Mixing Tip of the day: Vocal leveling
In my opinion, nothing beats good old fashioned volume automation to get the vocals level. If you add the compressor to a smooth vocal line, when you make adjustments to the compression it which will remain consistent throughout the song.
This is especially true for De'essing. If you manually zoom in and lower all the “ess, tees efffs” BEFORE the compressor, you are going to get much better results. Don't be scared to zoom right in and automate your volume as small as syllables if needed. Fore reference, here is a pic of volume automation I did on a female vocal track that needed lots of de'essing.
-Mike Lizotte