Soothe 2 – How To Instantly Clean Up A Muddy Mix ⌛
If you’re struggling with muddy mixes, Soothe 2 might be your savior.
In a nutshell, Soothe 2 identifies problematic resonances and applies gain reduction automatically.
Need to give your vocals more clarity? Too much muddiness in your bass? This is what Soothe 2 was made for!
Although it might sound complex, the process is surprisingly straightforward. In this guide, we’ll cover:
- What dynamic resonance suppression is
- How Soothe 2 works under the hood
- The main parameters of Soothe 2
- My favorite application of Soothe 2 ��
So let’s get started! And if you’re already convinced, you can grab Sooth 2 here.
Note: dynamic resonance control is quite an advanced topic. So if you’re just getting started with production, this might not be the guide for you. �� However, I have tried to make it as digestible as possible. Before diving in, ensure you are familiar with the concepts of EQ’ing, stereo imaging, and ADSR.
11 unique sounds, courtesy of soothe2 ��
Download our soothe2 Sample Pack containing 11 creative FX sounds , from artefact-laden drums, to retro-style synths, and more ��
soothe2
Soothe2 is a dynamic resonance suppressor. It works by analyzing the incoming signal for resonances and applies reduction automatically. Soothe can be used on individual channels, busses, and in mastering.
It is recommended that you read through the manual to understand all the details around Soothe. Alternatively, you can use the interactive tutorials in the plug-in or this quick-start tip if you want to get right to it:
2. Quick start
- Start with the default factory preset and turn the depth up until you notice that Soothe attenuating too much. Then, back off the depth setting slightly.
- Adjust sharpness to suit the input material – less sharpness for more general processing and more sharpness for targeting more specific resonances.
- Press delta to turn ondelta monitoring feature.
- Use the nodes on the frequency graph to focus the processing. Boost a frequency area until you hear the resonances you want to take out.
- Turn offdelta monitoring and find an optimal depth value.
- Use bypass to evaluate the result of the processing.
3. Parameters
3.1. Main section
Soft/hard mode
Soothe defaults to soft mode, which is usually easier to use and faster to set up. It is more transparent, preserves transients better, and generally causes fewer artifacts. The soft mode is less level-dependent and is often better suited for tracks with a wide dynamic range.
Hard mode is more level-dependent, powerful, and tweakable. It can be easier to overuse and may take more time to set up, but it can be necessary for material with prominent resonances. For example, when soothing a close mic’d guitar cabinet, the soft mode might not produce adequate results. In those cases, using the hard mode is a good option.
Note: Selecting a mode changes the behavior of the parameters and is relative to the mode. I.e., a depth of 3.0 in soft mode will not behave like a depth of 3.0 in hard mode.
Depth
Depth controls how much processing is applied to the signal: more depth results in more reduction. You can think of it as the sensitivity or threshold for the processing. Adjust the depth always according to the input signal, even when using presets.
The numeric depth value does not represent the absolute amount of reduction in dB, which is shown in the frequency graph.
Depth has more range than what is usually needed. This is to open up possibilities for creative uses. Cranking the depth all the way up can result in up to 60 dB notches that will mangle the sound source beyond recognition.
Sharpness
Sharpness controls how deep and narrow cuts Soothe makes. Higher sharpness results in deeper and narrower cuts. High sharpness values can be beneficial for sharp resonant audio material like drum overheads. Low sharpness values can be good for addressing general energy build-ups both in individual instrument channels, busses and master channels.
If a high sharpness in soft mode doesn’t reduce the resonances enough, you can try lowering the sharpness and switching to hard mode. Note that an overly high sharpness can introduce unwanted artifacts, making the signal sound distorted. The resulting distortion is noise, and non-resonant residue in the sound material as the process removes all the resonant frequencies in a very surgical manner.
Selectivity
Selectivity determines how selective Soothe is about what resonances to suppress. Selectivity acts as a threshold. With a higher selectivity value, only the most prominent resonances are cut. This is a good setting for targeting specific spot frequencies in instruments such as string and wind instruments. A lower selectivity value means, Soothe is less selective and cuts almost all resonances. This is a great way to make the uneven material sound more balanced.
