#201: What If Your De-esser Plugin Could Do More Than Fix Sibilance?

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

Chapters

• 0:00 Creative De-Esser Techniques for Mixing Beyond Vocals
• 3:57 What Is a De-Esser? History, Function & How It Works
• 8:47 Where to Place a De-Esser in the Signal Chain
• 14:45 Using De-Essers on Instruments, Reverb & Delay Effects
• 21:52 De-Esser vs Dynamic EQ: When to Use Each
• 30:25 Subtle De-Essing Techniques & Final Mix Considerations

Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:37

You've probably used a de-acetatame harsh S sounds on vocals. But what if we told you this tool can fix harsh cymbals and possibly even control kick drum boxiness? Are we all underusing one of mixing's most powerful secret weapons? Who knows? You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. Welcome to Inside the Mix, your go-to podcast for music creation and production. Whether you're crafting your first track or refining your mixing skills, join me each week for expert interviews, practical tutorials and insights to help you level up your music and smash it in the music industry. Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome back to Inside the Mix, or welcome if you are a new listener or watcher. Today I am joined again by my good friend from Watch it, tim Benson, aka Aisle9. And we are answering a question from one of you folks how to use de-essers creatively. But before we dive into that, tim, how are you? And welcome.

Tim Benson: 1:43

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 uh enjoying the uh lovely sunshine by the sea and uh not doing much music over the weekend, just uh barbecuing and seeing family.

Marc Matthews: 1:53

So I'm pretty good, pretty rested yeah, you know what I'm jealous man? Barbecues. I love a barbecue and not having a garden, I I routinely have to go to the beach to have a barbecue, which is not a bad thing to do, but you do have to travel there. So I'm jealous in that respect. But we are blessed that we live so close to the coast. Indeed, we have this available to us Folks before we dive into this.

Marc Matthews: 2:17

So again, just to recap, we are talking about how to use DSs creatively. If you do have a question you'd like us to talk about, click the SpeakPipe link in the episode description to submit your questions and also share your social media handles or your website. And if you're releasing anything as well you've got something coming up you can also stick that in there as well, and we will endeavor to answer or at least talk about your question on the podcast. And one lucky person each month will win a coffee voucher. So again, as I mentioned, we in this episode we're talking about the creative use of ds's. So ideally, we're going to be discussing beyond vocals and we're breaking down how to this one plugin can fix problems and be used creatively.

Marc Matthews: 3:01

But I think it's probably quite important to chat about what a dsa is. So we are attenuating or we're we're controlling, we are simulant frequency. So s is sounds, sounds which I find when I edit the podcast I get a lot of those sounds, basically trying to get rid of any snakes you could say in a recording. But that's what we're doing with ds's. But maybe it'd be quite interesting to start with the history behind ds's. So we were discussing this before we started recording about what we or not necessarily myself, because I think I've always been, I guess, blessed that I've used DSs in plug-in format, so I've never actually had to daisy chain or side chain a compressor to an EQ to create a DS. Have you had to do that yourself or have you just ever done it out of interest?

Tim Benson: 3:53

Yeah, I have. Yeah, I mean so sort of. If you've got a you're in a more sort of old-school conventional studio with an analog compressor, you would some of them have got built-in filters in in in in them that you can switch in. I had one that had a built-in set of filters that you could switch in to the path of the EQ. Or you could, as you say, you could sort of insert into the compressor an eq off your desk or an outboard eq and then essentially, yeah, you're, you sort of using the side chain on the compressor.

Tim Benson: 4:35

You set the compressor to sort of be triggered by a certain frequency range. That's what you're trying to do when you're de-essing. So you say to the compressor right, when, say, the sound's between 4k and 6k, when you get a lot of energy in this band above the threshold level that you set on your compressor, trigger the compressor. The compressor reduces the gay ads applies gain reduction to the signal when that goes over the threshold. But you use your EQ to sort of key in that that frequency band so you might roll off all the bottom, roll off all the top and end up, you know, with a narrow band in the middle.

