I'm working on remastering this track where the nasty "sandpaper kshhhshshhshshhhhh effect" has me stumped (sound clip shows the problem). How would you fix this, if re-recording isn't an option and there are no stems?

Tried finding the resonance with narrow Q cuts, and it somewhat helps but it's not at a single frequency. The sandpapering partially goes away with narrow cutting, but takes most of the music with it too, deadening the high end. Tried de-essers, with pretty similar results, same for dynamic EQ.

If you know of a better way to deal with this kind of crap, please let me know. The soundcloud clip is a downloadable WAV if you want to have a go at it.

 

hi my friend,i know you already said you tried de-essers,but have you already tried fabfilter Pro-DS ?
if yes,maybe try this :
https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/bx_refinement.html

 

The vocal sibilants are already roasted and that 80s TC Helicon reverb is already baked into the track pretty hard. It doesn't sound too bad, but if you wanted to alleviate the presence of that sibilance this is one of those cases where a multi-band compressor and D-EQ can get some honest work in.

You are basically going to build you own multi-band de-esser.

 

Last edited: Nov 29, 2017

Maybe try Roland R-Mix or similar apps (iZotope RX, etc) that allows you to trace, edit, and minimize/remove that unwanted sound.

Some example of usage..

 

use analog modeling of tube, tape and transistors stacked up where each is barely doing anything
it will build harmonics and then afterwards be able to smooth out.

 

You can build a deesser based on phase inversion yourself with as many broad or narrow bands as you like: Aux send, phase invert, bandpass. If you don't want it to be active all the time just add a gate or a downward expander.
The best method I know.

 

Last edited: Nov 29, 2017

OP. are you doing this for someone? could they send you alternate vox takes? Hopefully not already mixed & ̶v̶a̶n̶d̶a̶l̶i̶z̶e̶d̶ ̶ processed -- "widened" (mono it to see what I mean) + verb/mayo.

The t in come true. Look at it.

 

Thanks a lot dudes,for all the responses. You gave valuable ideas, and I wanted to share how the problem was finally tackled.

The winsome technque for killing the sand was to use Zynaptiq Unchirp, followed by multiple instances of OD DeEdger, tuned to narrow bands where remaining elements of the "sandpaper" were sitting.





Unchirp is designed to reduce the effects/artifacts of audio codecs and the warble left behind by FFT processes like denoisers, however I used it with success to attack the buzzy HF component of the stuff I needed to get rid off. If you configure the bands as shown and crank the "Sync" param way down, it does a decent job of isolating the nasty buzz, and removing it. This naturally results in a loss of HF clarity, so it's necessary to then tune Treble and especially the desired Drry/wet Mix for the best compromise.

DeEdger is a type of ess and harshness suppressor which I selected because it automatically does nothing unless it detects harshness in the selected "work band", and is much gentler than my previous deesser/dynamic EQ approach was. The sand was typically prominent just above 10k, and then I went down to 5k, 2.5k etc, adjusting the bandwidth of the processor down as I went and tuning intensity to taste for each band. After about 3-4 instances in chain, I got a palatable result where the sandpaper was dramatically reduced. It's still there but doesn't make the track unlistenable anymore to me.

This approach proved powerful and flexible, I've used it several times now when faced with this type of problem. Here's the final result for you to enjoy, hard to believe that's what I was able to bring out from the same damaged source file I shared in the original post!

 

Interesting appraoch and total unknown to me. Thanks for sharing this with us!

 

Deedger is not deharsher or deesser, it is mostly attack/transient smoother, dehardener, suppressor. It works for selected frequency but in time domain, smoothing short choks and ticks. It is not like Soothe or new Ozone Spectral shaper

 

Thanks mPm, I did not know that about DeEdger. Man, it's an obscure thing, even after reading the manual and all the "tip" pages about it, I still didn't have a clue what it's doing. For example, I would never have thought of using it to get rid of clicks. Going to have to try that out.

Any links where more indepth info about it could be gleaned?

 

TDR say it reduces hardness...Hardness is a so subjective term.

 

That's a creative approach, nice!
I would have chosen a much simpler path: Use a harmonic exciter matching the voice well and use a little filtering/EQ to fine-tune. The "sandpaper" effect apparently comes from attenuated higher treble range.
In fact, the way you've used Unchirp supports my suggestion.

 

Last edited: Dec 12, 2017