For de-essing, the optimal selectivity value depends on the nature of the sibilance. For noisy, more broadband esses, a lower selectivity value is recommended. A higher selectivity value may work better if the esses are more of the whistling or lisping type.
The main controls – soft/hard mode, depth, sharpness, and selectivity – are interdependent, so changing any of them might require adjusting others.
3.2. Stereo section
Stereo mode
Stereo mode toggles between mid/side and left/right processing. All related stereo controls follow this setting. The left/right mode with a low link setting usually works well on source material with hard-panned elements. Mid/side mode with the link at 100% is a good starting point for any complex stereo material. The stereo image typically gets wider when lowering the link setting in mid/side mode.
Stereo link
With the stereo link at 100%, Soothe will sum the channels for analysis and apply the same processing to both channels. When the link is set to 0%, Soothe will act as dual mono and process each channel individually.
Stereo balance
Adjust balance to control how much processing is applied to each channel. When you want to focus the processing on the left channel, you can turn the balance rotary to the left. The text box below shows 100% for the left side and less for the right side – and vice versa. This works equally for the mid/side stereo mode.
Note: For more information on different balance settings, see the diagram of the processing pipeline.
3.3. Speed section
Attack
Attack determines how quickly the processor reacts to resonances. A high attack value results in a slower response and vice versa, similar to compressors. The attack value is displayed as a referential constant, while the actual response times are frequency-dependent. The attack speed is always relatively faster on high frequencies.
Release
Release determines how quickly the notches disappear after the corresponding resonances have disappeared. Like the attack value, the release value is displayed as a constant but is frequency-dependent. Low values result in a fast release, and high values in a slow release.
Increasing the release value can be used to avoid possible processing artifacts, as fast-moving, adapting filters can create audible phase distortion when doing drastic cuts.
3.4. Quality section
You can increase spectral oversampling and time resolution in the quality section. The left-hand side value refers to the selected real-time oversample value, and the right-hand side value to the selected real-time resolution value.
The asterisk (*) indicates that the offline settings differ from the real-time settings. Open the quality controls by clicking the selected quality settings’ label.
Oversample
Oversample calculates the reduction filter in a higher frequency resolution. Higher values offer better frequency resolution for the processor to distinguish resonances. This can be necessary when working with low frequencies. Higher oversample settings give you smoother results when using high sharpness values.
Resolution
Resolution adjusts the resonance detection’s refresh rate and filter updates, resulting in a smoother response in the time domain. Using resolution in high or ultra can be beneficial with material that has lots of transients or complex waveforms, such as drums, busses, harpsichord, or grand piano. Using resolution on eco roughly halves the CPU usage. However, this can introduce artifacts if the material’s frequency content varies a lot over time.
Note: For both oversampling and resolution, the higher settings can be extremely demanding on the CPU!
Offline rendering quality settings
Use the dropdown menu on the right-hand side to change the offline rendering settings. These settings override the real-time settings when the plug-in host reports it’s doing an offline rendering. All major DAWs should support this functionality.
With this, you can first adjust Soothe with higher quality settings. When you’re happy with the results, you can drop the real-time rendering quality to save the CPU while bouncing at the desired quality.
The offline settings include “same as real-time (default) and “copy to all instances” in addition to the standard real-time quality settings. The first refers to using the real-time settings for offline rendering. With the latter, you can set all of the project’s Soothe instances to use the same offline settings as the current instance.
Note that offline rendering settings go together with presets. Loading a preset might change the instance’s offline rendering settings.
Lock quality settings between presets
Lock the quality settings to keep them unchanged when changing presets by toggling the
lock icon. This lets you set your preferred quality settings while browsing through different presets.
3.5. Sidechain
You can route an external input into Soothe and use it for resonance detection by toggling on the sidechain. Click the
headphones icon to listen to the external sidechain input. Sidechain is only in use when the
on/off icon is lit. The details on routing an external sidechain key signal to a plug-in depend on the DAW you are using.
