and get a
smoother sounding vocoder sound.
So there are quite a lot ofthings where you can use your
de-esser to make an a bettercreative sound.
(15:25):
You know a better sort of useof something.
Maybe in itself it's notcreative, but, like we're saying
, with reverbs, with coders,with all kinds of other things,
like you know saturation, allsorts of things that you might
be using creatively use ade-esser as well and you might
get a slightly better resultyeah, interesting what you
mentioned about the vocoder.
Marc Matthews (15:46):
I never thought with a vocoder, but going back
to what you mentioned aboutinterfaces, it kind of reminds
me.
It's a bit of a bit of atangent here.
It's like when you go into arestaurant and you get a menu, I
find this, and then if thereare so many things on that, it
just takes me forever to choosewhat I want.
If I go to a restaurant andthen there's a menu and it's got
three starters, four mains,three desserts, I'm like, ah,
(16:08):
easy, it's easy, I'm gonna findout why I want easy.
Alternatively, I'm gonna decideactually, no, this isn't for me
, and I can make a quickdecision.
Um, and I think that's.
That's the kind of the uh, theway I live my life with most
things, I want it nice andsimple and sometimes as well.
Tim Benson (16:25):
It's that sort of.
I mean, the things that we goto.
I think a lot in plugins areones that are simple but sound
good, quickly.
They get you where you'retrying to get quickly, without
too many decisions and like Idon't know I could change
billions of.
Sometimes you get like that.
I always remember behringerused to make some classic sort
(16:45):
of hardware that had a billionoptions on it, like their
compressor.
They made a behringer composercompressor, which was a cheap
compressor.
Everyone had that um, and I'msure people tell me they got
amazing sounds out of it.
Every time I used it I gave upand just found my DBX one that
had two buttons over, easy jobdone and sounded lovely.
(17:06):
But the Behringer alwayssounded pretty shit, no matter
what I did with it All thecontrols and all the extra bits.
So yeah, sometimes I really dogo for the same as you simple
and sometimes that one sliderde-esser where you bring it down
the threshold, the S soundsstart going and job done.
Marc Matthews (17:29):
That's the beauty of the iZotope one.
When you put it in classic mode, you've got the threshold and
you drag it down and then itstarts to attenuate those
sibilant sounds and thenobviously, like I said earlier,
you can just flip it so you canjust hear the sonics that are
being attenuated, and just beingable to do that that's all I
wanted to do, and then I think,with logics, you can sweep
around, which is pretty useful.
You can sweep around to findthat particular frequency.
(17:51):
That's that's sticking out.
So those are the two key ones.
For me really is that is thethreshold and then just being
able to sweep around, if I, if Iwant to, to find those
frequencies, because, like youmentioned earlier, but if I
actually want to use it on aboxiness of a kick, I'm gonna
have to go the other end of theuh, the frequency spectrum to
find that in the low mids orwhat have you, rather than the
um, the high mids and whatnot.
Tim Benson (18:13):
And you, I guess you might want to use two um ds's.
You might want to use them sortof one after the other, so you
use one to sort of catch aparticular frequency and then
one to catch a slightly higherfrequency, maybe like in a vocal
, where because vocals could befunny like that you can be
(18:34):
catching the sort of like uppermids, and then there's sometimes
, maybe in a female vocal, areally higher sort of sibilance
in the top sort of frequencies,so you might not just just be
able to attenuate it all withone one de-esser.
I mean I I find as well, likebacking vocals is a really good
(18:55):
use for de-essers, because likeI'm often put on a backing vocal
group, like you have your groupbus or whatever of backing
vocals and I will essentiallysort of compress them quite hard
, the backing vocals, becauseyou want them to sit behind the
vocal, but then I might well dsthem quite hard, because there's
(19:18):
nothing worse than when you'vegot Ten vocals all making an s
sound at the same time and thatthat starts to really pop on
mixes really badly.
Marc Matthews (19:33):
Yeah, do you no-transcript channel for the
backing vocals?
Yeah, yeah, that's the way I doit.
Yeah, I was thinking there.
I was working on the track theother day and there was some and
it was quite prominent and nowI was having to do that.
Um, but changing tacticsslightly.
So we're talking about so sofar we've been through.
Uh, obviously we've got vocals.
We can use it on effect sendsas well.
(19:56):
So you talked about possibly ondelays vocodas as well.
Uh, boxing us in kick reverbs,possibly on delays Vocoders as
well, boxiness in kick drums.
So we can use it there we'resweeping around.
Remember folks to find these?
Sizzle on cymbals?
Yeah, sizzle on cymbals as well.
String noise on an acousticguitar.
Yeah definitely Squeaks andthings like that.
All things you can use adynamic EQ for if you wanted to,
(20:19):
rather than using a de-esser,but pick whatever you want to
use, ultimately mastering.
I've never used a de-esser inmastering, have you?
Tim Benson (20:29):
yes, you have very cautiously and sparingly,
because you've got to be socareful, haven't you?
You can really, you know, Imean, in mastering, I always
think, like you know, if you'reattenuating those sort of um,
you've got some s sounds thatare popping out in a, in a vocal
(20:52):
, in a, in the final mix, um,ideally it's better to go back
to the mix and sort them beforethe mastering stage.
You don't really want to havethem in the mastering stage, but
obviously some of the thingsyou might be adding in the
mastering might be bringing themout a bit more as well.
If you're adding saturation,you're adding compression,
(21:13):
you're adding limiting.
So, yes, a little bit ofde-sing can just sort of help,
but it's got to be really subtleso that you don't swallow the
brightness and detail in the inthe mix.
Yeah, yeah, that's the key withmastering, isn't it?
Marc Matthews (21:32):
anything you do, ultimately your effect it's not
just, whereas in a mix we can doit on an instrument or an
instrument group, in masteringit's going to affect everything
that is in that pocket.
So yeah, I suppose again, it'sprobably where I'd use dynamic
EQ.
But to be honest with you, Idon't use dynamic EQ much either
.
It's not something I often use.
Tim Benson (21:54):
I don't use it very much on mastering.
Certainly I'm sort of wary ofit a little bit sometimes on the
bass end I find like a lowshelf yeah like a low shelf.