Marc Matthews: 5:26

Yeah, because there's a multi-band compressor, isn't it right that is going into and then um no, so it's just a, it's not a multi-band.

Tim Benson: 5:32

So yeah, yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah, it's a, it's a broad band compressor.

Marc Matthews: 5:36

It's a broad band compressor, yeah so I'm going into using.

Tim Benson: 5:40

That, of course, is different, because, which is relevant, I think, to this is because you're just using a broadband compressor. It will key the compressor but all that will happen is it will. It will affect all frequencies the same and it will just turn down the volume. So you're singing along and you make an s sound and the overall volume of the vocal will just dip at that point and then come back up, so it won't actually selectively reduce the s sound. In that instance, using the analog compressor and an eq, which is conventionally what I think they had to start off using in studios to do this, but as you said you could. You know there are. Then other options became available, like multiband compressors or like dynamic EQs and other things, and now we have so many options. You know your standard de-essing plug-in in a DAW can do many things, a lot of which we don't even know what it's doing so.

Marc Matthews: 6:50

We're not quite sure I was going to say that's the beauty, isn't it, of the plug-ins available to us now. I think years, decades ago, when they would have had to cobble all this together and think creatively of how they're going to control the siblings. I mean, ultimately, if you have the studio time, you possibly go back and think about your mic choice and where you're recording the vocal to try, and yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marc Matthews: 7:14

And then think, actually, you know what? I'm going to solve this now, rather than have to rely on um, cobbling together an eq and a compressor further down the line, but now like having these available to us and just the ability to actually, with an EQ sorry, with a de-esser plug-in, the ability to be able to just listen to the results, the attenuation of the sibilant sounds I can't remember what it's called now Isolate, and in some way it changes in plug-ins. I personally I use the iZotope De-esser plugin and you can switch between standard, which might not be the correct name for it, or classic I think it's called classic, which is like the easy version of using it, and then it goes into a more sort of like granular controls of De-essing, much like you said there about like there's a lot you can do with the de-esser that you probably don't ever dig into. I certainly don't. I mean, when I was putting the notes together for this episode, I was thinking, actually, how creative am I with a de-esser? Probably not that creative and I probably reach for other tools first. But I use the iZ, isotope de-esser, um and I put it and I I say it routinely.

Marc Matthews: 8:30

I read online trying to look okay. Well, what are people doing with de-essers? Are they putting them at the end of the signal chain of a vocal or they put them at the beginning? I tend to put them at the beginning, but sometimes I also have them at the end as well. Um, but then again I might switch around the other way, but I was interested in what your thoughts are. Generally, my thought process is, if I put it at the beginning, I'm attenuating the sibilant frequency, so I'm not then sending those frequencies or that frequency content, that sonic content, into the next plug-in in the chain, but others say differently and they'll put it at the end.

Tim Benson: 9:08

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 you think, if you're going to sort of put a saturation plug-in in there because if you're going to put a saturation plug-in in you're going to increase the harmonic content you are likely to push up some of that sibilance in the in a vocal like with some saturation. So you might want to then cut that a little bit, like with um, attenuate it with a de-esser on the end. Um, I like the waves de-esser.

Tim Benson: 9:35

By the way, I like that one quite a lot and that seems good and I I use cubase has got an inbuilt one which I find quite good, and I use a T-Rex one as well, which I like. But they yeah, I think all of mine are doing things in a fairly conventional sort of way. I think the Waze one gives me a few more options, sort of EQ wise sort of you know, to select the bands and stuff. I mean now there's even AI, I think, coming into this, because of course you can imagine how AI could sort of recognize sibilance in a voice and actually, you know, remove it in a much more sort of, you know, exacting way, because it literally recognizes the s sounds within the vocal rather than, you know, it just being a sort 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 returns. I was just going to ask you about I was just going to say I do I ds.

