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99% of the time, I'll de-ess early in the chain, so that equalizers aren't exacerbating the problem frequencies, and so that the "sss" overshoots aren't hogging the contour/response behavior of my primary compressor.
PS: UREI LA-22 is a very hip compressor that can do the de-ess trick surprisingly transparently (if you snipe me on ebay for one, there'll be hell to pay). Waves' Ren-De-esser is actually pretty decent too. Haven't used a DBX 902 in years, but it works pretty well, at the expense of a little "hardening" of the remaining signal (IMO).
Faking Dolby-A in plugins never feels the same as the real thing (and too bad, as the Dolby-A thing can be a cool effect). However, compressing a mult of the signal (with fast attack and release), highpass filtering it and blending it back in with the original (time-aligned) is perhaps in the neighborhood of the ballpark ... not really the same, but something I often try on vocals where air-boosting with an equalizer sounds too "equalizer-y" ... Either can effectively re-ess some vocals, too!
-dave
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