This soothe2 review covers the plugin that has changed how many engineers deal with harshness, resonance and sibilance. Made by oeksound, soothe2 is a dynamic resonance suppressor, which is a fancy way of saying it constantly scans your audio for peaky, ringing frequencies and gently pulls them down only in the exact moments they poke out. That is a fundamentally different job from a static EQ cut, which lowers a frequency all the time whether it is a problem or not. This review explains what soothe2 does, where it genuinely earns its price, its honest limitations, and the concrete settings that make it useful rather than destructive on vocals, guitars, cymbals and full mixes.
The core promise is simple: keep the tone and energy of a track while removing the specific resonances that make it sound harsh, honky or brittle, and do it automatically as those resonances come and go.
What this soothe2 review found it actually does
soothe2 works by analysing the incoming spectrum in real time and applying rapid, narrow, dynamic reductions wherever it detects peaks that stand out from their neighbours. You control the range it operates over by drawing a target curve, so you can tell it to focus on, say, 2 to 9 kHz for harshness while ignoring the low end entirely. The main controls are Depth (how much overall reduction it can apply), Sharpness (how narrow and aggressive each reduction is), Selectivity (how much a peak must stand out before it acts), and attack and release times that let it react like a fast de-esser or a slower, smoother tone-tamer. A soft/hard mode changes how surgical it is, and it offers mid/side processing plus a delta listen button so you can hear only what is being removed, which is the single most useful feature for setting it responsibly.
Pros and cons in this soothe2 review
- Pros: Removes harshness and resonance far more transparently than static EQ because it only acts when a frequency actually spikes; brilliant on sibilant vocals, harsh electric guitars, ringing cymbals and brittle mix buses; the delta listen makes it easy to hear exactly what you are removing; mid/side mode lets you tame a harsh centre vocal without dulling the sides; genuinely solves problems that were tedious or impossible before.
- Cons: It is easy to overuse and suck the life out of a track, dulling it into lifelessness if you crank Depth; it is a corrective tool, not a creative one, so it adds nothing; it is CPU-heavy, especially at high oversampling; and it is premium-priced, which stings if you only need occasional de-essing that a cheaper de-esser could handle.
Exact settings from this soothe2 review
Restraint is everything, so start conservative. For a harsh lead vocal, load a preset aimed at vocals, then draw the active range to focus on roughly 2 to 9 kHz and set Depth low, around 20 to 40 percent, so it only shaves the worst peaks. Use the delta button to confirm you are removing hiss and harshness, not the vocal’s clarity and consonants. If it sounds lispy or dull, lower Depth or raise Selectivity so it acts on fewer peaks. For sibilance specifically, narrow the range to about 5 to 9 kHz and shorten the attack so it behaves like a fast, frequency-following de-esser.
For harsh electric guitars or cymbal build-up, place the range around 2 to 6 kHz with moderate Sharpness so it evens out the pick and edge without removing bite. On a brittle or fatiguing full mix, run soothe2 in mid/side, apply a gentle amount only to the mid channel across roughly 3 to 8 kHz, and keep Depth very low, because a little across an entire mix goes a long way. Always A/B at matched loudness, since removing harsh energy also lowers perceived level and can trick you into thinking the duller version is worse.
A few placement tips make soothe2 far more effective. It usually works best late in a channel chain, after your corrective EQ and compression, so it is smoothing what actually reaches the output rather than fighting moves you make afterward. On resonant acoustic sources like a boomy acoustic guitar or a ringing tom, you can also point its active range at the low mids, roughly 200 to 500 Hz, to catch the specific notes that jump out without dulling the whole instrument. When you use it across a bus or the master, prefer several instances doing tiny amounts over one instance doing a lot, because gentle, distributed suppression sounds far more natural than one aggressive pass. And keep the soft mode engaged for musical, broad smoothing, saving hard mode for stubborn, narrow resonances where you genuinely need surgical precision.
Who should buy it after this soothe2 review
If you regularly fight harshness, sibilance and ringing resonances and you are tired of dulling whole tracks with static EQ cuts, soothe2 is close to essential and will genuinely change your results on vocals and busy mixes. If harshness is only an occasional problem for you, a good dynamic EQ or a standard de-esser may cover it for less money, and our roundups and the free tools in our free audio tools hub can help you diagnose whether resonance is really your issue. Learn to find the offending frequencies by ear first; our mixing guide covers spotting and cutting resonance so soothe2 becomes a finisher rather than a crutch. The honest verdict of this review is that soothe2 is a remarkable, almost surgical problem-solver, but its power is also its trap: used gently it is transparent magic, used heavily it flattens the life out of a track, so buy it for the problems it uniquely solves and keep the Depth low.