Marc Matthews: 10:41

was just going to say I DS my reverb returns, Do you?

Tim Benson: 10:43

do the same. I do indeed.

Marc Matthews: 10:45

Yeah, I do, do that, yeah, I do do that Not always but if it's yeah, very subtly, very subtly, I do it. Yeah. What about delays? I don't think I ever do it with a delay return.

Tim Benson: 10:58

Do I do it? I don't think I have done with a delay that would suggest I never needed to. I guess it's probably an interesting idea because you could, you could need to at times. I mean, having said that, you might just sort of sometimes you sort of roll off the top of a delay or something, don't you? So it becomes um darker as it goes away. So, yeah, depends on the delay you're using, maybe on a very sort of open digital sounding delay, that's very sort of full frequency. On the repeats you might find it useful to ds so that the s sounds don't interrupt. But often they're at quite a low level, aren't they? So it depends on the level I suppose in the mix.

Marc Matthews: 11:38

Yeah, I was thinking then, because sometimes and I've never done this, but it's got me thinking actually I send a crash or something out to a delay just to get the thereafter and I'm thinking, actually, is there again? This goes back to what I said just now the the fact that I haven't used it on the delay probably suggests I don't need to, but I wonder if there is a cause for it there. But I think this goes back again to what I said earlier about re-recording the vocal if I've got a crash.

Marc Matthews: 12:07

that is inherently like that sort of sound yeah, I would probably just choose a different sample choose a different crash unless it was like the the perfect one. Other than that, I'd probably get a different one if you're recording live drums.

Tim Benson: 12:22

I've used ds's before on live drums. I mean, I'm using them and this comes into something we'll probably touch on about like that. You're often using these things almost more like conventionally. Nowadays you probably use a dynamic eq to do this, this. But you could use them and this was, I think I started doing this when I didn't really have a dynamic EQ plug-in. It just wasn't something I had. But I had a de-esser and you could use it to sort of reduce crashes in the overheads or sort of harshness in the overheads on a drum recording. So if you've got overheads and you're getting sizzle from your cymbals, you could set the de-esser to just sort of reduce that a little bit, those frequencies that were annoying you. And you could do that with anything. As you said, I think, boxiness or harshness in a recording. You can set your de-esser to kind of listen to that sort of part of the frequency spectrum and just basically duck it a little bit when it gets too loud.

Marc Matthews: 13:29

Yeah, for intensive purposes. It's what you'd use a dynamic EQ for, isn't it?

Tim Benson: 13:34

Yeah, that's the bottom line.

Marc Matthews: 13:36

Yeah, go back right to the beginning, when I said could we use it for controlling boxiness in a kick drum?

Tim Benson: 13:43

Yeah, or in acoustic guitars or that boxiness you get from the body or any acoustic instrument where you get that resonance, or like twang twang noises, I don't know why I clicked my tongue then, because that's not what it sounds like, but um, but you're probably going to reach for a dynamic eq.

Marc Matthews: 13:58

Now this got me thinking, racking my brains again. It's just like if, if, if we've got, because you can get free dynamic eqs like the nova, nova eq uh is free to download and it's a dynamic eq. Why wouldn't we just go for a dynamic 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. When I say colour, I mean obviously, if we're using the plug-in, it's going to have some effect on the sound, not colour, as in warmth.

Tim Benson: 14:29

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 using plug-ins purely on the basis that the GUI is not present, because the GUI is horrible yeah. I genuinely yeah, yeah.

Marc Matthews: 14:46

I'm just like I should probably look beyond the fact that this GUI looks bloody horrible and think, actually it sounds really good, but sometimes I can't.

Tim Benson: 14:56

Do you know, I opened a waves plug-in ovox the other day which has got I mean it looks really great on its gui. The trouble is, but I mean maybe other people understand that plug-in but every time I open it up it's bewildering in the number of things it can do. And it's meant to be a sort of vocoder but sort of it's way more complicated than that. It can do all kinds's. Meant to be a sort of vocoder but sort of it's way more complicated than that. It can do all kinds of stuff. And I just nearly always give up because it's just just too complicated in the gui and um and I I just end up not being able to do what I want to do in it.

