Waves Sibilance: please add gain IN/OUT

Feature Requests
1

Short Version:
Please add Input Gain & Output Gain to Sibilance (preferably with a linked control.) Sibilance’s settings (and UI display) work a lot better if the volume is a higher level than many people record at.

Details:
I owned Waves Sibilance for years but didn’t have a lot of luck with it. It turns out my vocal levels were too low (for Waves Sibilance.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Sibilance was made in the 16-bit audio era where people ran their levels hotter. In the 24-bit era with the added headroom and lower noise floor, people eased back on levels – especially since most analog emulation plugins (including Waves’s) are calibrated to -18db = 0VU.

Either way, this problem would be easily solved with Input Gain + Output Gain knobs – especially with a linked control!!!

Once sibilance gets vocals at a higher level, it’s much easier to read the UI and the various settings become less finicky. It’s actually a fantastic de-esser, but it really needs a healthy gain to be able to dial in the settings to work well.

To use it now I need a gain plugin before and after it. That works fine… but it’s cumbersome.

PS. Some plugin companies are refreshing old products by adding Gain In + Gain Out in the TOP BAR of all their plugins (!). That’s something to consider, as I suspect other plugins may benefit similarly.

2 Likes
2

Just to follow up – an alternative to adding input/output gain would be a scale slider or knob that simply scales up the waveform in the preview area.

That would improve the usability of Smack Attack when dealing with a low level signal – without requiring any changes to gain.

3

You make a valid point here.

You’d thing a Gain In/Out would be standard these days, but its not always the case. Even the vertical zoom (scale) control would be appreciated in this instance.

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