oeksound soothe2 1.3.3 — Mac version

The 1.3.3 update tidies up a couple of annoying host glitches and adds a handful of new presets to get you started faster.

Dynamic resonance suppressor — a plugin that identifies harsh, ringing frequencies in real time and pulls them down only when they stick out. It works a bit like a sidechain EQ that listens and reacts constantly.

Hard mode — for stubborn problems like string squeaks or piercing vocal esses. Cuts deeper without pulling the whole signal apart.

Soft mode — for gentle shaping. Useful on a full mix bus or an already decent recording that just needs the edges taking off.

Stereo processing modes — you can apply the suppression to the mid and sides separately, or just hit the main stereo channels. Handy when a problem lives mostly in the centre, like a nasal voice-over, or in the sides, like a splashy cymbal wash.

soothe2 works across music, voice-over, sound design and final mastering. Chuck it on a single troublesome track or across a group — it adjusts to what's there rather than applying a fixed EQ curve. The manual spells out the finer details, but the basic idea is simple: it makes one sound sit more comfortably without carving out the bits you want to keep.

Dial sharpness down to tame hollow body resonances

Out of the box, soothe2 does a lot right — but the defaults assume a middle-of-the-road mix. A couple of quick tweaks make it fit your track faster.

• Sharpness. Dial this down for broad, boxy resonances (think hollow acoustic guitars or muddy room mics). Push it up for narrow rings — dodgy snare overtones or a glockenspiel that won't quit. Start low, sweep up until the display shows the spike you're chasing.
• Selectivity. This controls how much the plugin backs off when the signal is busy — higher values mean it only grabs the real standouts. On a sparse vocal, lift it so the compressor's natural tone doesn't get flattened. On a dense bus, ease it back so nothing slips through.
• Delta monitoring. Click the delta icon (headphones symbol) early on. Hearing only what soothe2 is removing tells you straight away if it's working on the right stuff or chewing into the body of the sound. Switch it off once you've confirmed.
• Stereo link. If you're taming a hard-panned element — say, a shaker out wide — unlink the channels so the suppression doesn't bleed across and dull the other side unnecessarily.

De-essing a vocal from start to finish

Here's a practical walk-through for the most common job people reach for soothe2 on: taming sibilance without the robotic lisp of a traditional de-esser.

1. Insert soothe2 on the vocal track — after corrective EQ but before compression. That way the dynamics downstream aren't reacting to harshness you're about to remove.
2. Loop a phrase with a couple of hard "S" and "T" sounds. Set Sharpness quite high (around 8-10) and watch the display — you'll see jagged peaks in the 4-9 kHz region lighting up as the esses hit.
3. Enable delta monitoring to hear only the removed signal. Adjust the Depth knob until what you're hearing is mostly sibilant splash, not the meat of the voice. If whole syllables are disappearing, back it off.
4. Disable delta, switch between bypass and active a few times. The vocal should feel smoother, less spitty, but still present. If consonants sound dulled, nudge the upper processing band down a touch so it leaves the air frequencies alone.
5. If a particular "ess" still pokes through, automate a tiny depth bump for that moment — or, on a really stubborn phrase, toggle Hard mode just for that section.

The whole process should take under two minutes once you've done it a few times. Soothe2's value here isn't speed, though — it's that you're not painting a static EQ cut over the whole performance. The plugin only moves when the problem does.

• Fixed playback overloads when opening the GUI in Logic.
• Fixed automation issues after modifier-key parameter clicks in Pro Tools.
• Added a few new factory presets.
• Minor fixes and improvements.

• macOS 10.14 or later
• Intel or Apple Silicon Mac
• VST, AU or AAX host