Vocal "s" emphasis...not a pretty sound!

[buzzsmith]

Hi, everyone!

A client/friend of mine likes to record his vocals at his own place at his leisure, and then bring them over on a CD which I load into DP, align them up and off we go.

However lately, I'm noticing his off-site recorded sound is not as clear, and there's some "splashiness" with "sh" syllables and overall "s" sounds and not quite the warmth that I know he has in his sound.

He's got great gear (Neumann 147, Avalon VT-737SP, Apogee Rosetta A/D converter and a Roland VS 1824CD purchased thru Sweetwater a couple of years ago. He's definitely not into the technical side of things, but over the phone we've reset his Roland to factory (in case he had somehow engaged some hi freq EQ), and verified that the Avalon's frequency controls were bypassed.

He lives quite a distance from me, so personally going to his place to check things out would be difficult.

He swears nothing's changed in his approach, but something is amiss...his vocal recordings are now not of the quality that you would want to continue with...not his performance, but the sound.

Anyone have any ideas? (replace tubes, etc.)

I did send him a post I found, I believe, at Digi, to see if this may help...

From member...

De-Essing

Change the mic angle . . . the ess sounds come from below the mouth. Try this . . . hold out your hand in front of you. Say "P" really pronounced and you'll find the the wind of the "P" will hit your hand square on. No say "ess" and you'll feel the wind of the "ess" hitting your wrist or below the wrist. That explains to me why some of the metal grill pop filters might actually make the "ess" worse. So have the mic above the singer's mouth aimed down toward their face, instead of below their their mouth aimed up at the face. Also keep in mind tonality. Typically placing the mic below their mouth makes the sound more "trebly" while placing the mic above their mouth makes the sound a bit more bassier. I have been in situations where even with the mic placed at a significant distance and above the mouth of the artist, the "ess"'s were still there. Mic placement / technique and de-ess. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound in cure.


Thanks!

=buzz=

[David Polich]

If he "was" sending you good tracks recorded with the same setup, and they've taken a turn for the worse lately, I'd say it's most likely the angle of his vocal mic.

90% of the time I find that moving the vocal mic up above the singer's mouth (so that the diaphragm is pointed at about the middle of their nose) fixes the sibilance (your "ess" and "shhh" problem). The singer should then have to sing "up" into the mic.

If that doesn't help, there's always de-essing. The Waves De-essers plug-ins are very good, I use those constantly. You can also configure a compressor plug-in to de-ess, and many compressor plug-ins have a "De-ess" preset which you can tweak further to accomodate your particular situations.
An added suggestion - try rolling off the high end with EQ - start by rolling off at 8khz. I've even rolled off at 6.5khz with some vocal tracks - some singers just have a ton of high frequenbcy content in their voices.

[buzzsmith]

Thanks, David, for your reply!

I'll forward this to him, as well.

I believe he has an engineer coming by his place soon just to verify that everything in the chain is still set "right".

As I mentioned, he's very non-technical, so between having a pro checking out his gear and rethinking his mic placement, perhaps he can get back to the vocal quality he should be getting.

=buzz=

[BradLyons]

I have several De-Esser plugins, the best is in my Forte plugin but that is ProTools only. The next best, IMHO, I have to agree with Dave and the Waves De-Esser...VERY good!

[giles117]

The Best De-Esser Plug in WAS The SPL De-Esser. Too Bad SPL, nor steinberg bothered to update this past OS 9.... I Loved using it in DP 3

I had the Hardware Unit as well. It DeEsses Via Phase Cancellation, which sounds way better than compression. IMHO.