When your voice gets recorded or broadcasted through a microphone, it oftentimes emphasizes the harsh tones that occur when you make certain sounds with your voice. In particular, sibilant consonants such as “s” and “z” are overemphasized through a microphone and create tones that are unpleasant to listen to. You don’t want to drive viewers away because it hurts their ears every time you say words like “snake”, “sand”, or “zebra”.
Thankfully, minimizing those unpleasant tones can be done through a de-esser. You can set one up in OBS within a matter of minutes with the help of this guide. Kudos to Atomic Overdrive for almost all of this information, as I followed their guide while trying to resolve my sibilance issues and am largely adapting their knowledge in this post. However, I will try to add any extra insight I have to make this a more complete guide for you, including where to put the de-esser in your processing chain.
Follow along and let’s make your voice even more pleasant to listen to by adding a de-esser in OBS!
In Third Person 