That again you've got to becareful if something gets too
dynamic that that could be badnews on your, if your thing is
(22:14):
constantly moving on sort ofhigh or low frequency, and
master isn't it.
Marc Matthews (22:21):
But little bits can help.
I was going to say what aboutin mixing, though, Just going
back to the mixing phase,because I think it's important
to talk about dynamic EQ as well.
Do you use it much in mixing?
Again, it's not something Ioften use.
If I do use it, it's generallyon a group rather than an
individual instrument.
Tim Benson (22:38):
Yeah, I started using it a lot more.
I would have said at one pointthat I never used it really, but
I suppose the tools are there alot more and almost any EQ you
pick up, like Frequency, whichis one built into Cubase or
Pro-Q 3 or whatever.
They all do the same thing nowon the Nova one, don't they?
(23:00):
So you've got that option.
Um, I think I I definitely useit on things like um vocals, the
sort of when you get that sortof uh, lower resonance when
someone's coming a bit too closeto the mic and they're getting
proximity effects or you knowthe kind of low the low mids are
(23:21):
getting sort of up and down alittle bit.
I will maybe sort of set adynamic eq on that to sort of
reduce some of the resonance, sothat I mean, I think you don't
want to.
That's because you don't wantto take all of that warmth away
from the end of the vocal witheq, but you do want to attenuate
it a little bit when theproximity effect kicks in,
(23:44):
because it can start to soundtoo sort of boomy in the mix.
Marc Matthews (23:47):
Yeah, I think that's where there's potential
there.
If you do the other way, whichis to just use like a high pass
filter or a low cut and then youremove it, but then you're
removing that content that youprobably want there in the vocal
.
Tim Benson (24:01):
Possibly the warmth in the vocal.
Yeah, it's going to sound a bitthin.
Yeah, it's probably where I useit low mids a lot.
I mean, I think I don't tend touse it a lot in something like
synth stuff, but then again youmight sometimes find that I
think a certain range, thenagain you might sometimes find
(24:24):
that I think a certain range ina sound feels resonant and the
overall balance of that soundsounds nice, but those
resonances are creeping in everynow and again.
So I find it useful to tamethose.
I mean, something like Sootheis very useful, like that, isn't
it?
And I've used soothe asurprising amount recently.
Um, you know well, somethinglike soothe, um, like a sort of
(24:48):
similar kind of you know um,plug-in, but like those, those
are, those are great, um, uh,but you have to be very careful
because they can be veryheavy-handed and I find that
it's, uh, I use yeah, I use um,isotopes, uh, nectar, and it's
(25:08):
got, uh, it's got unmask andit's got sculptor and like
you've got to be so, so carefulwith it.
Marc Matthews (25:16):
I was using it on a mix quite a while ago and, um
, I was using unmask and I was Iwas keying the vocal to, I
think, I think it was the drums,and my light suddenly just got
really bright in my eyes.
I don't know what's going on,and I was, and then, and then I
was like why is that snaresounds so weird?
Like everything?
(25:36):
It was just it was sucking thelife out the snare and at some
point, for whatever reason Ihadn't gone in and properly
checked, but it was because Iwas using that, I was keying it
to the vocal and every time thevocal was coming in it was just
sucking the life out the snare.
So I learned the hard way when I, when I was using these, that
you've got to be so.
I think you've got to be veryprecise in what it is the
frequency range that you'retrying to attenuate or want to
(25:57):
attenuate, and also the amount.
The amount, because itshouldn't be that much, really,
really it shouldn't, itshouldn't be a huge amount I use
track spacer quite a lot whichis, I've heard, track spacer.
I've not used it, but I've heardof it.
Tim Benson (26:11):
Um yeah, again like subtly is, that is the thing.
But that is essentially usingdynamic eq in a very similar way
, um, to what we sort of talkedabout at the very beginning.
Really, um, because it's justlike a compression that's being
sort of keyed by some otherelement in your, your dynamic um
(26:32):
compression.
So you know, I mean like I'llhave, I mean you can do it with
like all kinds of things, butyou might have like, uh, say
you've got, I mean you could doit with a kick drum and a bass
drum.
You could have it that everytime the kick drum comes through
it attenuates, but not thewhole of the bass drum, but just
(26:53):
certain frequencies yeah, yeah,they're like the fundamental of
the kick.
Yeah, yeah rather than maybesort of side chaining, like as
heavily as you might dootherwise, like just with a
standard compressor.
But there again, I don't know,sometimes one works, sometimes
the other works.
Depends what you're aiming for,doesn't it?
(27:14):
So I, I definitely use it quitea lot that that plug-in, but
like sparingly, yes.
Marc Matthews (27:22):
I find that I think that is the key word there
sparingly, I think anythinglike that.
And then I've been using andtrialling the Waves IDX plug-in,
which is like some form ofcompression I'll do it to
service, if I try and describeit, but it's very good.
But again, you've got to be sosubtle with it.
(27:43):
I was using it on.
What was I using it on?
I think I was using it on adrum bus, I think, and I was
listening to it and this mightbe my own ignorance and not
saying it up correctly, becauseI'm still playing around with it
.
But I was just like why are myclaps?
Why?
Because I'm still playingaround with it.
But I was just like why are myclaps?
Why is that clap pulling so farto the left?
And then I was listening.
I was like why is it doing that?
And then you do that thingwhere you just disable plugins
(28:06):
until you get to the root causeof what it is.
And it was that and I couldn'tfigure out why.
Probably should have gone insoon and figure out why Somebody
listening or watching this willprobably be able to tell was
doing that.
Um, but it's another one ofthose, again like you get these,
you get these.
Fantastic this.
Tim Benson (28:18):
We're gonna find a proper tangent here yeah, yeah,
no, I think you're right, um,but a lot of these things are
using a similar sort of process.
I think they're all you knowfrom we.
We may have digressed a bit,but ds's, ds's and um sort of
intelligent plugins, uh thatabound now are sort of a lot of
(28:40):
those are based in some way ondynamic processing, that sort of
dynamic eq.
And dynamic eq is some form offrequency conscious compression.
So you know, um, yeah, I thinkthat's the thing you get with
the dynamic eq, which might bebetter suited to whatever you're
trying to do than just using ade-esser, is.
