Ralph, I'm a bit of a newbie, but have a couple of suggestions. One: try clip gain attenuation, ie. pulling down the volume of the sibilant parts in the clip gain. It's a little time consuming, but very effective. Two: using melodyne. In melodyne the sibilant parts of the vocal are separated, and are adjustable in a similar way to using clip gain. Even if you don't need any tuning, this feature is great. I find it really useful. If you overdo it and it gets lispy, you can go back and raise it a little to bring back more sibilance. Both methods take a little time, but not that much, and then you may need a slight use of a de-esser, or likely none at all. I highly recommend this approach, esp if you've had such a hard time with it Good luck :)

Hi All, I'm a first time FTMer, and I have learned SO much (and haven't even seen Day 3 yet). I loved the educational approach, and due to that I have learned lots that I am implementing into my mixing now. So I'll be back and for other stuff as well hopefully.