New Music Gear Monday: iZotope Velvet Intelligent Vocal Plugin

If you’ve been mixing for a while you know that a vocal or piece of dialog with sibilance could mean a struggle, often resulting in trying a few different de-esser plugins to find the one that works. Even then, it was never perfect, and you still ended up dialing in some automation to take care of some of the more egregious sections. One of the best things about the new generation of intelligent plugins is that they save a lot of time and this kind of grunt work, and a great example is iZotope’s new Velvet plugin.

Velvet is a multi-channel intelligent de-esser, tone adjuster, and de-clicker, all in one package. It’s a fact that sibilance normally occurs at more than one frequency, and Velvet has a 6 band dynamic EQ that automatically identifies sibilant frequencies and sets up intelligent EQ nodes for immediate de-essing. Just hit the Learn button, and the plugin does the rest. If you need any tweaks, you can adjust or add individual EQ nodes, scale all the nodes with a single Amount control, and change filter types.

More Than De-Essing

For tonal shaping, Velvet’s Lift and Tame controls allow you to shape the sound of the vocal without affecting sibilance. Plus, there are separate additional controls for the Lows, Mids, and Highs for further adjustment.

De-clicking is also a pleasant addition to the plugin as it can attenuate or eliminate any pops, clicks, mouth-noise and other accidental knocks and thuds with a simple fader tweak on the right of the plugin.

The user interface is divided into two separate lanes. The top lane shows all the controls for sibilance adjustment, while the bottom lane is dedicated to shaping the sound of the vocal. Also, there are over 50 presets that allow you to quickly dial in exactly what you need for almost any vocal, dialog, and even instrument situation.

Velvet is another entry into iZotope’s popular Catalyst series, with the intent being purpose-built, easy-to-use plugins that help you quickly solve difficult mix problems.

The best part is that it’s just $49 ($39 if you’ve purchased from iZotope before), which is a steal for a plugin as powerful as this one is. You can find out more here, or watch the video below.