So Using my ears I notice that whenever I have an instance of pro ds even when it’s not desseing anything seems to bring the leve down just a touch and also effect the quality, thinning it slightly, is it the look ahead? It doesn’t seem to be effect any level when I analyze the numbers but I’m not crazy and know what I’m hearing, I’m not talking about when the actual silibance compresson takes place, I can see an area where clearly nothing is being effected by the desser and In that area when I a/b(enable/disable)I notice the vocals are slightly quieter when enabled, has anyone else noticed this? I work so hard on my vocal chains coming in and after and really don’t need a desser effecting my entire recording even when not doing anything, maybe I’m crazy, can anyone shed some light on this?
I’ll definitely have to automate the bypass to only activate when actually triggering, which is gonna be a good amount of extra work
Maybe somebody knows something I don’t or can explain to me how it’s not possible that it’s doing this and I’m crazy
Try disabling ‘lookahead’ it seems to attenuate higher frequcies more when engaged. 1ms lookahead does not have much of an effect if you require a little lookahead. Please let me know if this helps.
alright so I did a few tests, and with the look ahead at 1ms its better but still noticeable to me at least, and even With look ahead disabled and oversampling at none for zero latency I can hear the desser effecting the vocal take, when solo’d it sounds like its making it tighter, kind of sounds ok or good on studio monitors solo’d but thats fools gold as its actually taking away a great deal of texture and juice, average person might not notice or care but I sure do, even with the threshold at 0(not inf) so there should be no effect the effect also takes place, funny thing is Ableton is able to pick it up slightly with a couple .10 of a Db but that is actually not the prob entirely as its just not making it a couple tenths quite but actually effecting the quality, I don’t need a desser effecting my vocal take just when running through it at all, going to just automate the bypass for now and only when it really needs it
thanks for always being a great help on here Paul
edit/add : dude I just tested it with the bypass engaged and the plug-in on and with the actual plug-in turned off and it sounds like even when the plug-in is bypassed its effecting it the vocal also, only when the plug-in is completely turned off you can hear it not effecting it, that super crazy, at least when I automate the on off button it doesn’t make a click or pop so I can just bypass that way
hmmm, I am not sure why it is doing that. Pro MB is good as a gentle de-esser perhaps give that a go. Personally, I prefer using clip gain and automating the volume instead of using de-essers, seems to give the most nature result for me. Of course quite time consuming. Another thing, do you have the latest version of Pro DS, might be worth an update if not, just incase it is a bug.
I actually haven’t updated but might, it’s not mentioned as bug fixes in the update description
The crazy part about all this is i wouldn’t have noticed prob if I just put pro ds in work flow wise as position in the chain, but what made me noticed is I had a finished track mixed mastered the whole Shabang and went back to put pro ds in and was like what the heck! My vocals sound worse, I think it has something to do with fab filter sound engine or whatever you wan to call it
After all this I did some comparisons with pro-q2 and equal from t-racks, which is like pro-q2 but for t-racks with the same boost and cut and wow, it’s not even close, equal sounds so much better and so much closer to the original sound as pro-q2 seems to make the sound feel cheaper, this beautiful bass patch from massive x sounded less clean/thrilling/accurately full with pro-q2 as opposed to equal, I am seriously going to stay away from fab filters stuff for the time being as I can mostly do everything with other companies, the whole desser thing really rubbed me the wrong way and after compareing pro-q2 I think their sound engine/playback is inferior
As far as dessing I think automating the clip gain is the best way also, do you just bring it down enough so it’s not so loud? cause I know if you go to far it sounds really unnatural or like a cuss word on a radio edit