Quote:
Originally Posted by Seldrums
De-Ess! (Came out yesterday!) http://www.airwindows.com/
Best De-Esser I've come across. I have yet to put it to the everyday tests but seems superior to all my other solutions. Love Chris's creations!
I contribute to his Patreon because I use his plugs all the time.
Give it a try. IMO, Airwindows is a best-kept secret. |
I have to second this one. DeEss should win the plugin of the year award, Chris is brilliant. Every other De-Esser on the market just a band-specific dynamic compressor in disguise (or not). I've always wondered why none of the big names could make a De-Esser that simply recognized the characteristics of sibilance and smoothed it out without stomping everything else in that area of the spectrum. I mean, you can easily spot it in a waveform and a spectrogram, so this approach was something that I thought someone would have implemented a long time ago. I really would have put my money on iZotope for that, but their De-Esser is pretty lack-luster, IMO. Prior to DeEss, FabFilter DS was the best one out there. FF DS seemed to work best because of its internal side chaining and visual feedback, so you could really just nail the offenders, but Chris' DeEss is absolute genius and was my introduction to Airwindows.
Is it just my setup, or do the Airwindows Mac VSTs not work in REAPER? They show up, but adjusting the sliders doesn't do a darned thing. I had to install the AUs, which work as expected.
I like a bit of ToTape5, too. I mostly do VO work, and I haven't discovered which of the Airwindows plugins can replace the other stuff in my FX chain yet, so much thanks to the OP for this thread! Obviously I'll have to figure out what he called his HPF and LPF and play with his compressors. ToTape5 makes it sound like I have a better preamp, but I'm sure he's got a nice tube emulator that might work better. Suggestions?
The only gripe I have about Airwindows plugins is that it's pretty hard to know what to do with them, right? Having just discovered this huge list of gems, it really helps to have some pointers as to where to start digging. Aside from VO work, I also produce demos and am venturing into more music production, so if there is an Airwindows plugin that will do something wonderful, I want to be sure and know about it!
Chris is a savant. The work he does is amazing. I've only had time to watch a few of his videos, but his explanation and illustration of how/why most limiters, HPFs, and LPFs create artifacts and how he got around that really gets you scratching your head about how these companies like Waves keep suckering people into buying their mediocre products. As much as I love FabFilter and think some of the stuff iZotope are doing is great, I can't quite figure out why they can't do what Chris does. And I can't figure out why we can't make him rich! I support him as much as I can afford right now, but my work is all for a charity that helps the homeless and helping to create affordable housing for families and the disabled. I plan to keep upping the ante as often as I can, though. We need to do this to make a point to companies like Avid, Waves, and NI who abuse their customers with mediocre products at high prices with draconian licensing schemes.
Now, if we could just get him to make a good De-Breather. Nectar 2 has the only one that was trustworthy as a set-and-forget for long form narration, and I think it's gone in Nectar 3. Everything else I've tried needs babysitting or it grabs stuff it shouldn't, and iZotope's RX Breath Control doesn't seem to work the same way.
Best kept secret is right, but we should make a point of getting people to support Chris' work, so spread the word! He's got to be the nicest guy on the planet!