Hannes Andersson of oeksound On soothe2
oeksound is a company based in Helsinki, Finland, which invented the plug-in soothe2 – a dynamic resonance suppressor. At oeksound, they create new tools for the modern needs of music producers, allowing them to focus more on the music and less on other problems. oeksound was founded back in late 2016, with ‘soothe’ being its first product launched on the market. Being the first of its kind, soothe quickly became popular with top mixing and mastering engineers all over the world. We contacted 27 years-old Marketing and Promotions Manager of oeksound, Hannes Andersson, to get a better understanding of how this plug-in works. Hannes has been writing, producing, recording and mixing music for over ten years and uses soothe2 on a daily basis.
gigmit: Hi Hannes, how are things in Finland?
Hannes Andersson: Being based in Finland has its perks, as we reacted quite early to the Coronavirus crisis and took it seriously. Our population is highly educated and we trust our government and have few problems following regulations. As personal space is almost considered holy here, social distancing is no problem. At oeksound we are used to working remotely so the change has not affected us that much.
You are a digital native?
oeksound, and our products, have never existed outside of the digital world. There has never been a hardware unit capable of doing what our products do. So we are basically digital natives. We are excited to see so many more creators join us in understanding the capabilities of the digital world where the only limit is our imagination. We connect, collaborate and learn from each other and this results in new approaches in music that no one has ever heard about before.
A lot of people are currently recording themselves at home in a less-than-ideal environment. Can you help them out?
By training your ears and learning how to use EQ, Dynamic-EQs, De-Essers and Multiband Compressors you can make these recordings sound great, but this takes time and focusing on manually correcting stuff often kills creativity, which might result in you never releasing that song everybody needs to hear.
Now here’s where your dynamic resonance suppressor soothe2 comes in…
That’s right! I use soothe2 on a daily basis. It’s a great tool for automatically correcting harshness, sibilance or mud in a mix. The default preset works well for vocals, and with a little tweaking you can make it fix a multitude of problems without spending too much time finding frequencies and adjusting thresholds, ratios and bandwidth.
Sounds like I don’t need an expensive microphone anymore?
I do a lot of songwriting sessions where we record vocals or instruments with our iPhones to get a more raw sound and then throw them into the DAW. You can make them sound quite good with soothe2, and I’ve even made a preset for it!
How does the music industry react to this innovation?
This is the best part of my job. As a producer, I get to reach out to my own idols, the best engineers in the industry and ask them for feedback about our products. The first version of soothe was already a big success with engineers like Greg Wells (The Greatest Showman, Katy Perry, One Republic) and Chris Shaw (Weezer, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow) praising it on forums. The list is endless now but includes Michael Brauer, Josh Gudwin, Ian Kirkpatrick, Ilya Salmanzadeh, Alex Tumay, Jaycen Joshua (google them): they all use soothe. And a lot, too.
With all the feedback we gathered from our users we managed to improve soothe in almost every aspect, adding features while making it even easier to use and to get good results. The plug-in community is so great because we love talking about plug-ins. I personally always ask for a second opinion on plug-ins if I’m not sure, and I always try before I buy.
That’s why you have this special offer, right?
Yes, of course! When you download soothe2, you get to try it for 20 days without any further limitations. So go ahead and mix that song and release it, we won’t stop you.
What soothe2 Can Do
soothe2 works wonders on anything from sound design and post-production to the most demanding of mastering applications. As a dynamic resonance suppressor it identifies problematic resonances on the fly and applies matching reduction automatically. This results in a smoother, more balanced sound and saves you from having to find and notch out those frequencies manually. The reduction kicks in only when and where needed without affecting the nearby frequency areas. This preserves the timbre of the original sound source and results in transparent treatment with minimal artefacts. With soothe2 you can:
- Remove harshness from close mic’d sound sources
- Transparently manage sibilance in vocals and dialogue
- Treat uneven tonal balance from cheaper microphones
- Clear muddiness, boominess, and proximity effect
- Soften overly bright guitar and piano recordings
- Tame piercing synth sounds
soothe2 saves time and effort. It is equally on individual tracks and on busses.
Benefit from digital innovations!
Download now the oeksound plug-in soothe2 HERE and keep on discovering the digital age of booking on gigmit.com