You can, for example, use a hi-hat channel as the sidechain input to a snare track to control the hi-hat bleed to the snare channel. You can also set up your session with the lead vocals going to a separate bus from the rest of the material and carve out space for the vocals by using them as the sidechain key input for the rest of the material. You can combine the sidechain settings with the mid/side stereo mode to settle vocals in the stereo image.
When the sidechain key signal is routed to Soothe, with the sidechain enabled, the reduction and visualization are based on the sidechained signal.
Sidechain input delay compensation
Soothe requires the main and sidechain inputs to arrive in sync for the sidechain to work as intended, and proper delay compensation may be necessary. The DAW handles the bus routing delay compensation.
You can find up-to-date information about per-DAW delay compensation on our website: https://oeksound.com/support/daw-delay-compensation
3.6. Output section
In the output section, you can adjust the monitoring and levels of Soothe.
Adjust the wet-dry ratio using the mix setting. When the mix is at 100%, only the wet (processed) signal comes through the output. When at 0%, only the dry (unprocessed) signal gets to the output. You can, for example, apply heavy processing with Soothe and then mix some dry signal back in for more transparent results.
Note that the reduction graph visualizes the processed signal. Lowering the mix value will result in shallower notches in the graph. The maximum reduction in decibels is shown when adjusting the mix control or hovering over it.
Delta
Delta is the difference between the dry and wet signals. Toggle delta on to monitor the part of the signal Soothe is removing. Delta helps you understand which frequencies are affected by the current settings, much like boosting a frequency with an EQ can help you know what to cut. Delta can also be used as an effect by leaving it on.
To lock or unlock your current delta setting, right-click the delta toggle. Locking the delta setting keeps it unchanged when changing presets. You can use it to compare the delta of different presets quickly.
Bypass
Bypass is a soft bypass for quick A/B comparison without glitches that some DAWs might introduce when bypassing the plug-in from the host. Please note that Soothe continues to compute the output, so bypassing using this control won’t save you any processing power. To disable the plug-in, you should always deactivate it from the host.
4. Frequency and reduction graph
Soothe has a real-time reduction graph — the blue area in the figure on the left — showing the parts of the signal being reduced.
Use the colored EQ nodes to shape the sensitivity curve – shown in white in the figure – to control which frequency areas are processed. ‘Boosting’ specific frequency areas, or a band, reduces resonances more in this area. The curve can be thought of as an inverse EQ or a sidechain EQ. The process doesn’t strictly follow the curve; rather, it’s more sensitive to the frequency areas that are ‘boosted’, and less sensitive to the frequency areas that are ‘cut.’
Adjust the band parameters by dragging the nodes on the frequency graph or by using the knobs in the band controls. Or use the mouse wheel or scrolling gestures to adjust the nodes or knobs. Different adjustment options are available in conjunction with modifier keys. A detailed run through of them can be found in the section modifiers.
4.1. Band types
Soothe has five bands used to adjust the curve: a low cut, a high cut and four (yellow, orange, red, purple) general-purpose bands. The low and high cut bands offer different steepness slopes which to choose from. The general-purpose bands can be switched from peaking type to several different types:
Frequency Sidechaining With Oeksound soothe2
In this article, we apply the often overlooked Sidechain feature of soothe2 to a breakbeat mix. We’ll use it to make the vocals and kick pop out admidst the harmonic elements and subby low end. This might just be the sidechaining secret weapon we’ve been waiting for!
Last month, we looked at soothe2’s features and applied them to the stems in a deep house mix. As a quick recap, soothe2 is a resonance reducer that detects harsh frequencies across the spectrum. It reduces these frequencies in real-time and you have control over how wide the cuts are, attack and release times, depth and more.
The workflow of Oeksound’s notorious resonance suppressor usually sees producers apply it to stems in a mix and select areas to smoothen via the EQ nodes.
The Sidechain input feature (which was introduced as a new feature in soothe2) ducks the fundamental frequencies and harmonics of the Sidechain input. This allows for extremely surgical frequency separation and is one of the fastest methods for sidechaining that we’ve ever seen!
