# Please help with de-sser.

**URL:** <https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/please-help-with-de-sser/48588>\
**Category:** New Plug-Ins\
**Created:** [March 16, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/please-help-with-de-sser/48588 "2018-03-16T18:59:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 14

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**Author:** ![steve](https://forum.audacityteam.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@steve](https://forum.audacityteam.org/u/steve)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2018, 1:23pm UTC](https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/please-help-with-de-sser/48588/14 "2018-03-26T13:23:36Z")

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> [@steve](#):
>
> The way I would approach this would be to create an amplitude follower using “snd-avg” ([http://www.audacity-forum.de/download/e](http://www.audacity-forum.de/download/e) … l#index494) This is a little bit tricky because you need the envelope to precisely match the timing of peaks in the audio and “snd-avg” is always looking ahead to the next block of samples. To get synchronization it will be necessary to offset the envelope by the length of “blocksize”.
> 
> Then I would clip the envelope so that only those parts above the threshold remain, and scale the envelope to a range equivalent to the amount of attenuation required.
> 
> The envelope can then be used as a control signal for “eq-band” ([http://www.audacity-forum.de/download/e](http://www.audacity-forum.de/download/e) … l#index351).

Here’s a plug-in that I’ve put together based on the above description.  
I’ve only done basic testing, and don’t have a good selection of sibilant speech recordings to test with, but from limited tests it seems to work reasonably, though a bit fiddly to set up. Previewing the “Residual” (the “S’s”) helps, as does checking the frequency response in Plot Spectrum.

I’ve commented just about everything so that you can see what it’s doing and how, so hopefully it will be a useful starting point for your own plug-in.  
[de-esser.ny](https://forum.audacityteam.org/uploads/short-url/yytmdpYlw8fDBYg7MMtdiAL2l3A.ny) (2.87 KB)

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