Mixing is about directing the listener’s attention as much as it is about masking imperfections and highlighting what is best about the recording. In fact, if you think about it those are just two ways of saying the same thing. While we might think that ‘boost what is good and cut what is bad’ is the logical way to get a good mix, it’s not as cut and dried as that. If you find an aspect of a sound undesirable, rather than trying to control or eliminate that, maybe boosting what surrounds it will make it palatable.
To be specific, sibilance can be distracting enough to ruin a vocal. However, unlike popped plosives or whistling nose breath, as ‘ess’ is an integral part of the sound and needs to be present and clearly audible. Sibilance only becomes an issue when it is too prominent and particularly when it starts to be perceived as out of proportion with the rest of the vocal to which it belongs.
In this free extract from Start to Finish: Jimmy Douglass - Episode 12 - Mixing Part 2 Jimmy Douglass demonstrates how, with some fairly gentle moves with an EQ, he manages to alter the context in which the sibilance exists sufficiently to make the dynamic process of a de-esser unnecessary. As Jimmy puts it “Cancel the de-esser. I found another way around it”.
Hear the example and the EQ setting which solved the problem in the video extract below and click the button to visit the PureMix blog where you can read in more detail how to approach de-essing both with and without a de-esser.
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