Unfa did a whole video on DeBess… if you haven’t seen it, maybe it could help you correct your DeBess issues (or confirm them): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gigr5VVGlug
I use LSP (Multiband Compressor) for de-essing. Bit of a learning curve, but I love the LSP stuff now. I even got it work on Windows so I can go back and forth using the same plugins (necessary because sadly my RME Digiface doesn’t work with Linux).
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I’ll second the LSP multiband. Does the thing nicely.
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Hi @ardourwlk. In fact, that video acknowledge me about DeBess. I love how Unfa use x42 simple scope to visualize the effect of the De-Esser but I couldn’t. Ake it work nor hear the change. Perhaps is my mistake and I screwed up things somewhere.
@werner.back @eighty could you give me more details about it?
I just tried the DeBess plugin and a neat thing about that is the SenMon fader at the bottom.
If you set it to 1 you’ll hear what’s being removed, so if you do that, set Intensity to 0.3, Sharpness to 0.3 and Depth and Filter to zero you should be hearing mostly just the esses.
The AirWindows video on that plugin suggests that it works best with 44.1 or 48k material, so if you’re working with 88k or above it may not work that well.
https://www.airwindows.com/?s=debess
Indeed!! Thank you Peder… I’ve tested with Unfa’s De-esser stress test (or something like that) and I could clearly listen to the nasty “sss” being removed.
Some alternatives so far:
De-essers…
Airwindows-> DeBess
Harrison → XT-DS De-Esser
Workaround…
LSP → Multiband Compressor
Zam → Dynamic EQ
ZL-Audio → ZL Equalizer
Any other thoughts are welcome 
Do you really need a de-esser though? Is that the best approach for you (in the long term)?
- If you record with a good, clean microphone, you will not need a de-esser.
- With an SM58 (not my choice, not my recording) I have found using static EQ to correct for its frequency response curve gave acceptable (almost pleasant
) results. - With other microphones, that were really prone to essing, I was unable to achieve a good result with EQ or with de-essing.
But my expertise and time was limited. So I now try to avoid having to de-ess by sticking to recording with good microphones.
Hi @HuBandiT
That’s a fair question… I agree with you about being more careful when recording in order to avoid having to de-ess. Unfortunately, re-record it is not an option here so 
Nevertheless, I must assure that a De-Esser is a valuable and powerful tool to use when needed.
Well, yes and no. Getting the best out of the recording during … the actual recording is the path you should go, sure (GIRATS, as Joe Gilder would say).
For my own productions I can say: as soon as I put a compressor on the vocals, the sibilants usually become “amplified” and therefore I need a de-esser (still using the Calf one) to “work around” it. Just statically cutting down the highs with an EQ usually won’t work for me, because then the vocals would lose some clarity/brightness…
PS / fun fact: for recording the voice of my band singer, the SM57 just beats all other microphones that we have by an order of magnitude (SM58, OD505, MXL990, CM25 MkIII).
I agree about statically cutting down with an EQ @slash. Maybe a dynamic eq or a multiband compressor is a better approach but every music production is different so it’s better to have multiple tools.
Just to clarify, GIRATS means Get It Right At The Source and I think it’s the ideal situation to pursue.
As you already know, there is a problem with CALF plugins and their GUI (something related to GTK version). Have you consider another FOSS alternative?
Yup, heard of it. 
And no, so far I’m sitting it out, until KDE neon (the distribution I use) eventually does a rebase to Ubuntu 24.04, before I’m deciding for myself, what alternative to use…
Curious, did you pick up the Plasma 6 update? If so how did that go for you? Specifically are Ardour and plugins aside from Calf (especially LSP) OK?
I’m on Ubuntu Studio for my daily driver but one of my other machines is running Neon … I’ve been reluctant to take the latest updates to Plasma 6, at least until 6.1 is released.
Yes, I did. Initially I did have some “weird” issues on my PC. The biggest ones were:
- Plasma session not even starting => had to switch back from wayland to x11 (because of proprietary nvidia driver)
- weird flicker (which resolved itself after a minute, or so) after unlocking a locked screen.
Most of the “usability issues” are solved in the meantime, except that I didn’t try wayland again in the meantime. Only one (I’d say minor) issue is left, that sometimes (rather rarely), when switching between virtual desktops, I see an application window (e.g. dolphin), but can’t click on anything in it, unless doing an Alt-Tab first.
On my Laptop (Ryzen with built-in AMD graphics) I didn’t see this happen yet.
Regarding Ardour and LSP Plugins, I didn’t notice anything that broke due to the Plasma 6 upgrade…
What I also did recently was a manual upgrade of the dragonfly reverb package to the one from 24.04. The reason for this however had nothing to do with KDE/plasma, but with a bug that at least the plate reverb seemed to continuously build up noise until it became audible after 20 minutes or so…
HTH.
I’ve also been missing a good de-esser since Calf Plugins stopped working. Static EQ isn’t even an option for me here. Dynamic EQ can do the trick, but I’ve had a hard time getting it to. Multiband compression seems overkill to me. It quickly goes from doing almost nothing, to giving the singer a lisp.
The best I’ve found is the LSP broadband compressor. @novalix mentioned highpassing the sidechain. That’s the trick. Set a fast attack and release, HPF the sidechain up to around 5 kHz, set the threshold so it only compresses on sibilants, and set the ratio so it tames the sibilance but doesn’t give the singer a lisp.
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Thanks @darin1, nice HOW-TO comment. I think a good replacement for CALF plugin would be the Harrison De-esser. You can try it and use it with generic GUI for free
Please try putting the EQ before your compressor.
Furthermore, if you can provide some (unprocessed) samples (with a description of how they were recorded), I could try to see what you guys mean. @L_Pro you too, if you want, since you are the original poster.
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