I've been working with a lot of sibilant vocal tracks lately. Been using Massey's de-esser a lot, and it works great (although I wish there was a Q control.) The other times when that's not cutting it and we're not pressed for time, I manually automate the volumes down on the offending sounds. This works the best hands down but it can be very time consuming...but it doesn't have to be...
I know Digi has a de-esser plugin, but sometimes you need more control. It'd be really cool if Digi implemented some kind of built-in de-esser function. I suppose this could be done thru an AU plugin (that could access the volume automation lane) or integrate it's functionality like the "strip silence" feature ("strip sibilance!")
Anyways, the algorithm would identify sibilant sounds and write volume automation to address them. There would be a threshold for detection (with a selectable frequency-boost sidechain,) pre-post roll, and amount of volume attenuation (could be ratio driven or flat.)
I know you can accomplish this task to a degree with several types of processors, but sometimes it's nice (necessary) to have more individual control over sibilant sounds throughout the track. Having a good visual starting point that a feature like this would provide would save me lots of editing time.
I filled out the request form suggesting this. If this is something you'd be interested in too, feel free to do the same:
http://archive.digidesign.com/support/forms/feature/
I know the Pro Tools software doesn't get nearly as much feature request attention as Reaper, but you never know! Thanks for reading!
