De-essing is the process of reducing the sibilance in vocal recordings. These bursts of high frequencies are primarily produced by the letter ‘s’ (hence the name), but can also be created by ‘t’ and to some degree ‘f’, ‘sh’ and ‘ch’.
Sibilance is at its worst when close miking and there are various tips and tricks you can use to reduce it at the recording stage. Nevertheless, here we’re focusing on mixing and we’ll assume you have some existing sibilant vocals that need sorting out.
Often when you first hear a vocal, the sibilance is not that obvious. However, once you start compressing it or boosting higher frequencies to add air and sheen, the sibilance gets magnified and becomes a