(29:02):
You've got q width, so you can.
You know, and I mean you maywell have on some of them, you
get attack and decay and release, sort of.
You know, um, you get.
You get kind of more controlover the sort of the envelope of
the compressor, but it depends,some of them don't really give
(29:25):
you that control, but like, yeah, so you're not going to get
that on most DSs they're kind ofpreset, but that can be a good
thing if what you're doing isDSing something and you don't
want to sit there faffing withall that.
You just want to go.
I want to get rid of the Ssound.
Marc Matthews (29:41):
This is it.
This goes back to what we weresaying earlier about the
interface and thinking actually,I wanted to do this.
I wanted it to bestraightforward, I know what I
want to do, so I'm going to gowith that, rather than have to
go to a dynamic EQ and then, asyou, a lot of them.
Now you've got your envelopecontrols, you've got you need to
(30:02):
to set the queue and whatnot,rather, you know what.
Sorry, I'm just going to use dsand go down that route, um, but
I think I think that's.
That's 30 minutes.
Now talking about ds's, whichis, which is longer than I
thought.
Tim Benson (30:11):
30 minutes too long, no yeah, which is longer than I
thought we were going to getwith ds's, uh.
Marc Matthews (30:16):
So just to summarize, obviously again, I
did this briefly just now we'vegot, obviously we can use it on
vocals, but we've talked aboutvocodas as well.
We've talked about taming theharshness of cymbals, boxiness
and reverb sends delays.
We briefly spoke about using itin mastering as well, but being
very, very cautious with usingit.
So hopefully, folks listening,there are some examples there,
(30:39):
uh, that you can take away andpossibly using your own.
Now, we haven't explicitly saidhow to use them in those
scenarios, but maybe it's one ofthose ones where you think,
okay, well, I'll give it a tryand I'll experiment, which is
it's an advice buffet, buffet,buffet, buffet, um, for you to
take away.
But before we finish thisepisode, any releases Tim.
Tim Benson (31:01):
Yeah, I have.
I'm trying to decide its titlestill, but like it's either
called Future no More or noFuture no More.
But like you know, there we go,which is a single which I'm
going to be releasing at the endof the month, on Friday.
Is it the 27th?
Is that what it is?
Marc Matthews (31:19):
I believe it is.
It's the same as me.
Yeah, yeah, 27th.
Tim Benson (31:22):
Yeah, so that'll be coming out, which is a bit of a
departure from what I've beendoing recently, in the sense
that it's a vocal-based song,this one, whereas I've been
doing a lot of instrumentalsynthwave recently.
So you know that'll probablydrive everyone into hiding who
likes me, so you know.
But no, it's good.
I have released quite a fewvocal ones before, but I haven't
(31:43):
released one for a while.
So it's a track that I wasdoing a collab with someone and
they kind of disappeared and thetrack never happened, and so I
revisited it myself and sort ofrewritten it.
But like, yeah, so it's good tohave that coming out.
So this should be out when youget to listen to this, hopefully
it will be when this episodedrops.
Marc Matthews (32:06):
It will be the Tuesday after the 27th of June,
so, audience listening, I'll puta link in the episode
description, and I myself amalso releasing a track on the
27th Dark Light, dark Lightactually, it's all one word
technically and that drops onthe 27th.
Dark Light, dark Light actually, it's all one word technically
and that drops on the 27th aswell.
I'm collaborating with a singerthat I've worked with before
called Indigo, so give that aspin, folks.
(32:28):
Dystopian EDM with hauntingmelodic vocals and whatnot.
Tim Benson (32:33):
It's very haunting.
It's cool With some trancy bitsat the end.
Yes, give that a spin.
Thank you, mate.
Marc Matthews (32:39):
I appreciate that .
I appreciate that.
Tim Benson (32:40):
With Indigo Synthwave, isn't it yeah?
Marc Matthews (32:44):
Yes, I've done a couple songs with her in the
past.
Very, very good, so quick.
The turnaround is ridiculouslyquick.
It's very professional, so good.
Tim Benson (33:02):
I have to say, my track uses lots of de of dsing,
actually, because my vocals werereally s-y.
Because my vocals, for somereason, are really s-y, um, so,
uh, yeah, that that's a good useof dsr.
I also didn't do my best vocalrecording for one reason or
another and I think I made it,you know, more s-y than it
should have been.
So, um, yeah, and yeah, yeah.
So I had to smooth it out withlots of DSs.
So there we go, there we go.
Marc Matthews (33:22):
What we should do is you should give the well,
release, the stems for thoselistening to go and practice
their DSing on your vocals.
Tim Benson (33:30):
You're not seeing my stems on this.
They're terrible.
Yeah, no, yeah yeah, so it cameout all right in the end Nice.
Marc Matthews (33:37):
And again, we'll put links to both tracks in the
episode description.
And whilst we're on that topic,folks, if you've got a song
actually technically, yeah, ifyou've got a song.
If you've got a question againI said this at the beginning
that you would like us todiscuss on the podcast, click
the SpeakPipe link.
You don't need an account, youdon't need a mic, we do.
(34:04):
You need your phone, uh, butyou don't need a special setup.
It's just like sending an audiomessage record your question
and we'll we'll have a chatabout it on the podcast and give
you a shout out.
And you can also mention ifyou've got some release or
something coming up.
And and if you do not want touse speak pop, you can just send
me an email or dm me oninstagram at inside the mix
podcast.
So until next time, folks, stayinspired, keep creating and
don't be afraid to experimentinside the mix.
(34:24):
Goodbye, Tim, I'll catch upwith you soon, buddy.
You've probably used a de-acetatame harsh S
sounds on vocals.
But what if we told you thistool can fix harsh cymbals and
possibly even control kick drumboxiness?
Are we all underusing one ofmixing's most powerful secret
weapons?
Who knows?
You're listening to the Insidethe Mix podcast with your host,
(00:22):
mark Matthews.
Welcome to Inside the Mix, yourgo-to podcast for music
creation and production.
Whether you're crafting yourfirst track or refining your
mixing skills, join me each weekfor expert interviews,
practical tutorials and insightsto help you level up your music
and smash it in the musicindustry.
Let's dive in.