Tim Benson: 15:30

But like, here's a point to this in the sense of vocoding might be a good use for a ds. So you, you think vocoding can make really quite sibilant sounds like kind of really push the harshness up, um, when you're doing vocoding so you could use a de-esser after that on a vocoder to reduce the sort of you know harshness and get a smoother sounding vocoder sound. So there are quite a lot of things where you can use your de-esser to make an a better creative sound. You know a better sort of use of something. Maybe in itself it's not creative, but, like we're saying, with reverbs, with coders, with all kinds of other things, like you know saturation, all sorts of things that you might be using creatively use a de-esser as well and you might get a slightly better result yeah, interesting what you mentioned about the vocoder.

Marc Matthews: 16:23

I never thought with a vocoder, but going back to what you mentioned about interfaces, it kind of reminds me. It's a bit of a bit of a tangent here. It's like when you go into a restaurant and you get a menu, I find this, and then if there are so many things on that, it just takes me forever to choose what I want. If I go to a restaurant and then there's a menu and it's got three starters, four mains, three desserts, I'm like, ah, easy, it's easy, I'm gonna find out why I want easy. Alternatively, I'm gonna decide actually, no, this isn't for me, and I can make a quick decision. Um, and I think that's. That's the kind of the uh, the way I live my life with most things, I want it nice and simple and sometimes as well.

Tim Benson: 17:02

It's that sort of. I mean, the things that we go to. I think a lot in plugins are ones that are simple but sound good, quickly. They get you where you're trying to get quickly, without too many decisions and like I don't know I could change billions of. Sometimes you get like that. I always remember behringer used to make some classic sort of hardware that had a billion options on it, like their compressor. They made a behringer composer compressor, which was a cheap compressor. Everyone had that um, and I'm sure people tell me they got amazing sounds out of it. Every time I used it I gave up and just found my DBX one that had two buttons over, easy job done and sounded lovely. But the Behringer always sounded pretty shit, no matter what I did with it All the controls and all the extra bits. So yeah, sometimes I really do go for the same as you simple and sometimes that one slider de-esser where you bring it down the threshold, the S sounds start going and job done.

Marc Matthews: 18:06

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 it starts to attenuate those sibilant sounds and then obviously, like I said earlier, you can just flip it so you can just hear the sonics that are being attenuated, and just being able 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 find that particular frequency. That's that's sticking out. So those are the two key ones. For me really is that is the threshold and then just being able to sweep around, if I, if I want to, to find those frequencies, because, like you mentioned earlier, but if I actually want to use it on a boxiness of a kick, I'm gonna have to go the other end of the uh, the frequency spectrum to find that in the low mids or what have you, rather than the um, the high mids and whatnot.

Tim Benson: 18:50

And you, I guess you might want to use two um ds's.

Tim Benson: 18:55

You might want to use them sort of one after the other, so you use one to sort of catch a particular frequency and then one to catch a slightly higher frequency, maybe like in a vocal, where because vocals could be funny like that you can be catching the sort of like upper mids, and then there's sometimes, maybe in a female vocal, a really higher sort of sibilance in the top sort of frequencies, so you might not just just be able to attenuate it all with one one de-esser. I mean I I find as well, like backing vocals is a really good use for de-essers, because like I'm often put on a backing vocal group, like you have your group bus or whatever of backing vocals and I will essentially sort of compress them quite hard, the backing vocals, because you want them to sit behind the vocal, but then I might well ds them quite hard, because there's nothing worse than when you've got Ten vocals all making an s sound at the same time and that that starts to really pop on mixes really badly.

