These are cool sound design tips and all, but many of these sounds are fine the way they are... These are just standalone sounds; in a mix, most don’t need to feel “full” or perfect for that matter. In fact, by layering in an attempt to add more frequency balance, you risk increasing masking & muddiness. It really depends on which sound you pick and, more importantly, why. And a fair amount of sounds here are definitely being overprocessed. For sound design, that’s cool-you can certainly get creative with it. But for making a solid mix, going in with the intention to process whatever you want to process will thin out the mix. Any experienced engineer will tell you to have a really good reason to add processing, and some will say to avoid processing if possible.
I was thinking the exact same thing, also if the original sample/noise isn't correct in the context of where you are using it then simply find one which is, that's the easiest way to fix the issues
Coming back to this video, I find the examples well demonstrated. Yes, at first I didn’t think some were that bad- but imagining the concepts presented really opens your eyes in terms of creative problem solving. Very good video. Thank you 🙏🏽
Lol the person who sent in the gunshot sound actually sounded more like a gunshot than yours. It was just imitating certain kinds of Tommy gun or maybe LMG style machine guns, which can have that slightly fade-in, slicey sound. I do think his original sound could use a little boost to transients, or maybe just adding one in, but they were like 95% of the way there- didn’t really need to start from scratch haha.
While there is a lot of theory and technicality that goes into sound design, there is and always will be subjectivity and personal aesthetic preferences! :)
Realistic does not sound good for most people. People are used to movie sounds so that is what you make it sound like. It’s not correct but people like it more
I think some of the "bad" sounds could be usable with less modification in certain settings. Maybe not a traditional song. Especially 6 and 9. Maybe I'm wrong but I think its possible that you intentionally want an annoying sound sometimes. Isnt nyan cat in this category, even if its milder? Maybe im getting it all wrong. (but i for sure love nyan cat) Still the video was helpful.
But I guess he has to make music that he likes to keep integrity so its still good to watch the video and obviously its stupid to expect him to know the music genre out of every music genre ever, which fits a particular sample the best.
tbh I think that a lot of these sounds weren't that bad and would work fine in their contexts. sure, they sound better alone now, but I think it's pretty bold to say that you have given the sound a direct upgrade as a lot of them post-edit aren't really usable in the same context as the initial sample
this video didn’t really sit right with me, most of the sounds are actually fine the way they are. I don’t know why you always have to have a full frequency sound, sometimes sounds exist just to fill one frequency. it’s not that hard especially for someone with a lot of experience to understand
imo he made the sounds simply sound "better" with a technically correct approach (using compressors and EQs) while increasing the complexity. in the end its all subjective, there is no good or bad sound, i personally didnt like the gunshot either, he couldve gone into the direction of a code pandorum deathstep bass instead
It's design is fine, but it has a weird modulation in some moments and i think it's really weak, but distortion and saturation may fix that. Good sound with bad mastering i guess.
For shaping transients you can also use inverse compression. This will bring up the peaks above the set level and keep everything else at the original.
gonna be honest the original gunshot sample was more on point. generally for gunshot sounds its a LOT easier to just record a gunshot/get a gunshot sample. great video peter!
@Mr. Nobody I don't try to copy his settings, I just do not know how to sound design with a vocoder (it has 4 different modes and various different knobs) you have to copy to know how it works. I am sure you watched other people using how to sound design a supersaw or other sound (bet you wouldn't have come up with a hoover or something else by yourself, before knowing at least how sounds are made) before you knew hot to do that and consequently were able to create your own sound threw the knowledge you've gained. Same for the vocoder, I do not know how it works (to that extent at least, like what all the knobs really do) and what to do to get better sounds with it. I never saw someone use a vocoder in that way before, just wanna see what he did to learn from it.
Please everybody, the key phrase in #1 was "If you have an UNTREATED room" Headphones have a tendency to lie. Please invest in room treatment with your home studio Anyways, super interesting video
@@Oversampled After re-reading my initial comment, I realized it may come off as very cross. I'm so sorry if I came across as such ;-; Well, with a well-made set of headphones made specifically for mixing, those are great. But having two speakers cupped right against each ear makes it a little hard to get a sense of "space" in your mix (reverb, delay, panning, ect). It gives it an overly wide perception of the sound being played. Headphones also sometimes have a very unnatural or "dishonest"- for lack of a better term - frequency response Monitors in a treated room are more flat-sounding (making it easier for you to find the little goblins in your mix) and give you a more realistic representation of stereo sound since monitors have a little crossfade. On that same token, I come from a background of recording and mixing metal, and my father in law mixes primarily rock and heavy metal. Our experiences may differ because of the genre(s) we main. It may not matter as much in certain contexts. Not to mention, if you don't have the space or money for monitors and room treatment (or solid mixing headphones) a set of half-decant headphones will substitute until you can accommodate.