(00:42):
Hey folks, welcome back toInside the Mix, or welcome if
you are a new listener orwatcher.
Today I am joined again by mygood friend from Watch it, tim
Benson, aka Aisle9.
And we are answering a questionfrom one of you folks how to
use de-essers creatively.
But before we dive into that,tim, how are you?
(01:04):
And welcome.
Tim Benson (01:06):
Thanks, de-essers creatively.
But before we dive into that,uh, tim, how are you?
And welcome?
Um, thanks, yeah, I'm good.
Thanks, yeah, I've been uhenjoying the uh lovely sunshine
by the sea and uh not doing muchmusic over the weekend, just uh
barbecuing and seeing family.
Marc Matthews (01:15):
So I'm pretty good, pretty rested yeah, you
know what I'm jealous man?
Barbecues.
I love a barbecue and nothaving a garden, I I routinely
have to go to the beach to havea barbecue, which is not a bad
thing to do, but you do have totravel there.
So I'm jealous in that respect.
But we are blessed that we liveso close to the coast.
Indeed, we have this availableto us Folks before we dive into
(01:39):
this.
So again, just to recap, we aretalking about how to use DSs
creatively.
If you do have a question you'dlike us to talk about, click
the SpeakPipe link in theepisode description to submit
your questions and also shareyour social media handles or
your website.
And if you're releasinganything as well you've got
something coming up you can alsostick that in there as well,
(02:00):
and we will endeavor to answeror at least talk about your
question on the podcast.
And one lucky person each monthwill win a coffee voucher.
So again, as I mentioned, we inthis episode we're talking
about the creative use of ds's.
So ideally, we're going to bediscussing beyond vocals and
we're breaking down how to thisone plugin can fix problems and
(02:22):
be used creatively.
But I think it's probably quiteimportant to chat about what a
dsa is.
So we are attenuating or we'rewe're controlling, we are
simulant frequency.
So s is sounds, sounds which Ifind when I edit the podcast I
get a lot of those sounds,basically trying to get rid of
any snakes you could say in arecording.
(02:45):
But that's what we're doingwith ds's.
But maybe it'd be quiteinteresting to start with the
history behind ds's.
So we were discussing thisbefore we started recording
about what we or not necessarilymyself, because I think I've
always been, I guess, blessedthat I've used DSs in plug-in
format, so I've never actuallyhad to daisy chain or side chain
(03:10):
a compressor to an EQ to createa DS.
Have you had to do thatyourself or have you just ever
done it out of interest?
Tim Benson (03:15):
Yeah, I have.
Yeah, I mean so sort of.
If you've got a you're in amore sort of old-school
conventional studio with ananalog compressor, you would
some of them have got built-infilters in in in in them that
you can switch in.
I had one that had a built-inset of filters that you could
(03:37):
switch in to the path of the EQ.
Or you could, as you say, youcould sort of insert into the
compressor an eq off your deskor an outboard eq and then
essentially, yeah, you're, yousort of using the side chain on
the compressor.
(03:57):
You set the compressor to sortof be triggered by a certain
frequency range.
That's what you're trying to dowhen you're de-essing.
So you say to the compressorright, when, say, the sound's
between 4k and 6k, when you geta lot of energy in this band
(04:19):
above the threshold level thatyou set on your compressor,
trigger the compressor.
The compressor reduces the gayads applies gain reduction to
the signal when that goes overthe threshold.
But you use your EQ to sort ofkey in that that frequency band
(04:42):
so you might roll off all thebottom, roll off all the top and
end up, you know, with a narrowband in the middle.
Marc Matthews (04:48):
Yeah, because there's a multi-band compressor,
isn't it right that is goinginto and then um no, so it's
just a, it's not a multi-band.
Tim Benson (04:55):
So yeah, yeah, that's what I meant.
Yeah, it's a, it's a broad bandcompressor.
Marc Matthews (04:59):
It's a broad band compressor, yeah so I'm going
into using.
Tim Benson (05:03):
That, of course, is different, because, which is
relevant, I think, to this isbecause you're just using a
broadband compressor.
It will key the compressor butall that will happen is it will.
It will affect all frequenciesthe same and it will just turn
down the volume.
So you're singing along and youmake an s sound and the overall
(05:25):
volume of the vocal will justdip at that point and then come
back up, so it won't actuallyselectively reduce the s sound.
In that instance, using theanalog compressor and an eq,
which is conventionally what Ithink they had to start off
using in studios to do this, butas you said you could.
(05:47):
You know there are.
Then other options becameavailable, like multiband
compressors or like dynamic EQsand other things, and now we
have so many options.
You know your standardde-essing plug-in in a DAW can
(06:08):
do many things, a lot of whichwe don't even know what it's
doing so.
Marc Matthews (06:13):
We're not quite sure I was going to say that's
the beauty, isn't it, of theplug-ins available to us now.
I think years, decades ago,when they would have had to
cobble all this together andthink creatively of how they're
going to control the siblings.
I mean, ultimately, if you havethe studio time, you possibly
go back and think about your micchoice and where you're
(06:33):
recording the vocal to try, andyeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then think, actually, youknow what?
I'm going to solve this now,rather than have to rely on um,
cobbling together an eq and acompressor further down the line
, but now like having theseavailable to us and just the
ability to actually, with an EQsorry, with a de-esser plug-in,
the ability to be able to justlisten to the results, the
(06:58):
attenuation of the sibilantsounds I can't remember what
it's called now Isolate, and insome way it changes in plug-ins.
I personally I use the iZotopeDe-esser plugin and you can
switch between standard, whichmight not be the correct name
for it, or classic I think it'scalled classic, which is like
the easy version of using it,and then it goes into a more
(07:20):
sort of like granular controlsof De-essing, much like you said
there about like there's a lotyou can do with the de-esser
that you probably don't ever diginto.
I certainly don't.
I mean, when I was putting thenotes together for this episode,
I was thinking, actually, howcreative am I with a de-esser?
Probably not that creative andI probably reach for other tools
(07:44):
first.
But I use the iZ, isotopede-esser, um and I put it and I
I say it routinely.
I read online trying to lookokay.
Well, what are people doingwith de-essers?
Are they putting them at theend of the signal chain of a
vocal or they put them at thebeginning?