When a track combines harmonic elements playing simultaneously, frequencies will overlap which can reduce clarity in the mix. This often leads to mixes not translating well, particularly on lower-quality speakers such as a laptop or phone. And sadly, many do test music just from their iPhone so it’s worth thinking about it.
In this tutorial, we’re going to add soothe2 to the harmonic elements of a track and use the Sidechain feature to open up space for the vocals. We’ll also look at some of its other uses as we progress.
As ever click any image to enlarge.
Here’s the full mix with soothe2 active:
Here’s the same mix with soothe2 bypassed:
The results are subtle so we highly recommend listening on good headphones or studio monitors to hear the differences!
Sidechaining With A Harmonic Group
We’re going to look at the track as three elements; the harmonic parts, the vocals and the drums.
Let’s group all of the channels with harmonic elements. In our example that is the pad, the plucky melody and a synth lead.
Here’s how they sound together:
And here’s how they sound with the vocals:
We’ll insert soothe2 onto the harmonic group. Next, we’re going to select the Vocal channel in the list of sidechain inputs for the plug-in. We’ll then enable Sidechain in soothe2 and look at exactly where frequencies duck.
You can see below that soothe2 is ducking frequencies across the full spectrum. We can choose which frequencies the algorithm pays attention to by simply focuses dragging the nodes to the desired position.
We’ll focus on the high-mid 700Hz area and the high 4k region. We’re also going to change the algorithm from Soft to Hard. This will make the cuts slightly harsher.
Here’s how the vocal and harmonic stems sound with soothe2 active:
All three of the harmonic parts have lots of frequencies and harmonics in common with the vocal part. This overlap causes frequencies to clash or even cancel each other out.
Sidechaining groups to vocal channels is an efficient trick to create space and let the vocals’ key frequencies shine through. This process would also apply if you had a synth melody instead of a vocal part, for example.
The cuts in the image look unfeasibly large but soothe2 is a surgical plug-in. This means that the quality of audio stays high, even with large cuts.
Don’t Forget The Snare!
Snares and claps also have many high frequencies in common with vocals.
As before, we’re going to use soothe2’s Sidechain on the snare-clap hit. We can see where the fundamental frequency of the hit is by clicking on a node, enabling Listen, and scrolling through the spectrum.
It looks to be at 3.5k so let’s drag the node upwards above that frequency area.
Here’s how the kick, clap and vocals sound without soothe2:
Here’s the same combination with soothe2 active:
You can hear that the clap’s high frequencies roll off when the vocals are active.
Traditional Kick & Bass Sidechaining With soothe2
Lastly, we have a low kick drum competing for space in the low-end. We can solve this problem with some good old-fashioned kick-bass sidechaining.
We’re going to insert soothe2 on the bass channel and select the kick’s channel as the sidechain input. We can immediately see that the majority of ducking occurs around 170Hz. We’ll increase a node at this point to intensify the cut. We’ll also tweak the release parameter to ensure that the cut is disappearing at the exact same time as the kick hits.
Here’s the bass with soothe2 bypassed:
And here it is with soothe2 active:
You can immediately hear there is far more punch from the kick. This is because the frequencies where it would normally compete are now ducking. You can do this kind of sidechaining with any compressor. However, soothe2 is incredibly smooth and furthermore, it’s useful to see the exact frequency and only make reductions in the necessary regions.
Comparing With & Without soothe2 Mixes
Now that we have all necessary sidechain processes set up, we can make a comparison using the whole mix.
Here’s how the full mix sounds with all instances of soothe2 bypassed:
And here’s the mix with all soothe2 plug-ins active:
This technique has lots of applications and one could even experiment with more intense settings for sound design purposes!
Frequency Sidechaining With Oeksound soothe2
In this article, we apply the often overlooked Sidechain feature of soothe2 to a breakbeat mix. We’ll use it to make the vocals and kick pop out admidst the harmonic elements and subby low end. This might just be the sidechaining secret weapon we’ve been waiting for!
Last month, we looked at soothe2’s features and applied them to the stems in a deep house mix. As a quick recap, soothe2 is a resonance reducer that detects harsh frequencies across the spectrum. It reduces these frequencies in real-time and you have control over how wide the cuts are, attack and release times, depth and more.
