If you’re a singer recording your own vocals in your home studio, you may have been told that your recordings sound “sibilant.”  What is ssssssibilianccccccce, you assssssssssk?  Today we’re joined by Fett, a Nashville-based producer/engineer and co-founder of Azalea Music Group, who will give us some tips for taming the beast we call sibilance.

What is sibilance and why is it a problem?  

Sibilance is an overly-pronounced consonant sound in a particular frequency range.  Typically you’ll hear sibilance on “s” or “sh” sounds. It can also be on the “t”, “d”, “ch,” and other consonant sounds, depending on the voice.  Some people are “super-Ess-ers,” and other people are “super-Tee-ers” - there isn’t a one-size-fits all.  It has a lot to do with the shape of the mouth, and other factors.

The most common source of sibilance in recordings, is inappropriate use of the wrong microphone for a certain singer.  

*Note from YOSC - take a minute to read that sentence again!  You may just need to change out the mic you use!*

This is critically important.  Almost every mic out there has what’s called a “presence peak” - they start with a flat frequency response, and will start to boost certain frequencies in certain ranges, and on vocal condenser mics, they do it so the vocal will pop out in the mix.  And it just so happens that the “s”s and the “d”s and the “t”s, and “sh”s are all in that frequency range.  So that’s the first problem - that in general, those frequencies are getting boosted along with everything else in a vocal range.  

But the other one is this: where that presence peak is, will vary by microphone.    For example, the Neumann U87 is a very popular vocal mic, and it has a very big presence boost at a fairly high frequency range in the vocal range.  The MXL V69, which is a tube mic, actually has that present peak much higher, up into what’s called the “air range,” like 10k and above.  So these two mics will emphasize totally different aspects of the voice.

What I tell people is, if you’re having a problem with sibilance, try a bunch of different mics and settle in on one that doesn’t emphasize - or de-emphasizes - whatever problems you’ve got, and the biggest one is usually the “s”s and “t”s.  That’s the engineer’s answer to the problem, that’s what we do in the studio, we change the mic out.  

Ok, what about if you have a home studio, and don’t have the budget to switch out mics, or you’re already working with one that you’re otherwise attached to?
The old-fashioned way used to be that you’d use EQ, and turn down the frequencies where the sibilance is.  The problem with that is most EQs work in a pretty wide range, and you’re bringing down a bunch of frequencies around the “s”s and “t”s and you dull out the vocals.  You still want the vocal to be bright and present, and you’re just trying to turn down the sibilance.  So this is the quick fix that only sometimes works.

The next thing you can do is narrow the band of the frequencies you’re cutting - that’s called “the Q” by most parametric EQs.  If you use a certain type of narrowing called a notch-filter, that’s the narrowest band you can get.  Sometimes that will work much better, and not cause any of the side-effects of a regular cut.  

At some point decades ago, they created a thing called a “de-esser.” They fed the vocal into a compressor that was triggered by those frequencies.  As soon as the compressor received those frequencies, they would be pushed down, and then fed back into the mix, hence “de-essing” the vocals.  Problem solved.   And nowadays, we can easily use a de-esser plug-in in our DAWs.  But even then, there are usually a few controls we may need to play with, because if you start to use too much of it, you “thtart to thound like thith.”  So you can adjust the amount, and you can adjust the frequencies, because there’s a general range for male voices and a general range for female voices, and then you start to individualize.  

This sounds helpful!  Is there a de-esser plug-in out there that’s considered “the best?”

 Well it’s ironic, I don’t really know if there is one out there that’s “the best.” I use Cubase, I’m very hot on Cubase, though I have used all the DAWs.  There is one built into Cubase, and 90% of the time it will get me - transparently - to where I want to be.  Almost every DAW nowadays comes with some kind of a de-esser - either a plug-in by itself, or a compressor with a de-esser setting, so you don’t have to go out and buy anything crazy.  I’ve also got one from Universal Audio - every now and then that will do a better job.  

And here’s a bonus with de-essers: they can also be used to fix finger squeaks on guitar recordings!

I have used Melodyne’s sibilance tool, what do you think about that?

There’s nothing wrong with doing that, and in fact, the way I de-ess typically, is a combination of using a de-esser, and turning down the volume on a particular (sibilant) part of a word.  And the reason I do that is because if I want to catch everything, I’m probably going to have the de-esser turned up too much.  And so it gets all the really bad sibilance, but the ones that don’t need such a dramatic cut will end up “thounding like thith.” So the de-esser can get me 90% there, but the rest requires some extra work.  And then I’ll go in, and I’ll usually just use volume automation to bring down the super sibilant sounds. 

That’s the other way I will cut the sibilance in my vocals.  

Yes, if you’re already running your vocal through Melodyne anyway, you can certainly work on the sibilance there.  But I have a very specific angle that I do the curve at.  Right at the beginning of the sibilant part I have a direct, instantaneous reduction, anywhere from, say, -3 to -10 dB,  and then a very gradual build-up right to the end of the sibilant sound.  If it’s a hard cut across the whole sound, you might have a new type of artifact to deal with.  So I may end up with a song with five of those in it, and the de-esser doing the rest of the work, smacking the shit out of every “s” and “t.”

So start with a de-esser, don’t set it too extreme, and then clean up the stray super-sibilant sounds with automation (or in Melodyne)?

Yes.  Now here’s a little secret.  The time that you’re taking to go the extra mile with the clean-up using automation is the difference between a good mix and a great mix.  All of the difference is in the fine detail.  I’ve been doing this for 40+ years, and there will be times when I have 40, 50+ automations on a track.  I learned from a very famous Nashville engineer named Bobby Bradley, and he would sit at the console at Bradley’s Barn with the lyric sheet in front of him.  And after listening to a few takes, he could anticipate the sounds that needed adjustments, and he would ride the vocal, moving the faders to create automation data.  And the vocal would never lose focus all the way through the song, without ever having obvious volume changes or artifacts.  It reached out, grabbed you, and held you in that exact spot for the entire song.  I inherited that from Bobby, and I do every song that way.  That’s something people say about my mixes, the vocal is always “right there.”  And that’s largely through automation. 

One of the most important things you can do with a singer is pay attention to the ends of the phrases, where the volume often drops.  Well, it’s that little drop at the end of the word that contains so much essence of the nuance of each individual’s vocal delivery.  So you’ll see me drawing in little up-dips at the end of certain words - especially in a ballad with long-held notes, I’ll get it so they might sound like they’re whispering the word in your ear, but it’s totally natural, it doesn’t sound like it was boosted with a machine. That’s the magic of that extra mile!

 Thank you Fett, this has been both enlightening and empowering!

Sibilance I say this to you now!

Would you like to learn more from Fett, or have him record your next song?  Did you know Fett offers an incredible twice-yearly “Empowering Women in Audio” course?  Find out about it all at: http://azaleamusic.com

Fett is an independent music producer and engineer, published author, music career coach, and co-founder of the Azalea Music Group in Nashville.  He helps artists and songwriters reach their fullest sonic and emotional impact with the recordings he produces, and also teaches them how to do it themselves.  Fett is the former Technology Editor for Performing Songwriter magazine, author of the popular book “Fett’s Mixing Roadmap: A Step-by-step Guide To Mixing Music In The Studio” and occasional journalist for CMA Close Up, Drum! and Keyboard magazines.  His diverse list of clients includes Davy Jones of the Monkees, Grammy-winning songwriter Don Henry, and international guitar virtuosos Tommy Emmanuel and Muriel Anderson.