Completely irrelevant but, this gave me an idea for a cleaner colour bass. So, In fl studio, there’s a patcher preset called “resonator”. Which you can rout to midi to give your sounds tonality. What I was thinking is, what if you used the same filter on two basses (one, on some au5 shit and one, just an organ patch or something basic like a hp’d square, playing the resonated notes) and routed one with “the resonator” and one with no fx on it to a vocoder. It’s be like…not all fucked up sounding. Cuz. In fl. I gotta like separate the track into mid and side channels. Than use only the mid channel to vocode with another mono tonal thing, otherwise the stereo shit gets all screwy (especially if the stereo information of the send is different than the bass). Than I gotta rout it all back together, glue em…realize the highs are still janky, so now I gotta just ott em. Realize the hpf on the vocoder is trash, and the Ott is just boosting some random ass feedback noises. Go back and noise gate. Nd now I have a bass that sounds like it has bad cell reception. So, yeah….just tried the thing I mentioned at the beginning of the comment. It kinda works. But, damn. Au5 and virtual riot are doing something spicy I’m not aware of. I heard au5 uses sooth 2 and a morph plugin to get “perfect vocoding”…but, I don’t have the funds required to aquifer such plugins. Plus, I think he just uses sooth as a resonator. So I have no idea how that’s different. Regardless. The closes I could get is to do all of the above, than de-ess the track. Thaaaan add a mid side ott. Than mid side eq it, cutting out some 1200hz from the side band and some 4000hz from everything. I’m going on a rant but, I wanna make sure I’m explaining myself in detail to get this final questions across. How tf do you do colour bass….why am I asking you? Cuz you can do it. However, all tutorials I’ve seen on RU-vid so far are just like “oh. Just vocode to a bunch of shit”. And than, the final product sounds like ass. And the comments are like “yoooooo. This shit saved me fam”. I want that goood, good colour bass. That mmmm. That, “bruh. Are you virtual riot?” Type colour bass. Ight. That’s my rant.
Ight. So my sounds aren’t necessarily weak…but, they sound, and I don’t know how to describe it…loose? But not sonically. Like, subs are tight. Highs are clean. Mids are up to level. The track is balanced. But, for some reason….it sounds. Shit. I can’t even describe it. Like, It doesn’t sound quite right. But there is nothing explicitly popping out to me. Fuck. This hurts. Whatever the problem is, it’s definitely the problem. Because I don’t know what it is. But I know it’s there. And it fucking hurts me soul. It’s consistent too. Like…ight. Imma have to use analogies. It always sounds like my drops are diet virtual riot…bars. Like, it’s all there. The flavour is the same. The sweetness is there. But, for some reason you can tell it’s not professional. Like it’s missing something. But, if you were not given contrast, you might not notice….yeah. My drops are sounding sucrulose when I want sugar….ok fuck. That’s useless. That could mean like a million different things. I’ll point out specific things I notice. My subs tend to be overpowering. Yet, weak. Like, au5’s inflex is the reference track I use for subs. It’s both relatively balanced. But, those subs are thiiccc. Than, my basses sound loose. I like a sort of slurpy sounds. But, referencing some other tracks with similar properties, they all sound loose yet, tight. Like, you can hear the subtle transients of the bass. But, they aren’t gargly. And whenever I layer, it sounds like separate layers instead of one thing…my god. It’s a compression thing isn’t it. Welp. Lemme just try to further the ott, saturation and eq my top bass nd see what happens.
Bruh. I figured it out. For some reason it m biased towards adding too much 2k frequencies and not enough 10k. It makes sense too. 2k is the slurpy frequency.
Try many things, tweak settings once it's close, eventually something good will come out of it. Sometimes you get lucky and it takes only a few minutes (especially if already have an ok sound to start with), but it can take an hour or two before it works out. When in doubt, add a bit of reverb, compress, shape transients, and/or EQ. It's more about how it sounds than what you used to get there. Better to try a lot of options than to focus on what you "should" do, but there are certainly a few things to avoid doing.
If your in Ableton theres a scale only option. Just mess around in thatvtill it sounds right. Realistically your just gonna have to learn a little bit of theory if you want to do it quickly
There is a point where too much ott is a thing. I think.most people don't want to use ott because it won't really fur a sound, if you want a wet sound there's no point adding itt just to make it wetter at the end
@@illford Nah, at least for the memes, more OTT = more better;) Yes, not really, but most of my projects benefit from a few percent OTT here and there. A bit spice, excitement, tonal balance in a single plugin - thats pretty nice to have
