Ice Pick to the Ear: How to Deal With Sibilance in Your Dialogue

Owww! Grimace! Wince! Those painful "S" and "T" sounds in words that jump out of your speakers are called sibilance and they can hurt!

It can actually be painful to your listener when not reined in properly since it's in and around the frequencies that our human ears are most sensitive to.

Look for the problem to spike in one or more spots somewhere between 3000 and 10,000 Hz (Hertz).

Sibilance can be a real barrier to your voice recording sounding professional and coming through clearly to your listener.

It has always been a problem in any voice recording (for podcast, voice-over for video or sermon audio), not to mention full mixes and masters, that I've ever worked on.

So how do we soften that blow to our listener's ears and subdue the sibilance or de-ess?

Sculpt Your Sound

The approach that has worked for me with the nagging problem of sibilance in my voice recordings is to think of the processing like sculpting.

Since dealing with sibilance can sometimes be like whack-a-mole (it keeps popping up), I usually take the approach of attacking it over and over.

Thinking of your recording like a sculpture means that it needs to be carved, shaped and refined.

So you can knock off some bad sounding sibilant areas and then tame and bring down those same areas again if you hear them sticking out too much down the line.

Don't be afraid to deal with the same spots over and over until they're tame.

Typically, I'll record my voice into a channel strip with the EQ already set to reduce my sibilant area at 4.6 kHz a bit from the start:

• see group of 3 knobs with blue lines below where I'm cutting -1.5 dB.

Then, I'll de-ess some more down the line using a de-esser plug-in after doing some earlier processing steps like de-noising or removing mouth smacks in iZotope RX.

Usually, I'll end up having to de-ess once again in the mastering stage as the recording gets compressed and EQ improvements are made!

Take Listening Breaks Often

Do, however, note that when you're doing extended listening to sibilant areas you can quickly fatigue your ears.

You may be listening back and forth to see if your de-essing has helped, but silently your ears are starting to tire...

Our ears will adapt to what we're listening to and it will start to be difficult to make accurate decisions about how much to de-ess your recording.

In my experience, my ears get super sensitive to the sibilant areas if I haven't taken a listening break.

In that situation, I'll tend to go too heavy handed on the de-essing (killing some of the lovely top end frequencies that you need for clarity in your spoken word recording).

Reputable sources mention taking a 10 minute break to rest your ears every hour of audio production work you're doing.

After resting your ears for 10 or 15 minutes, you'll notice how much easier it is to make production decisions (like how much to de-ess).

Restarting your listening session, with well rested ears, is when you should trust your production moves the most.

Make a decision and move on while the ears are fresh!

Tools of the Trade

So what do we use to tame those harsh, sibilant areas in our voice-over recording?

The most common tools are de-essers, EQ's or dynamic EQ's and they work in different ways:

• A de-esser will mostly affect just that general problem area that you tell it to affect without touching the lower frequencies of your audio...
  
  
• This action from the de-esser happens when a certain threshold is exceeded (you would set the threshold where you need it to be).
  
  
• A regular EQ will cut the problem area along with any good frequencies unless you define a very narrow area for it to work in only.
  
  
• A dynamic EQ's strength is that you can pinpoint very accurately only the areas you want to reduce AND it won't cut unless a certain threshold is exceeded.

Generally, the de-esser and the dynamic EQ will give you better (i.e. more transparent) results by reducing just the sibilance and leaving the good parts alone. 

For a complete step by step guide on how to de-ess with a de-esser or a dynamic EQ:

• Check out my free Voice Recording Problem Solving Guide (and see Problem 1: The Piercing "S" on page 3).

Start Saving Your Listeners' Ears!

Do yourself and your listeners a huge favor by getting sibilance under control in your audio for video, podcast or sermons using the three steps above.

Becoming confident in de-essing your voice recordings will remove a huge barrier toward your audio sounding professional.

Remember to sculpt your recording by removing sibilance whenever it crops up in your production process.

Next, rest your ears frequently to make the best decisions in your audio production.

Finally, use a dedicated de-essing tool to remove the distracting and sometimes painful problem of sibilance.

Have YOU used these techniques on a recent voice-over recording?

How did they help with any sibilance?

Cheers, Bryan
Your Dialogue Editing Mentor