0557 – Mic Muck-Ups Solved!: Sibilance

2022.07.11 – 0557 – Mic Muck-Ups Solved!: Sibilance

Sibilance

This is ‘too much’ (whatever that is) of an ‘s’ sound, and in our line of work the pitch of that sound can be picked up and exaggerated by the microphone (and different types of mic work better with different kinds of voices, picking up different frequencies better), and with podcasts can go right into someone’s ear.

There is some fix for the problem (if indeed it is a problem – some may reasonably say that sibilance adds character to the voice and what is too sibilant to one person is not to another), of recording a voice which has a lot of hisses in it or is very ‘essy’. You may be able to reduce the problem by having the mic to one side of your mouth so you are not speaking into it or indeed across it.

It’s an issue well-recognised, so much so that audio programs often have a ‘de-esser’ function built in. De-esser https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/the-dos-and-donts-of-de-essing.html

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