It only features a handful of controls, such as Center Frequency, Band width, Attenuation, Threshold, Release, Look Ahead, and a wideband and low pass filter, which makes it an ultra-simplistic plugin to use and one that is ideal for beginners.
The plugin has been carefully designed to suppress any artificial or alienated sound that may arise under awkward situations with some other DeEssers. It is a basic high frequency dynamic processor VST plugin that is designed to get rid of “stinging” sibilants that may occur on vocals after compression or adding that high-end boost. Here’s a table with the ones I like the best (more still available on this list): Nameįor quicker and easier navigation, you can always use the table of contents below to navigate to the desired section.Įven though it’s quite normal to EQ your vocals to make them brighter so that they sit well in a mix, sometimes this boost can accentuate the “s” and “z” sounds, also known as sibilance, and this is where a plugin like the Tonmann DeEsser comes in.
Now, in this article I will list both free and premium de-essers, as well as give you my top 3 choices right at the end, simply to make things a bit easier. If you don’t know what a De-esser does then here’s a post I wrote that explains just that!
Other declippers aren’t any good, possibly with the exception of Audition, which I have not tested.De-esser plugins are essential not only for making any vocal track sound professional but also to tame the harshness on almost any other tracks in your mix like hi-hats, cymbals, and even in the mastering phase. The other mentioned waveshaping and dynamic compression/expansion plugins aren’t really declippers, and may help on some very specific audio samples with fine tuned settings. Stereo Tool can repair longer gaps than RX. If the defect is severe, and sounds like tape dropouts, then the resynthesized waveform will remain bad in a different way, and sound dull somewhat like MP3. Light clipping, which can be heard as harshness, fuzz or distinct clicks, can usually be repaired almost perfectly. If the frequency makeup was intentionally compensated for subsequent clipping, the processed sound may become noticeably unbalanced after declipping. The GUI is demanding on CPU resources.īoth RX and Stereo Tool have their applications.ĭeclippers will restore the amplitude of whatever fundamental tone was in the instrument before clipping, and can result in significantly more bass in instruments such as kick drum. Stereo Tool needs significantly more lead-in context, to settle the detection, and doesn’t work on short selections. An important parameter is Tilt Detection, which is on by default, and in my experience leads to the plugin ignoring clipping unexpectedly. The program has a lot more options, which can be used to constrain or relax detection of clipping. This results in more processing to the sound. It aggressively expands the loudness of drums. This program can automatically detect clipping at varying amplitude levels, for example, if several clipped sources have been edited together, as well as soft clipping that is not perfectly flat anymore. Version 2 of the plugin is available in DirectX format, and all of them also as VSTs to be called from audio editors that are more ergonomic than RX itself.Īnother good option is “Stereo Tool” by Hans van Zutphen. The declipper has remained almost unchanged throughout versions 2 to 5. The plugin works very well on short samples or selections audio can be processed repeatedly without errors accumulating. RX does not make any attempt to extrapolate clipping of non-tonal percussion sounds.
The plugin is unlikely to make the sound worse, since it affects only samples with level above the set threshold, and the rest are passed through untouched. “Izotope RX” is very good at removing clipping and is relatively safe to use on a wide range of programs.