Marc Matthews: 20:11

Yeah, do you no-transcript channel for the backing vocals? Yeah, yeah, that's the way I do it. Yeah, I was thinking there. I was working on the track the other day and there was some and it was quite prominent and now I was having to do that. Um, but changing tactics slightly. So we're talking about so so far we've been through. Uh, obviously we've got vocals. We can use it on effect sends as well. So you talked about possibly on delays 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're sweeping around. Remember folks to find these? Sizzle on cymbals? Yeah, sizzle on cymbals as well. String noise on an acoustic guitar.

Marc Matthews: 20:48

Yeah definitely Squeaks and things like that. All things you can use a dynamic EQ for if you wanted to, rather than using a de-esser, but pick whatever you want to use, ultimately mastering. I've never used a de-esser in mastering, have you?

Tim Benson: 21:07

yes, you have very cautiously and sparingly, because you've got to be so careful, haven't you? You can really, you know, I mean, in mastering, I always think, like you know, if you're attenuating those sort of um, you've got some s sounds that are popping out in a, in a vocal, in a, in the final mix, um, ideally it's better to go back to the mix and sort them before the mastering stage. You don't really want to have them in the mastering stage, but obviously some of the things you might be adding in the mastering might be bringing them out a bit more as well. If you're adding saturation, you're adding compression, you're adding limiting. So, yes, a little bit of de-sing can just sort of help, but it's got to be really subtle so that you don't swallow the brightness and detail in the in the mix. Yeah, yeah, that's the key with mastering, isn't it?

Marc Matthews: 22:10

anything you do, ultimately your effect it's not just, whereas in a mix we can do it on an instrument or an instrument group, in mastering it's going to affect everything that is in that pocket. So yeah, I suppose again, it's probably where I'd use dynamic EQ. But to be honest with you, I don't use dynamic EQ much either. It's not something I often use.

Tim Benson: 22:31

I don't use it very much on mastering. Certainly I'm sort of wary of it a little bit sometimes on the bass end I find like a low shelf yeah like a low shelf. That again you've got to be careful if something gets too dynamic that that could be bad news on your, if your thing is constantly moving on sort of high or low frequency, and master isn't it.

Marc Matthews: 22:59

But little bits can help. I was going to say what about in 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 I often use. If I do use it, it's generally on a group rather than an individual instrument.

Tim Benson: 23:15

Yeah, I started using it a lot more. I would have said at one point that I never used it really, but I suppose the tools are there a lot more and almost any EQ you pick up, like Frequency, which is one built into Cubase or Pro-Q 3 or whatever. They all do the same thing now on the Nova one, don't they? So you've got that option.

Tim Benson: 23:39

Um, I think I I definitely use it on things like um vocals, the sort of when you get that sort of uh, lower resonance when someone's coming a bit too close to the mic and they're getting proximity effects or you know the kind of low the low mids are getting sort of up and down a little bit. I will maybe sort of set a dynamic eq on that to sort of reduce some of the resonance, so that I mean, I think you don't want to. That's because you don't want to take all of that warmth away from the end of the vocal with eq, but you do want to attenuate it a little bit when the proximity effect kicks in, because it can start to sound too sort of boomy in the mix.

Marc Matthews: 24:25

Yeah, I think that's where there's potential there. If you do the other way, which is to just use like a high pass filter or a low cut and then you remove it, but then you're removing that content that you probably want there in the vocal.

Tim Benson: 24:38

Possibly the warmth in the vocal. Yeah, it's going to sound a bit thin. Yeah, it's probably where I use it low mids a lot. I mean, I think I don't tend to use it a lot in something like synth stuff, but then again you might sometimes find that I think a certain range, then again you might sometimes find that I think a certain range in a sound feels resonant and the overall balance of that sound sounds nice, but those resonances are creeping in every now and again. So I find it useful to tame those. I mean, something like Soothe is very useful, like that, isn't it? And I've used soothe a surprising amount recently. Um, you know well, something like soothe, um, like a sort of 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 very heavy-handed and I find that it's, uh, I use yeah, I use um, isotopes, uh, nectar, and it's got, uh, it's got unmask and it's got sculptor and like you've got to be so, so careful with it.

