Pare manual

Dynamic resonance suppressor. Pare finds the frequencies that stand proud of the sound around them and shaves them down, only where they ring and only while they ring. When nothing is ringing it does nothing at all.

Warren Labs · Trueness line · VST3 · AU · Standalone · macOS

What it's for

Every recording has resonances: a room mode humming under a vocal, a snare shell ringing at one pitch, a guitar body honking in the low mids, a cymbal spitting at 7 kHz. A static EQ cut fixes those moments and damages everything else, because the resonance is only there some of the time.

Pare watches 24 bands across the spectrum. For each one it compares that band's level to its neighbours. A band that stands above its own neighbourhood is a resonance, and gets pulled down in proportion. A band that matches its surroundings is left completely alone.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• Transparent at rest. With nothing resonant in the signal, the output is the input. At Depth 0 it is bit-for-bit identical.
• Minimum-phase. Pare adds no pre-ringing and no latency. It will not smear transients, and it does not need delay compensation.

The controls

Focus Mode

The same engine, scoped to a different part of the spectrum.

The named modes carry fixed bands on purpose, so switching modes can never overwrite a Custom range you've dialled in. The active window is shaded on the display.

Focus Low / Focus High set the Custom window. They read — and grey out in the other modes, because there they aren't doing anything.

Depth

How hard Pare pulls a detected resonance down. Low values tickle; high values are surgical and obvious. This is the control you reach for first. If Pare is doing too much or too little, change Depth before anything else.

Threshold

How far above its neighbours a band must rise before Pare treats it as a resonance, in dB. Lower catches more. Raise it if Pare is acting on material you wanted left alone; lower it if an obvious ring is slipping through.

Sharpness

How narrow each corrective cut is. High is surgical: it takes the ring and leaves the tone around it. Low is broad and gentler, closer to a tone shift than a repair. If cuts sound like they're "pinching," lower this.

Attack / Release

How fast the reduction clamps down and lets go. The defaults (6 ms / 120 ms) suit most material. Faster attack catches sharp transient rings like snare crack; slower release sounds smoother on sustained material but can pump if you push it. De-essing generally wants both faster.

Mix

Dry/wet blend. Below 100 % this is parallel processing, keeping some of the original resonance for a more natural result. Useful when a full repair sounds lifeless.

Output

Make-up trim, ±dB, applied last. Deep suppression drops level, and every judgement you make about a corrective tool is invalid if the processed version is quieter. Use this to match the bypassed level before you decide whether Pare improved anything.

Delta

The most useful button here. Monitor only what Pare is removing. If Delta sounds like the resonance you're chasing, your settings are right. If it sounds like the music, you're taking too much: back off Depth or raise Threshold.

Power

Bypass, with a click-free crossfade.

The display

• Grey spectrum: the incoming signal.
• Amber curve hanging from the top: reduction, per band. Deeper means more is being removed.
• Shaded vertical band: the focus window (De-ess, De-mud, and Custom only).
• Number, top right: the largest reduction happening right now, in dB.

If the amber curve is pinned deep across the whole spectrum, Pare is doing too much. Aim for it to move, dipping where the problem is and returning to nothing when it isn't.

A worked example: a ringy snare

A snare has an unpleasant ring around 400 Hz that only shows up on hard hits.

1. Mode: Full. You don't know the exact frequency yet, so don't scope it.
2. Delta on. Now you hear only what's being removed.
3. Threshold down until the ring appears in the Delta signal. Around 3–4 dB usually gets there.
4. Depth up until Delta is clearly the ring and not much else. Watch the display: you should see one band dipping on the hits, not the whole curve sagging.
5. Sharpness up if Delta contains body along with the ring; that means the cut is too wide.
6. Attack down to about 3 ms so it catches the initial crack rather than arriving late.
7. Delta off. The ring should be gone and the snare otherwise unchanged.
8. If it sounds over-repaired, Mix to about 80 % to let a little of the original back in.

Now that you know the problem lives in the low mids, you can switch to De-mud to stop Pare watching the rest of the spectrum entirely.

Tips

• Set it with Delta, judge it without. Delta tells you what; only bypass tells you whether.
• Less than you think. Pare is easy to overuse because the reduction is so clean. If the source sounds duller than the bypass, it's doing too much.
• On a bus, keep Depth low and Threshold high. Bus resonances are usually milder.
• Not a de-esser replacement for every voice. De-ess mode is frequency-conscious, which suits bright, complex sibilance. A single static notch is sometimes still the right tool.
• Pare doesn't add anything. If you want colour, that's the Character line.

Presets

PRESETS saves and recalls every control, including the Focus Mode and the Custom range. Snapshots live in ~/Music/Warren Labs/Pare/Presets/.

Licensing

Pare verifies a .wllicense file offline, with no phone-home, no account and no internet needed. Drop it at ~/Music/Warren Labs/Pare.wllicense, or use Import License in the About panel (the ⓘ button, top right).

Specifications

Warren Labs. Tools that tell the truth. · warrenlabs.com