DE-ESS

What it does

Takes the hiss out of every S: a band around FREQ is watched, and when it passes THRESH it is turned down by AMOUNT. For voices, and for anything with too much top at the moments it matters.

Start with THRESH at -24 and bring it up until the S stops lisping
FREQ 6 kHz for most voices; higher for a bright one

Where it goes

PADSINSTRUMENTS

Four to a socket, in order: sound runs through the slots top to bottom. Open the box and every knob is in real units; BYPASS takes it out of the path without losing its settings; the presets are along the top; any knob learns a controller and gets an automation lane.

The knobs

3 KNOBS · REAL UNITS

Knob	Range	Starts at	Scale
FREQ	3000 Hz to 10000 Hz	6000 Hz	log
THRESH	-40 dB to 0 dB	-24 dB	linear
AMOUNT	0 to 1	0.7	linear

The presets

0 IN THE BANK

Every box ships with a bank. AS SET is the knobs as you left them; the rest are starting points, each a sound someone wanted often enough to name. Star one and it sits at the front of the bank.

Preset	FREQ	THRESH	AMOUNT
No bank for this box yet.

The console line

Every box is also a line of the console's language, so a pad or a patch can carry its effects in text. The words are the knobs:

fx deess freq=6000 thresh=-24 amount=0.7

The rest of VOICE

FOR A VOICE

TUNE

pitch correction

Pulls the pitch onto the note

HARMONY

vocal stack

Voices above and below, in the key

DOUBLE

double tracking

A second take that never quite lines up