Marc Matthews: 25:53

I was using it on a mix quite a while ago and, um, I was using unmask and I was I was 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 snare sounds so weird? Like everything? It was just it was sucking the life out the snare and at some point, for whatever reason I hadn't gone in and properly checked, but it was because I was using that, I was keying it to the vocal and every time the vocal was coming in it was just sucking the life out the snare.

Marc Matthews: 26:25

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 very precise in what it is the frequency range that you're trying to attenuate or want to attenuate, and also the amount. The amount, because it shouldn't be that much, really, really it shouldn't, it shouldn't be a huge amount I use track spacer quite a lot which is, I've heard, track spacer.

Marc Matthews: 26:47

I've not used it, but I've heard of it.

Tim Benson: 26:49

Um yeah, again like subtly is, that is the thing. But that is essentially using dynamic eq in a very similar way, um, to what we sort of talked about at the very beginning. Really, um, because it's just like a compression that's being sort of keyed by some other element in your, your dynamic um compression. So you know, I mean like I'll have, I mean you can do it with like all kinds of things, but you might have like, uh, say you've got, I mean you could do it with a kick drum and a bass drum. You could have it that every time the kick drum comes through it attenuates, but not the whole of the bass drum, but just certain frequencies yeah, yeah, they're like the fundamental of the kick.

Tim Benson: 27:36

Yeah, yeah rather than maybe sort of side chaining, like as heavily as you might do otherwise, 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? So I, I definitely use it quite a lot that that plug-in, but like sparingly, yes.

Marc Matthews: 27:59

I find that I think that is the key word there sparingly, I think anything like that. And then I've been using and trialling the Waves IDX plug-in, which is like some form of compression I'll do it to service, if I try and describe it, but it's very good. But again, you've got to be so subtle with it. I was using it on. What was I using it on? I think I was using it on a drum bus, I think, and I was listening to it and this might be my own ignorance and not saying it up correctly, because I'm still playing around with it. But I was just like why are my claps? Why? Because I'm still playing around with it.

Marc Matthews: 28:35

But I was just like why are my claps? Why is that clap pulling so far to the left? And then I was listening. I was like why is it doing that? And then you do that thing where you just disable plugins until you get to the root cause of what it is. And it was that and I couldn't figure out why. Probably should have gone in soon and figure out why Somebody listening or watching this will probably be able to tell was doing that. Um, but it's another one of those, again like you get these, you get these. Fantastic this.

Tim Benson: 28:56

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 know from we. We may have digressed a bit, but ds's, ds's and um sort of intelligent plugins, uh that abound now are sort of a lot of those are based in some way on dynamic processing, that sort of dynamic eq. And dynamic eq is some form of frequency conscious compression. So you know, um, yeah, I think that's the thing you get with the dynamic eq, which might be better suited to whatever you're trying to do than just using a de-esser, is. You've got q width, so you can.

Tim Benson: 29:44

You know, and I mean you may well have on some of them, you get attack and decay and release, sort of. You know, um, you get. You get kind of more control over the sort of the envelope of the compressor, but it depends, some of them don't really give you that control, but like, yeah, so you're not going to get that on most DSs they're kind of preset, but that can be a good thing if what you're doing is DSing something and you don't want to sit there faffing with all that. You just want to go. I want to get rid of the S sound.

Marc Matthews: 30:18

This is it. This goes back to what we were saying earlier about the interface and thinking actually, I wanted to do this. I wanted it to be straightforward, I know what I want to do, so I'm going to go with that, rather than have to go to a dynamic EQ and then, as you, a lot of them. Now you've got your envelope controls, you've got you need to to set the queue and whatnot, rather, you know what. Sorry, I'm just going to use ds and go down that route, um, but I think I think that's. That's 30 minutes. Now talking about ds's, which is, which is longer than I thought.

