Sonnox Oxford Supresser v3

The Sonnox Oxford SuprEsser was designed primarily to be the last word in ‘de-essing’ applications. While we worked on creating the best possible de-essed sound, we found that we needed more control than was available on conventional De-Essers. Most de-essing work can be carried out in ‘simple’ mode but sometimes, to do the job properly, it is necessary to utilise all the controls of the underlying engine — a full-blown dynamic EQ, or frequency- conscious compressor.

Thus a new concept was born — a simple and intuitive De-Esser, plus access to a much more sophisticated frequency-specific compressor, giving complete control over aggressive frequencies wherever they may be in the audio spectrum. With the Oxford SuprEsser you can take out unwanted frequency peaks as and when they occur — unlike applying a fixed EQ to the whole channel.

As a De-Esser, the Oxford SuprEsser is designed for the treatment of sibilance and fricatives in vocals, and the treatment of unwanted whistles and ’spirant’ artefacts associated with wind instruments. However, it can equally be applied to removing low-end plosives and thuds from over-close vocal work, without affecting nearby components in the frequency spectrum, keeping the low-end intact. For the most natural sounding results, the Oxford SuprEsser de-esses only the frequency band you select — so you won’t end up with an over-de-essed lisp- like voice with all the high frequencies gone!

Detailed visual feedback is provided by a highly intuitive graphical display, allowing quick identification of the frequencies that need treatment, and where to set the threshold. The threshold level and peak-hold level of the user-definable band are shown on the graph, alongside the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) display of the narrow band signal, which includes retention of the peak level and the frequency containing the most energy.

At the heart of the Oxford SuprEsser is an enhanced version of the compressor section of the Sonnox Oxford Dynamics plug-in, which is renowned amongst professional users for its consistent delivery of the precise and transparent control of peak signals. Around this is built a pair of crossover filters to make the compressor react only to the defined frequency band. These linear-phase filters are modelled on the filters from the Sonnox Oxford EQ, making the Oxford SuprEsser useful for precise mastering as well as mixing work.

Three listen modes allow the user to listen to the Mix, the output of the bandpass filter (Inside), or the output of the band-reject filter (Outside).

Careful thought has been put into making the Oxford SuprEsser extremely easy and quick to use. The screenshot on the title page shows the plug-in as it appears when first activated. Once the frequency band has been defined, simply lower the threshold fader until the gain reduction meter starts to kick in. The plug-in then automatically tracks the general signal level and the threshold follows accordingly, so that it gives the same relative amount of gain reduction as the signal level rises or falls. This is perfect for vocals where, for example, a vocalist is louder in the chorus than the verse, but you want to apply the same relative amount of de-essing, but don’t want to over de-ess in the chorus. This Auto-Level-Tracking mode lets the Oxford SuprEsser do all the hard work. It can also be switched off for a fixed threshold.

In its default mode of operation, the Oxford SuprEsser feeds the defined Band signal to the compressor to affect only this narrow-band signal. The result is that the compressor reacts only to specific frequency components when they reach a specific threshold, and applies compression only to these specific frequency components, leaving the rest of the spectrum untouched. Audio Wide mode can also be selected to allow full-band compression reacting to only specific frequencies, or any combination of Band and Wide defining when the compressor reacts, and what it compresses.

The Oxford SuprEsser comes complete with many presets to act as good starting points; alternatively, the advanced section provides full access to all controls for precise correction, or even creative use.