De-essing

De-essing (also desibilizing[1]) is any technique intended to reduce or eliminate the excessive prominence of sibilant consonants, such as the sounds normally represented in English by "s", "z", "ch", "j" and "sh", in recordings of the human voice.

De-essing is a dynamic audio editing process, only working when the level of the signal in the sibilant range (the ess sound) exceeds a set threshold.

Time-domain approaches, such as bandpass filters, are more suited to real-time applications such as live radio due to less constraint on digital signal processor.

A dynamic equalizer can be used to achieve the same effects as a de-esser, however, plugin manufacturers have tailored these tools to operate efficiently within the mid-high to high frequencies.

Because of this, attack and release times[clarification needed] are extremely important, and threshold settings cannot be placed as low as with other types of de-essing techniques without experiencing more blatant sound artifacts.

This method is made feasible by editing automation points directly, as opposed to programming by manipulating gain sliders in a write-mode.

An audio engineer would not be able to react fast enough to precisely reduce and restore vocal levels for the brief duration of sibilants during real-time playback.