The workflow of Oeksound’s notorious resonance suppressor usually sees producers apply it to stems in a mix and select areas to smoothen via the EQ nodes.
The Sidechain input feature (which was introduced as a new feature in soothe2) ducks the fundamental frequencies and harmonics of the Sidechain input. This allows for extremely surgical frequency separation and is one of the fastest methods for sidechaining that we’ve ever seen!
When a track combines harmonic elements playing simultaneously, frequencies will overlap which can reduce clarity in the mix. This often leads to mixes not translating well, particularly on lower-quality speakers such as a laptop or phone. And sadly, many do test music just from their iPhone so it’s worth thinking about it.
In this tutorial, we’re going to add soothe2 to the harmonic elements of a track and use the Sidechain feature to open up space for the vocals. We’ll also look at some of its other uses as we progress.
As ever click any image to enlarge.
Here’s the full mix with soothe2 active:
Here’s the same mix with soothe2 bypassed:
The results are subtle so we highly recommend listening on good headphones or studio monitors to hear the differences!
Sidechaining With A Harmonic Group
We’re going to look at the track as three elements; the harmonic parts, the vocals and the drums.
Let’s group all of the channels with harmonic elements. In our example that is the pad, the plucky melody and a synth lead.
Here’s how they sound together:
And here’s how they sound with the vocals:
We’ll insert soothe2 onto the harmonic group. Next, we’re going to select the Vocal channel in the list of sidechain inputs for the plug-in. We’ll then enable Sidechain in soothe2 and look at exactly where frequencies duck.
You can see below that soothe2 is ducking frequencies across the full spectrum. We can choose which frequencies the algorithm pays attention to by simply focuses dragging the nodes to the desired position.
We’ll focus on the high-mid 700Hz area and the high 4k region. We’re also going to change the algorithm from Soft to Hard. This will make the cuts slightly harsher.
Here’s how the vocal and harmonic stems sound with soothe2 active:
All three of the harmonic parts have lots of frequencies and harmonics in common with the vocal part. This overlap causes frequencies to clash or even cancel each other out.
Sidechaining groups to vocal channels is an efficient trick to create space and let the vocals’ key frequencies shine through. This process would also apply if you had a synth melody instead of a vocal part, for example.
The cuts in the image look unfeasibly large but soothe2 is a surgical plug-in. This means that the quality of audio stays high, even with large cuts.
Don’t Forget The Snare!
Snares and claps also have many high frequencies in common with vocals.
As before, we’re going to use soothe2’s Sidechain on the snare-clap hit. We can see where the fundamental frequency of the hit is by clicking on a node, enabling Listen, and scrolling through the spectrum.
It looks to be at 3.5k so let’s drag the node upwards above that frequency area.
Here’s how the kick, clap and vocals sound without soothe2:
Here’s the same combination with soothe2 active:
You can hear that the clap’s high frequencies roll off when the vocals are active.
Traditional Kick & Bass Sidechaining With soothe2
Lastly, we have a low kick drum competing for space in the low-end. We can solve this problem with some good old-fashioned kick-bass sidechaining.
We’re going to insert soothe2 on the bass channel and select the kick’s channel as the sidechain input. We can immediately see that the majority of ducking occurs around 170Hz. We’ll increase a node at this point to intensify the cut. We’ll also tweak the release parameter to ensure that the cut is disappearing at the exact same time as the kick hits.
Here’s the bass with soothe2 bypassed:
And here it is with soothe2 active:
You can immediately hear there is far more punch from the kick. This is because the frequencies where it would normally compete are now ducking. You can do this kind of sidechaining with any compressor. However, soothe2 is incredibly smooth and furthermore, it’s useful to see the exact frequency and only make reductions in the necessary regions.
Comparing With & Without soothe2 Mixes
Now that we have all necessary sidechain processes set up, we can make a comparison using the whole mix.
Here’s how the full mix sounds with all instances of soothe2 bypassed:
And here’s the mix with all soothe2 plug-ins active:
This technique has lots of applications and one could even experiment with more intense settings for sound design purposes!