Oeksound is a new plug-in developer out of Helsinki in Finland. Their first plug-in release is Soothe which whilst originally designed as vocal processor, has been designed to give you an in control, vocal sound.

What Is Soothe?

Soothe is a dynamic equaliser with self-adjusting frequency bands. Unlike traditional EQ-tools, soothe has been designed to analyse the signal on the fly and adjust the frequency-wise reduction based on the input. This saves you from having to manually notch the problematic mid and high frequencies. The reduction kicks in when needed and where needed, without affecting the nearby frequency areas.

The team at Oeksound have set out to fix a range of issues not just for vocals, examples include...

• A vocalist with problematic sibilance recorded with a saturating microphone.
• Fingerboard noises on acoustic guitar and double bass tracks.
• Excessive whistling from the cymbal close mics.
• Overly bright electric guitar and piano tracks.

What Is Soothe Like?

It can be difficult to find a category for initiative plug-ins like soothe but the developers at Oeksound have used phrases like "advanced de-esser" and "automatic dynamic frequency notcher". Apparently, it even has presets for DPA lavalier microphones. At first glance, it seems to have similarities to the McDSP SA-2 Dialog Processor and it would be interesting to try the two plug-ins side by side to see if that theory has any merit.

Target Just What You Want

They have laid out the graphical user interface to make it easy to just target the areas you want, with control over the frequency range and sensitivity of the process. The frequency graph shows which frequencies are being processed. You can then choose to tweak the material for round results that sit well in the mix, or go over-the-top and find new sounds! The Delta switch enables you to see and hear the difference signal - what is being removed making it easier to fine-tune the parameters with confidence.

Okesound say that they have put several years on R&D to design a spectral process with minimum amount of artefacts. soothe is free from pre-ring, crossovers, and summing artefacts which they say can be found in dynamic EQs and multi-band compressors. The process has been developed to sound as natural as you like, with the option to add even more resolution and oversampling – if your CPU can handle it!

System Requirements

• Windows 7 and up as 32/64bit VST and 64 bit AAX.
• Mac OSX 10.7 – 10.12 as 32/64bit VST and AU, and 64 bit AAX, Intel-based Macs
• No dongle required. Online access required for the initial activation of the product and trial.
• One licence allows activation of the product on 3 machines. Licences are valid for both Windows and Mac OSX platforms.