Sibilance is a de-esser that reduces harsh “ess” and “shh” sounds precisely without altering the timbre or brightness of the voice.

Unlike most de-essers, which act like narrow-band compressors, the Waves Organic ReSynthesis engine breaks the sound down into core elements such as carrier and envelope and reduces only the components that create sibilance – other components stay untouched, even those with high frequencies. This preserves the timbre, duration and resonance of the voice even with heavy de-essing, and you can still add brightness with EQ if needed. Set the width narrow for ess transients or wide for shh sounds, choose the frequency range with Mode, and watch the de-essing overlaid on the waveform in a real-time graph. Sibilance suits vocals, dialogue, voiceover and podcasts, and includes a zero-latency version for live performance.

Features

• Organic ReSynthesis removes harshness and keeps brightness
• Retains the original vocal tone, even with heavy de-essing
• Detection width for ess transients or longer shh sounds
• Selectable frequency range from wideband to split-band
• Graph shows where and how much de-essing occurs
• Zero-latency version for live performance

Technical details

• Operating systems: Windows, macOS
• Plug-in formats: VST3, Audio Unit (macOS only), AAX
• Architecture: 64 bit
• Licensing: licence key, machine-bound or USB flash drive (via Waves Central)

System requirements

• macOS 14 Sonoma, 15 Sequoia, 26 Tahoe or 27 Golden Gate (Apple silicon or Intel)
• Windows 10 64-bit (version 22H2) or Windows 11 (Intel or AMD, x64)
• 16 GB RAM
• 30 GB free disk space on the system drive

The licence is registered with the manufacturer at https://www.waves.com/downloads/central. You will receive your serial number and the download link by e-mail immediately after purchase.