Excellent, thanks Floyd.

Yes, yes, yes, manual de-essing is the best option and, as you wrte, becomes easier once one becomes familiar with the visual representation. I've been using the spectral visual representation in Reaper recently as it makes the esses and plosives even easier to pick - and the visual cues when editing in with PreFX Volume automation make that side of things even easier, (the reduced esses lose yellow & red as they are de-essed).

I have a couple of bits of Alesis Micro gear that are still good value and the comp/limiter is part of my bass signal chain.

The high shelf so popular these days seems to be a result of a million YouTube heads banging on about adding "air". they neglect to mention adding "air" accentuates essing and triggers artefacts when combined with reverb. I notice the Waves/Abbey Road stuff has high & low shelf stuff and buys into that as well. Perhaps with tape it was the case that such things worked pre Dolby. In fact I was listening to a chap talking about how he likes to engage the Dolby A encoder but disengage the decoder because it adds ..you guess ed .."air".

You are a singer...you have a wonderful voice/instrument with full knowledge of that instrument and how to use it. Your set up reflects that and your mic technique reinforces that you've absorbed that understanding.

As I'm not a singer and have almost no control of my voice I use a VERY heavy compressor in the box: Modern Deathcore, (no nothing like the music genre but it does "colour"),...it does a good job of levelling my vocal - doesn't remove the need for level automation but makes it easier.

I also need to carefully EQ my voice as there are two or three sections in the freq. range that are VERY weak and another that is quite strident regardless of the mic used. (recently I had a fairly really good result with a dynamic mic ...I was doing a quick audio jot for a song and didn't bother setting up one of the three condensers in the drawer...less sensitive may be the way I need to go).

As mentioned, excellent outline of a signal chain that REALLY works REALLY well.
Thanks. I've renewed impetus to review what I'm doing.

Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe