Helsinki, Finland (February 26, 2026)—Founded in Finland a decade ago, oeksound has made its presence known with vocal chain and mix bus staples such as its flagship Soothe and Soothe2 plug-ins.
Soothe and oeksound have humble grassroots beginnings. Ten years ago, Olli Keskinen, an audio engineer with a degree in programming and music technology, discovered that top-tier mixing engineers were often going over vocal takes and adjusting the EQ syllable by syllable. This labor-intensive step, Keskinen thought, was ripe for automation.
Working on his own, Keskinen devoted years to creating a solution that would automate the syllable-by-syllable approach, drawing on his computer science experience. He succeeded, developed the first version of Soothe, and eventually posted it to Gearspace. It was picked up by Canadian producer and songwriter Greg Wells, who sang its praises—and Soothe went viral.
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Keskinen designed Soothe to work like a dynamic EQ or de-esser plug-in, but with far more going on “under the hood.” As dynamic resonance suppressors, Soothe in all its variations takes the edge off potentially jarring moments in performances. Meant to reduce resonances from close-miked sound sources such as vocals, guitars, woodwinds and violins, Soothe cuts back on these frequencies without impacting adjacent ones, maintaining clarity.
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“Due to the chaotic radiation patterns of the instruments, and multiplied by the pickup patterns of the microphones, nastiness is likely to be present when sticking a microphone a few inches from a sound source,” Keskinen explained to Music Tech in 2017, when the plug-in first caught on. “Soothe is at its best when used as the first line of defense to treat these problematic sound sources, saving the mixing engineer a lot of time and frustration trying to get the stuff to sit in the mix, especially with the lead parts.”
