Sonible pure:deess Plug-In — A Mix Product of the Week

New York, NY (March 20, 2025)—De-essing falls on the utilitarian side of audio signal processing. It’s a task that’s frequently necessary but doesn’t engender much excitement or creative satisfaction. Therefore, any tool that makes it easier, such as Sonible’s new pure:deess plug-in, will likely find a welcome place in any processor collection.

Pure:deess is the latest addition to Sonible’s Pure Bundle, which features plug-ins designed to provide signal processing with simple controls, such as pure:eq, pure:comp, pure:verb and pure:umask. The company also offers plug-ins with deeper controls in its Smart Bundle.

Pure-deess utilizes artificial intelligence, employing an AI engine trained to recognize and reduce sibilance. Operation is simple: Insert the plug-in on the vocal track, hit play and press the (Re-) Analyze Voice button. The plug-in homes in on the sibilant frequencies, analyzes the attributes of the voice—including the phonetic content—and creates a custom setting. If needed, you can then fine-tune the de-essing with several adjustable parameters.

The Color parameter provides three choices for processing the sibilant content. Sonible describes them as follows:

• Soft: Produces smooth, unobtrusive sibilants, reducing harshness while maintaining a natural sound.
• Balanced: Preserves the natural tone of sibilants while correcting only problematic resonances or spectral imbalances.
• Sharp: Enhances clarity and presence, making sibilants more defined and articulate.

The Suppression parameter controls the amount of reduction applied and is controlled with a large dial in the center of the resizable GUI. When set low, the plug-in will reduce only the loudest sibilants. As you turn it up, the reduction gets applied to progressively more of the detected sibilance.

The third adjustable parameter is called Shaping. Using a scale of 1 to 150, it controls the intensity of the spectral processing, allowing for control over the tonal character of the detected sibilants.

Pure:deess also provides visual feedback in the Signal History, a waveform display that shows input and output signals, detected sibilants and applied gain reduction.

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Additional features include a button for soloing the sibilants to hear what’s getting detected and a Bypass button for easy on/off comparisons.

Sonible Pure:deess is available for Mac and Windows in VST, AAU and AAX formats. You can buy it for an introductory price of $29, or purchase it with the complete pure:bundle for $99. The introductory pricing ends April 14, after which pure:deess reverts to its regular price of $49 and the bundle to $169. Find out more on the sonible website.