Tim Benson: 30:48

30 minutes too long, no yeah, which is longer than I thought we were going to get with ds's, uh.

Marc Matthews: 30:53

So just to summarize, obviously again, I did this briefly just now we've got, obviously we can use it on vocals, but we've talked about vocodas as well. We've talked about taming the harshness of cymbals, boxiness and reverb sends delays. We briefly spoke about using it in mastering as well, but being very, very cautious with using it. So hopefully, folks listening, there are some examples there, uh, that you can take away and possibly using your own. Now, we haven't explicitly said how to use them in those scenarios, but maybe it's one of those ones where you think, okay, well, I'll give it a try and I'll experiment, which is it's an advice buffet, buffet, buffet, buffet, um, for you to take away. But before we finish this episode, any releases Tim.

Tim Benson: 31:39

Yeah, I have. I'm trying to decide its title still, but like it's either called Future no More or no Future no More. But like you know, there we go, which is a single which I'm going to be releasing at the end of the month, on Friday. Is it the 27th? Is that what it is?

Marc Matthews: 31:57

I believe it is. It's the same as me. Yeah, yeah, 27th.

Tim Benson: 32:00

Yeah, so that'll be coming out, which is a bit of a departure from what I've been doing recently, in the sense that it's a vocal-based song, this one, whereas I've been doing a lot of instrumental synthwave recently. So you know that'll probably drive everyone into hiding who likes me, so you know. But no, it's good. I have released quite a few vocal ones before, but I haven't released one for a while. So it's a track that I was doing a collab with someone and they kind of disappeared and the track never happened, and so I revisited it myself and sort of rewritten it. But like, yeah, so it's good to have that coming out. So this should be out when you get to listen to this, hopefully it will be when this episode drops.

Marc Matthews: 32:43

It will be the Tuesday after the 27th of June, so, audience listening, I'll put a link in the episode description, and I myself am also releasing a track on the 27th Dark Light, dark Light actually, it's all one word technically and that drops on the 27th. Dark Light, dark Light actually, it's all one word technically and that drops on the 27th as well. I'm collaborating with a singer that I've worked with before called Indigo, so give that a spin, folks. Dystopian EDM with haunting melodic vocals and whatnot.

Tim Benson: 33:10

It's very haunting. It's cool With some trancy bits at the end. Yes, give that a spin. Thank you, mate.

Marc Matthews: 33:16

I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

Tim Benson: 33:18

With Indigo Synthwave, isn't it yeah?

Marc Matthews: 33:22

Yes, I've done a couple songs with her in the past. Very, very good, so quick. The turnaround is ridiculously quick. It's very professional, so good.

Tim Benson: 33:39

I have to say, my track uses lots of de of dsing, actually, because my vocals were really s-y. Because my vocals, for some reason, are really s-y, um, so, uh, yeah, that that's a good use of dsr. I also didn't do my best vocal recording 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 with lots of DSs. So there we go, there we go.

Marc Matthews: 34:00

What we should do is you should give the well, release, the stems for those listening to go and practice their DSing on your vocals.

Tim Benson: 34:08

You're not seeing my stems on this. They're terrible. Yeah, no, yeah yeah, so it came out all right in the end Nice.

Marc Matthews: 34:15

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, if you've got a song. If you've got a question again I said this at the beginning that you would like us to discuss on the podcast, click the SpeakPipe link. You don't need an account, you don't need a mic, we do. You need your phone, uh, but you don't need a special setup. It's just like sending an audio message record your question and we'll we'll have a chat about it on the podcast and give you a shout out. And you can also mention if you've got some release or something coming up. And and if you do not want to use speak pop, you can just send me an email or dm me on instagram at inside the mix podcast. So until next time, folks, stay inspired, keep creating and don't be afraid to experiment inside the mix. Goodbye, Tim, I'll catch up with you soon, buddy.