Why I Now Use Soothe2 On Everything
Wondering if Soothe2 is worth the hype? Read on for a real world review of the Soothe2 dynamic resonance suppressor plugin from Oeksound.
Why I Now Use Soothe2 On Everything
Soothe2 first popped up onto my radar at some point in 2020. A fellow engineer of mine asked if I had tried out the updated Soothe to which I replied, “I don’t know what that is.”
I’m almost certain he scoffed at me and then responded with, “I can’t say enough good things about Soothe2. Using it is almost like cheating. I highly recommend you try it out.”
I confess I did not jump online to download it that day or even that week. However, when I finally pulled the trigger on it I was shown almost immediately what all the hype was about.
What Is The Soothe2 Plugin?
Nope, it’s not the title of a new Kenny G instrumental chord book, so if that was your guess you lost this round. Soothe2 is a dynamic resonance suppressor made by Oeksound. Soothe 2 actively and automatically applies reduction in what is essentially real time to target frequencies.
It boasts the ability to do this without affecting any of the surrounding frequencies, which yields a smoother sound. To be clear, Soothe2 is not a Compressor or an EQ so keep that in mind.
At first thought Soothe2 sounds almost too good to be true. There are a bunch of plugins and services on the market that claim to automatically do “something” to your tracks which makes them better. For example, a quick internet search will provide you with a number of websites that use an algorithm to master your songs in a matter of minutes. Many of these services and wonder plugins are, for lack of a better term, snake oil. They don’t deliver on what they promise and aren’t worth the time or cost.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Soothe2 is one of those plugins that does exactly what it claims to do. Not only does it do its job, but it does it extremely well. Reduction kicks in based on the parameters you set and only on the target frequencies. This leaves you with a clean and balanced sound, which is transparent and does not sacrifice timbre.
The interface is simple to use and comes with a ton of great presets, making it even easier to correct trouble areas quickly and get quality sound out of your project. Soothe2 can help tame harshness, clean up low-end muddiness, soften bright sounds and wrangle tonal balance.
You can use Soothe2 on individual tracks, on a bus, or even in the mastering phase.
Now that we’re all caught up to speed, I’d like to talk about one of the many ways I’ve successfully utilized this plugin to resolve an issue.
That’s An Awful Sound?
While working on mixing a beat tape for a client I came across an issue I am no stranger to but often find beyond frustrating. The client provided individual stems for every instrument except the drums. In place of tracks consisting solely of kicks, snares, hi hats and the like, I was given a single wav file containing the entire drums section. Whenever I receive files like this I always ask the client if they can provide things more broken down. If they cannot (which is often the case) then I simply treat the drums file as though it was a drum bus.
In this case I quickly discovered the drums file contained a sound I did not care for at all. After listening to it soloed a few times and then looking at it via a spectrum, I determined the issue to be somewhat within the kick itself. More specifically, the very end of the kick sample made a sound at around 2700kHz and around 11000kHz that was basically awful. Initial instinct is to go in with an EQ, isolate those parts of the frequency range and pull down the gain until the sound becomes more manageable.
This may have worked fine if the kick was on a track all by itself, but unfortunately it wasn’t. Doing that to this particular drum track would only slightly tamed the sound and result in making that entire section of the drums too quiet.
Option two is of course to manually cut out and appropriately fade each and every time the kick makes that sound. I personally hate this option because it is tedious. I also hate this going this route because you can and will run into other issues you’ll need to solve, such as the noticeable difference of room tone between each clip.
On top of that the client had a pretty small window of time in which they wanted the project finished, so I decided to put Soothe2 to the test.
Is Soothe2 Worth It?
Within literally 30 seconds of loading the plugin on the drum track, I was already hearing drastic improvement. I will point out that I used Soothe2 enough prior to this time to be at least partially familiar with it.
Having already identified some pretty specific problem frequencies, I started by setting the frequency parameters to focus on those. What’s great about this is that you can make the selection as wide or tightly focused as you need it to be.
Then I ensured the stereo mode setting near the bottom left corner was set to Mid |Side. Along with that, I set the balance more towards the Mid since the majority of the drum track was in the center with very little sound making its way to the sides.
Next, I started adjusting the Depth. The higher the depth setting the more reduction is applied. I like to turn it all the way up to start with then slowly dial it back until I’m happy with what I’m hearing. This method may not work for everyone, so do not take this as a stone rule.
You can choose to work in Soft or Hard modes. While Hard can be useful, Soft will give you much more transparent results.
One of my favorite features on this thing is the Delta option. If Delta is engaged, you only hear the sound being removed. After a few other minor tweaks I selected the Delta mode and sure enough there was that pesky sound I’d been trying to eliminate. This took me less than two minutes total.
The best part of all is that it applies reduction when it is needed and only when it’s needed. In the case of my drum track issue, when the harshness at the end of the kick showed up I could clearly see and hear the corrective reduction happening. When the snare and hi hats followed, the plugin let them roll right on past like an Atlanta airport security officer on a snack break.
Final Thoughts on Soothe2
Soothe2 continues to save me a bunch of time and headache during editing and mixing, which leaves me more available to focus on other aspects of a project. Overall, Soothe2 is an incredibly useful tool. It is super user friendly, functional, quick, responsive, right at home in numerous situations and just straight up impressive.
As it turns out my friend was right: using it almost feels like cheating. Tasks and issues that could take hours of fine-tuning using other methods are resolved rapidly and leave behind amazing results.
If you’re interested in trying out Soothe2 for yourself, they offer a free trial version download here with essentially everything you’d get from the full version but tied to an expiration date.
In my opinion, Soothe2 is worth every single penny Oeksound is asking for it and belongs in every audio engineer’s toolkit.