I tend to put them at thebeginning, but sometimes I also
have them at the end as well.
Um, but then again I mightswitch around the other way, but
(08:06):
I was interested in what yourthoughts are.
Generally, my thought processis, if I put it at the beginning
, I'm attenuating the sibilantfrequency, so I'm not then
sending those frequencies orthat frequency content, that
sonic content, into the nextplug-in in the chain, but others
(08:30):
say differently and they'll putit at the end.
Tim Benson (08:31):
Which way around do you usually do, or does it
depend?
I sometimes even do it on both,both ends actually.
Yeah, that's what I was saying.
Yeah, um, particularly if youthink, if you're going to sort
of put a saturation plug-in inthere because if you're going to
put a saturation plug-in inyou're going to increase the
harmonic content you are likelyto push up some of that
sibilance in the in a vocal likewith some saturation.
So you might want to then cutthat a little bit, like with um,
(08:52):
attenuate it with a de-esser onthe end.
Um, I like the waves de-esser.
By the way, I like that onequite a lot and that seems good
and I I use cubase has got aninbuilt one which I find quite
good, and I use a T-Rex one aswell, which I like.
But they yeah, I think all ofmine are doing things in a
(09:13):
fairly conventional sort of way.
I think the Waze one gives me afew more options, sort of EQ
wise sort of you know, to selectthe bands and stuff.
I mean now there's even AI, Ithink, coming into this, because
of course you can imagine howAI could sort of recognize
sibilance in a voice andactually, you know, remove it in
(09:37):
a much more sort of, you know,exacting way, because it
literally recognizes the ssounds within the vocal rather
than, you know, it just being asort of more eq based and volume
based sort of thing.
But, um, yeah, I, I.
I also find a really good tip,I think, is to ds your reverb
(09:59):
returns.
I was just going to ask youabout I was just going to say I
do I ds.
Marc Matthews (10:03):
was just going to say I DS my reverb returns, Do
you?
Tim Benson (10:05):
do the same.
I do indeed.
Marc Matthews (10:08):
Yeah, I do, do that, yeah, I do do that Not
always but if it's yeah, verysubtly, very subtly, I do it.
Yeah.
What about delays?
I don't think I ever do it witha delay return.
Tim Benson (10:20):
Do I do it?
I don't think I have done witha delay that would suggest I
never needed to.
I guess it's probably aninteresting idea because you
could, you could need to attimes.
I mean, having said that, youmight just sort of sometimes you
sort of roll off the top of adelay or something, don't you?
So it becomes um darker as itgoes away.
(10:41):
So, yeah, depends on the delayyou're using, maybe on a very
sort of open digital soundingdelay, that's very sort of full
frequency.
On the repeats you might findit useful to ds so that the s
sounds don't interrupt.
But often they're at quite alow level, aren't they?
So it depends on the level Isuppose in the mix.
Marc Matthews (11:01):
Yeah, I was thinking then, because sometimes
and I've never done this, butit's got me thinking actually I
send a crash or something out toa delay just to get the
thereafter and I'm thinking,actually, is there again?
This goes back to what I saidjust now the the fact that I
haven't used it on the delayprobably suggests I don't need
to, but I wonder if there is acause for it there.
(11:24):
But I think this goes backagain to what I said earlier
about re-recording the vocal ifI've got a crash.
that is inherently like thatsort of sound yeah, I would
probably just choose a differentsample choose a different crash
unless it was like the theperfect one.
Other than that, I'd probablyget a different one if you're
recording live drums.
Tim Benson (11:44):
I've used ds's before on live drums.
I mean, I'm using them and thiscomes into something we'll
probably touch on about likethat.
You're often using these thingsalmost more like conventionally
.
Nowadays you probably use adynamic eq to do this, this.
But you could use them and thiswas, I think I started doing
(12:04):
this when I didn't really have adynamic EQ plug-in.
It just wasn't something I had.
But I had a de-esser and youcould use it to sort of reduce
crashes in the overheads or sortof harshness in the overheads
on a drum recording.
So if you've got overheads andyou're getting sizzle from your
(12:24):
cymbals, you could set thede-esser to just sort of reduce
that a little bit, thosefrequencies that were annoying
you.
And you could do that withanything.
As you said, I think, boxinessor harshness in a recording.
You can set your de-esser tokind of listen to that sort of
part of the frequency spectrumand just basically duck it a
(12:47):
little bit when it gets too loud.
Marc Matthews (12:51):
Yeah, for intensive purposes.
It's what you'd use a dynamicEQ for, isn't it?
Tim Benson (12:56):
Yeah, that's the bottom line.
Marc Matthews (12:58):
Yeah, go back right to the beginning, when I
said could we use it forcontrolling boxiness in a kick
drum?
Tim Benson (13:05):
Yeah, or in acoustic guitars or that boxiness you
get from the body or anyacoustic instrument where you
get that resonance, or liketwang twang noises, I don't know
why I clicked my tongue then,because that's not what it
sounds like, but um, but you'reprobably going to reach for a
dynamic eq.
Marc Matthews (13:21):
Now this got me thinking, racking my brains
again.
It's just like if, if, if we'vegot, because you can get free
dynamic eqs like the nova, novaeq uh is free to download and
it's a dynamic eq.
Why wouldn't we just go for adynamic eq over a de-esser?
Is it because, if we're using,does it come down to processing
power and the colour Colour,quote unquote.
(13:45):
When I say colour, I meanobviously, if we're using the
plug-in, it's going to have someeffect on the sound, not colour
, as in warmth.
Tim Benson (13:52):
Yeah, it wasn't the fact that the TD Nova was blue
and the de -esser was white,Although I say that, sometimes I
have been put off usingplug-ins purely on the basis
that the GUI is not present,because the GUI is horrible yeah
.
I genuinely yeah, yeah.
Marc Matthews (14:09):
I'm just like I should probably look beyond the
fact that this GUI looks bloodyhorrible and think, actually it
sounds really good, butsometimes I can't.
Tim Benson (14:19):
Do you know, I opened a waves plug-in ovox the
other day which has got I meanit looks really great on its gui
.
The trouble is, but I meanmaybe other people understand
that plug-in but every time Iopen it up it's bewildering in
the number of things it can do.
