Claiming a new approach to de-essing, Wavesfactory’s Re-Esser plug-in separates sibilant from tonal content, allowing each to be shaped independently to giv engineers control over sibilance without sacrificing clarity, detail or musicality.
‘Traditional de-essers have always asked engineers to make a trade-off – reduce the harshness of sibilance and lose something else in the process,’ the company says. ‘That familiar dulling of brightness, that loss of air and openness, has long been the unwanted price of taming sharp S and T sounds. Re-Esser ends that compromise.
‘Re-Esser’s detection system is so accurate it can replace every traditional de-esser in the chain, delivering all the control professionals expect with far greater precision and creative freedom.’
Re-Esser allows users to compress the sibilance band in the traditional way and also move offending sibilance to a more usable frequency rather than simply cutting it. Reverb and effects can be added to the tonal layer only, if desired. Over-processed or over-de-essed recordings can be resored and top-end frequencies boosted without re-introducing harshness.
Third-party plug-ins can be brought into each band for flexibility, and the tonal part can be pitch shifted alone to keep the sibilance natural.
Optimised for speed and precision, Re-Esser allows engineers to shape and balance the vocal in ways previously not achievable, taming sharp consonants while enhancing tone and presence. It is equally effective on sung vocals as it is on spoken word – in music, Re-Esser controls sibilance without killing the energy or intimacy of a performance, while in postproduction, it keeps dialogue natural, clear and consistent across scenes.