In Praise of MOTU's De-Esser

[Killahurts]

Just finished mixing a vocal record.. de-essers are usually problematic for me, because they always seem best when used post whatever processing is on the vocal. Well, that means that the de-esser better be a transparent one, because you don't want to have to compromise the sound after you fought hard to EQ, compress, and whatever.

I have a few tools available for curing sibilance disorders, but my new favorite is MOTU's own De-Esser. You know a tool is powerful when you first turn it on and it's way, way too much. I love that. I can turn someone into a Castilian with the push of a button! Seriously, the parameter set is truly complete, and when it it is set up correctly, it is transparent to my ears. Any of you guys used it?

[dpdan]

ironically, I have never even tried this plugin,
ever since I parted with my analog DBX 902 de-essers, I have never been happy with any other de-esser, but you have piqued my interest with your post and I will give it a try,
thanks!

[mhschmieder]

It's actually very advanced, and quite transparent.

I mostly use de-essers to de-harsh cymbals and hi-hats, to de-harsh poorly recorded electric guitars (usually from sessions I wasn't in control of), and occasionally (though artifacts are hard to avoid) for DI bass tracks to improve their low end response. For those purposes I usually use Sonnox, as Fabrice Gabriel never ported Eiosis plug-ins (other than Air EQ) to 64-bits.

The MOTU De-esser, however, did pretty well on stringed instruments last week -- better than a lot of de-essers I've bought that weren't exactly free. Sony is the main one that has earned its keep; the others are mostly disappointments, but MOTU's surprised me when I brought it up in a session the other day as I had forgotten it's either rather newish or a redesign of an older MOTU plug. It's of a similar quality to the Dynamic EQ plug-in.

[EMRR]

Yep, and as I've said other places, if it's not a vocal usage, compare against the dynamic EQ plug, usually one or the other will be the obvious winner.

[Killahurts]

Yep, and as I've said other places, if it's not a vocal usage, compare against the dynamic EQ plug, usually one or the other will be the obvious winner.

Dynamic EQ is another great plugin!

[mhschmieder]

FYI Eiosis has announced a re-release of their de-esser at NAMM today.

I haven't the time to look at it in depth, but the GUI looks entirely different from the old 32-bit version.

I do hope it works as well and has similar functionality and algorithms, as I have yet to find a de-esser that does as good a job as that one does on certain tasks (such as de-harshing hi-hats). Now that I use ribbon mics on cymbals, it's less of an issue though.

It wouldn't surprise me if the new GUI was inspired by MOTU's de-esser, based on a quick casual look.

I suspect the MOTU de-esser will still find itself being used, even alongside Eiosis, as MOTU really took a unique approach to theirs.

[mikehalloran]

I suspect the MOTU de-esser will still find itself being used, even alongside Eiosis, as MOTU really took a unique approach to theirs

Reading this thread, I'm looking forward to playing with it this weekend. There's this old project…

[Basstrup]

MOTU de-esser is one of best around. Also even you use it on the vocal track itself add another instance on an aux track before a verb, can help a verb sound smoother...

[stubbsonic]

That's a cool tip. THANKS!

Putting a de-esser with some look-ahead on a reverb input could allow some more "open" settings on the reverb's spectrum.