And it's meant to be a sort ofvocoder but sort of it's way
more complicated than that.
It can do all kinds's.
Meant to be a sort of vocoderbut sort of it's way more
(14:40):
complicated than that.
It can do all kinds of stuff.
And I just nearly always giveup because it's just just too
complicated in the gui and umand I I just end up not being
able to do what I want to do init.
But like, here's a point to thisin the sense of vocoding might
be a good use for a ds.
So you, you think vocoding canmake really quite sibilant
(15:02):
sounds like kind of really pushthe harshness up, um, when
you're doing vocoding so youcould use a de-esser after that
on a vocoder to reduce the sortof you know harshness and get a
smoother sounding vocoder sound.
So there are quite a lot ofthings where you can use your
de-esser to make an a bettercreative sound.
(15:25):
You know a better sort of useof something.
Maybe in itself it's notcreative, but, like we're saying
, with reverbs, with coders,with all kinds of other things,
like you know saturation, allsorts of things that you might
be using creatively use ade-esser as well and you might
get a slightly better resultyeah, interesting what you
mentioned about the vocoder.
Marc Matthews (15:46):
I never thought with a vocoder, but going back
to what you mentioned aboutinterfaces, it kind of reminds
me.
It's a bit of a bit of atangent here.
It's like when you go into arestaurant and you get a menu, I
find this, and then if thereare so many things on that, it
just takes me forever to choosewhat I want.
If I go to a restaurant andthen there's a menu and it's got
three starters, four mains,three desserts, I'm like, ah,
(16:08):
easy, it's easy, I'm gonna findout why I want easy.
Alternatively, I'm gonna decideactually, no, this isn't for me
, and I can make a quickdecision.
Um, and I think that's.
That's the kind of the uh, theway I live my life with most
things, I want it nice andsimple and sometimes as well.
Tim Benson (16:25):
It's that sort of.
I mean, the things that we goto.
I think a lot in plugins areones that are simple but sound
good, quickly.
They get you where you'retrying to get quickly, without
too many decisions and like Idon't know I could change
billions of.
Sometimes you get like that.
I always remember behringerused to make some classic sort
(16:45):
of hardware that had a billionoptions on it, like their
compressor.
They made a behringer composercompressor, which was a cheap
compressor.
Everyone had that um, and I'msure people tell me they got
amazing sounds out of it.
Every time I used it I gave upand just found my DBX one that
had two buttons over, easy jobdone and sounded lovely.
(17:06):
But the Behringer alwayssounded pretty shit, no matter
what I did with it All thecontrols and all the extra bits.
So yeah, sometimes I really dogo for the same as you simple
and sometimes that one sliderde-esser where you bring it down
the threshold, the S soundsstart going and job done.
Marc Matthews (17:29):
That's the beauty of the iZotope one.
When you put it in classic mode, you've got the threshold and
you drag it down and then itstarts to attenuate those
sibilant sounds and thenobviously, like I said earlier,
you can just flip it so you canjust hear the sonics that are
being attenuated, and just beingable to do that that's all I
wanted to do, and then I think,with logics, you can sweep
around, which is pretty useful.
You can sweep around to findthat particular frequency.
(17:51):
That's that's sticking out.
So those are the two key ones.
For me really is that is thethreshold and then just being
able to sweep around, if I, if Iwant to, to find those
frequencies, because, like youmentioned earlier, but if I
actually want to use it on aboxiness of a kick, I'm gonna
have to go the other end of theuh, the frequency spectrum to
find that in the low mids orwhat have you, rather than the
um, the high mids and whatnot.
Tim Benson (18:13):
And you, I guess you might want to use two um ds's.
You might want to use them sortof one after the other, so you
use one to sort of catch aparticular frequency and then
one to catch a slightly higherfrequency, maybe like in a vocal
, where because vocals could befunny like that you can be
(18:34):
catching the sort of like uppermids, and then there's sometimes
, maybe in a female vocal, areally higher sort of sibilance
in the top sort of frequencies,so you might not just just be
able to attenuate it all withone one de-esser.
I mean I I find as well, likebacking vocals is a really good
(18:55):
use for de-essers, because likeI'm often put on a backing vocal
group, like you have your groupbus or whatever of backing
vocals and I will essentiallysort of compress them quite hard
, the backing vocals, becauseyou want them to sit behind the
vocal, but then I might well dsthem quite hard, because there's
(19:18):
nothing worse than when you'vegot Ten vocals all making an s
sound at the same time and thatthat starts to really pop on
mixes really badly.
Marc Matthews (19:33):
Yeah, do you no-transcript channel for the
backing vocals?
Yeah, yeah, that's the way I doit.
Yeah, I was thinking there.
I was working on the track theother day and there was some and
it was quite prominent and nowI was having to do that.
Um, but changing tacticsslightly.
So we're talking about so sofar we've been through.
Uh, obviously we've got vocals.
We can use it on effect sendsas well.
(19:56):
So you talked about possibly ondelays vocodas as well.
Uh, boxing us in kick reverbs,possibly on delays Vocoders as
well, boxiness in kick drums.
So we can use it there we'resweeping around.
Remember folks to find these?
Sizzle on cymbals?
Yeah, sizzle on cymbals as well.
String noise on an acousticguitar.
Yeah definitely Squeaks andthings like that.
All things you can use adynamic EQ for if you wanted to,
(20:19):
rather than using a de-esser,but pick whatever you want to
use, ultimately mastering.
I've never used a de-esser inmastering, have you?
Tim Benson (20:29):
yes, you have very cautiously and sparingly,
because you've got to be socareful, haven't you?
You can really, you know, Imean, in mastering, I always
think, like you know, if you'reattenuating those sort of um,
you've got some s sounds thatare popping out in a, in a vocal
(20:52):
, in a, in the final mix, um,ideally it's better to go back
to the mix and sort them beforethe mastering stage.
You don't really want to havethem in the mastering stage, but
obviously some of the thingsyou might be adding in the
mastering might be bringing themout a bit more as well.
If you're adding saturation,you're adding compression,
(21:13):
you're adding limiting.
So, yes, a little bit ofde-sing can just sort of help,
but it's got to be really subtleso that you don't swallow the
brightness and detail in the inthe mix.
