TWEAKING THE ESS

Sometimes when you brighten up a vocal or filter it you accentuate the hard consonants as well as the ess sound. In the case of the ess sometimes a de-esser doesn’t quite get it or it takes care of some and not others. That’s when you turn to the volume window. Once you identify the offending sounds and zoom in you might lose them at high magnification. The ess sound will look like a lot of tightly grouped jagged waveforms as in fig.1, whereas a hard consonant will be shorter and fewer jagged edges as in fig.2. You can always confirm by scrubbing over them.
You may have to be dramatic in the amount of level you remove. The accompanying examples have been dipped almost -10db which may seem like a lot , but in context they sound quite natural. As always use your ears to judge how much volume reduction you need. This technique can help your VO stand out in a sea of Sound Design and Music and reduce those annoying hard sounds that can rip your listeners ears off. Keep it smooth.