Yeah, yeah, that's the key withmastering, isn't it?
Marc Matthews (21:32):
anything you do, ultimately your effect it's not
just, whereas in a mix we can doit on an instrument or an
instrument group, in masteringit's going to affect everything
that is in that pocket.
So yeah, I suppose again, it'sprobably where I'd use dynamic
EQ.
But to be honest with you, Idon't use dynamic EQ much either
.
It's not something I often use.
Tim Benson (21:54):
I don't use it very much on mastering.
Certainly I'm sort of wary ofit a little bit sometimes on the
bass end I find like a lowshelf yeah like a low shelf.
That again you've got to becareful if something gets too
dynamic that that could be badnews on your, if your thing is
(22:14):
constantly moving on sort ofhigh or low frequency, and
master isn't it.
Marc Matthews (22:21):
But little bits can help.
I was going to say what aboutin mixing, though, Just going
back to the mixing phase,because I think it's important
to talk about dynamic EQ as well.
Do you use it much in mixing?
Again, it's not something Ioften use.
If I do use it, it's generallyon a group rather than an
individual instrument.
Tim Benson (22:38):
Yeah, I started using it a lot more.
I would have said at one pointthat I never used it really, but
I suppose the tools are there alot more and almost any EQ you
pick up, like Frequency, whichis one built into Cubase or
Pro-Q 3 or whatever.
They all do the same thing nowon the Nova one, don't they?
(23:00):
So you've got that option.
Um, I think I I definitely useit on things like um vocals, the
sort of when you get that sortof uh, lower resonance when
someone's coming a bit too closeto the mic and they're getting
proximity effects or you knowthe kind of low the low mids are
(23:21):
getting sort of up and down alittle bit.
I will maybe sort of set adynamic eq on that to sort of
reduce some of the resonance, sothat I mean, I think you don't
want to.
That's because you don't wantto take all of that warmth away
from the end of the vocal witheq, but you do want to attenuate
it a little bit when theproximity effect kicks in,
(23:44):
because it can start to soundtoo sort of boomy in the mix.
Marc Matthews (23:47):
Yeah, I think that's where there's potential
there.
If you do the other way, whichis to just use like a high pass
filter or a low cut and then youremove it, but then you're
removing that content that youprobably want there in the vocal
.
Tim Benson (24:01):
Possibly the warmth in the vocal.
Yeah, it's going to sound a bitthin.
Yeah, it's probably where I useit low mids a lot.
I mean, I think I don't tend touse it a lot in something like
synth stuff, but then again youmight sometimes find that I
think a certain range, thenagain you might sometimes find
(24:24):
that I think a certain range ina sound feels resonant and the
overall balance of that soundsounds nice, but those
resonances are creeping in everynow and again.
So I find it useful to tamethose.
I mean, something like Sootheis very useful, like that, isn't
it?
And I've used soothe asurprising amount recently.
Um, you know well, somethinglike soothe, um, like a sort of
(24:48):
similar kind of you know um,plug-in, but like those, those
are, those are great, um, uh,but you have to be very careful
because they can be veryheavy-handed and I find that
it's, uh, I use yeah, I use um,isotopes, uh, nectar, and it's
(25:08):
got, uh, it's got unmask andit's got sculptor and like
you've got to be so, so carefulwith it.
Marc Matthews (25:16):
I was using it on a mix quite a while ago and, um
, I was using unmask and I was Iwas keying the vocal to, I
think, I think it was the drums,and my light suddenly just got
really bright in my eyes.
I don't know what's going on,and I was, and then, and then I
was like why is that snaresounds so weird?
Like everything?
(25:36):
It was just it was sucking thelife out the snare and at some
point, for whatever reason Ihadn't gone in and properly
checked, but it was because Iwas using that, I was keying it
to the vocal and every time thevocal was coming in it was just
sucking the life out the snare.
So I learned the hard way when I, when I was using these, that
you've got to be so.
I think you've got to be veryprecise in what it is the
frequency range that you'retrying to attenuate or want to
(25:57):
attenuate, and also the amount.
The amount, because itshouldn't be that much, really,
really it shouldn't, itshouldn't be a huge amount I use
track spacer quite a lot whichis, I've heard, track spacer.
I've not used it, but I've heardof it.
Tim Benson (26:11):
Um yeah, again like subtly is, that is the thing.
But that is essentially usingdynamic eq in a very similar way
, um, to what we sort of talkedabout at the very beginning.
Really, um, because it's justlike a compression that's being
sort of keyed by some otherelement in your, your dynamic um
(26:32):
compression.
So you know, I mean like I'llhave, I mean you can do it with
like all kinds of things, butyou might have like, uh, say
you've got, I mean you could doit with a kick drum and a bass
drum.
You could have it that everytime the kick drum comes through
it attenuates, but not thewhole of the bass drum, but just
(26:53):
certain frequencies yeah, yeah,they're like the fundamental of
the kick.
Yeah, yeah rather than maybesort of side chaining, like as
heavily as you might dootherwise, like just with a
standard compressor.
But there again, I don't know,sometimes one works, sometimes
the other works.
Depends what you're aiming for,doesn't it?
(27:14):
So I, I definitely use it quitea lot that that plug-in, but
like sparingly, yes.
Marc Matthews (27:22):
I find that I think that is the key word there
sparingly, I think anythinglike that.
And then I've been using andtrialling the Waves IDX plug-in,
which is like some form ofcompression I'll do it to
service, if I try and describeit, but it's very good.
But again, you've got to be sosubtle with it.
(27:43):
I was using it on.
What was I using it on?
I think I was using it on adrum bus, I think, and I was
listening to it and this mightbe my own ignorance and not
saying it up correctly, becauseI'm still playing around with it
.
But I was just like why are myclaps?
Why?
Because I'm still playingaround with it.
But I was just like why are myclaps?
Why is that clap pulling so farto the left?
And then I was listening.
I was like why is it doing that?
And then you do that thingwhere you just disable plugins
(28:06):
until you get to the root causeof what it is.
And it was that and I couldn'tfigure out why.
Probably should have gone insoon and figure out why Somebody
listening or watching this willprobably be able to tell was
doing that.
Um, but it's another one ofthose, again like you get these,
you get these.
Fantastic this.
Tim Benson (28:18):
We're gonna find a proper tangent here yeah, yeah,
no, I think you're right, um,but a lot of these things are
using a similar sort of process.
I think they're all you knowfrom we.
We may have digressed a bit,but ds's, ds's and um sort of
intelligent plugins, uh thatabound now are sort of a lot of
(28:40):
those are based in some way ondynamic processing, that sort of
dynamic eq.
And dynamic eq is some form offrequency conscious compression.
So you know, um, yeah, I thinkthat's the thing you get with
the dynamic eq, which might bebetter suited to whatever you're
trying to do than just using ade-esser, is.
(29:02):
You've got q width, so you can.
You know, and I mean you maywell have on some of them, you
get attack and decay and release, sort of.
You know, um, you get.
You get kind of more controlover the sort of the envelope of
the compressor, but it depends,some of them don't really give
(29:25):
you that control, but like, yeah, so you're not going to get
that on most DSs they're kind ofpreset, but that can be a good
thing if what you're doing isDSing something and you don't
want to sit there faffing withall that.
You just want to go.
I want to get rid of the Ssound.
Marc Matthews (29:41):
This is it.
This goes back to what we weresaying earlier about the
interface and thinking actually,I wanted to do this.
I wanted it to bestraightforward, I know what I
want to do, so I'm going to gowith that, rather than have to
go to a dynamic EQ and then, asyou, a lot of them.
Now you've got your envelopecontrols, you've got you need to
(30:02):
to set the queue and whatnot,rather, you know what.
Sorry, I'm just going to use dsand go down that route, um, but
I think I think that's.
That's 30 minutes.
Now talking about ds's, whichis, which is longer than I
thought.
Tim Benson (30:11):
30 minutes too long, no yeah, which is longer than I
thought we were going to getwith ds's, uh.
Marc Matthews (30:16):
So just to summarize, obviously again, I
did this briefly just now we'vegot, obviously we can use it on
vocals, but we've talked aboutvocodas as well.
We've talked about taming theharshness of cymbals, boxiness
and reverb sends delays.
We briefly spoke about using itin mastering as well, but being
very, very cautious with usingit.
So hopefully, folks listening,there are some examples there,
(30:39):
uh, that you can take away andpossibly using your own.
Now, we haven't explicitly saidhow to use them in those
scenarios, but maybe it's one ofthose ones where you think,
okay, well, I'll give it a tryand I'll experiment, which is
it's an advice buffet, buffet,buffet, buffet, um, for you to
take away.
But before we finish thisepisode, any releases Tim.
Tim Benson (31:01):
Yeah, I have.
I'm trying to decide its titlestill, but like it's either
called Future no More or noFuture no More.
But like you know, there we go,which is a single which I'm
going to be releasing at the endof the month, on Friday.
Is it the 27th?
Is that what it is?
Marc Matthews (31:19):
I believe it is.
It's the same as me.
Yeah, yeah, 27th.
Tim Benson (31:22):
Yeah, so that'll be coming out, which is a bit of a
departure from what I've beendoing recently, in the sense
that it's a vocal-based song,this one, whereas I've been
doing a lot of instrumentalsynthwave recently.
So you know that'll probablydrive everyone into hiding who
likes me, so you know.
But no, it's good.
I have released quite a fewvocal ones before, but I haven't
(31:43):
released one for a while.
So it's a track that I wasdoing a collab with someone and
they kind of disappeared and thetrack never happened, and so I
revisited it myself and sort ofrewritten it.
But like, yeah, so it's good tohave that coming out.
So this should be out when youget to listen to this, hopefully
it will be when this episodedrops.
Marc Matthews (32:06):
It will be the Tuesday after the 27th of June,
so, audience listening, I'll puta link in the episode
description, and I myself amalso releasing a track on the
27th Dark Light, dark Lightactually, it's all one word
technically and that drops onthe 27th.
Dark Light, dark Light actually, it's all one word technically
and that drops on the 27th aswell.
I'm collaborating with a singerthat I've worked with before
called Indigo, so give that aspin, folks.
(32:28):
Dystopian EDM with hauntingmelodic vocals and whatnot.
Tim Benson (32:33):
It's very haunting.
It's cool With some trancy bitsat the end.
Yes, give that a spin.
Thank you, mate.
Marc Matthews (32:39):
I appreciate that .
I appreciate that.
Tim Benson (32:40):
With Indigo Synthwave, isn't it yeah?
Marc Matthews (32:44):
Yes, I've done a couple songs with her in the
past.
Very, very good, so quick.
The turnaround is ridiculouslyquick.
It's very professional, so good.
Tim Benson (33:02):
I have to say, my track uses lots of de of dsing,
actually, because my vocals werereally s-y.
Because my vocals, for somereason, are really s-y, um, so,
uh, yeah, that that's a good useof dsr.
I also didn't do my best vocalrecording for one reason or
another and I think I made it,you know, more s-y than it
should have been.
So, um, yeah, and yeah, yeah.
So I had to smooth it out withlots of DSs.
So there we go, there we go.
Marc Matthews (33:22):
What we should do is you should give the well,
release, the stems for thoselistening to go and practice
their DSing on your vocals.
Tim Benson (33:30):
You're not seeing my stems on this.
They're terrible.
Yeah, no, yeah yeah, so it cameout all right in the end Nice.
Marc Matthews (33:37):
And again, we'll put links to both tracks in the
episode description.
And whilst we're on that topic,folks, if you've got a song
actually technically, yeah, ifyou've got a song.
If you've got a question againI said this at the beginning
that you would like us todiscuss on the podcast, click
the SpeakPipe link.
You don't need an account, youdon't need a mic, we do.
(34:04):
You need your phone, uh, butyou don't need a special setup.
It's just like sending an audiomessage record your question
and we'll we'll have a chatabout it on the podcast and give
you a shout out.
And you can also mention ifyou've got some release or
something coming up.
And and if you do not want touse speak pop, you can just send
me an email or dm me oninstagram at inside the mix
podcast.
So until next time, folks, stayinspired, keep creating and
don't be afraid to experimentinside the mix.
(34:24):
Goodbye, Tim, I'll catch upwith you soon, buddy.
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