What sound is this?

[Necrox]

What are those beautiful deep echoes in the first few seconds of this track? How do I make them?

[timaeus222]

The sonar-like distant sound? Try this:

---ADSR envelope---

Attack: 0%

Decay: 60~80%

Sustain: 0%

Release: 50~70%

---Signal Chain---

EQ if you want

Distortion

Reverb (low dry mix, sorta high wet mix)

That's the main part of it.

---Timbre---

Try something with a sine-wave-like tone to it. If you can, try building your own harmonic table in your synth.

Audio Example

Edited September 2, 2014 by timaeus222

[Necrox]

Thanks a lot!

[XPRTNovice]

The sonar-like distant sound? Try this:

I'm curious...did you sit down at a synth and try different stuff until you replicated it, or did you seriously just jot down those settings by ear?

[timaeus222]

I'm curious...did you sit down at a synth and try different stuff until you replicated it, or did you seriously just jot down those settings by ear?

I actually had a sound I already made that was similar. I made a few estimates first on the ADSR (which was by ear since I do this so much) and timbre, and checked them afterwards, but the signal chain was just by ear.

Edited September 2, 2014 by timaeus222

[Anorax]

Tried something similar when I first heard Rozovian's "Spume" track on the Pokemon MissingNO Tracks album. Basically what timaeus said, as far as effects go. For the actual sonar "ping", what I discovered is that you want to have two sine waves, one to be your base note and the other an octave higher, with the second sine turned down far enough to barely be audible. You want it just loud enough to add character, but not loud enough where you can tell there are two separate sine waves an octave apart.

(I also want to point out that there's a thread for trying to find a certain sound. Unfortunately it's a bit underused as of late, but people WILL help you when you ask!)

[Necrox]

Tried something similar when I first heard Rozovian's "Spume" track on the Pokemon MissingNO Tracks album. Basically what timaeus said, as far as effects go. For the actual sonar "ping", what I discovered is that you want to have two sine waves, one to be your base note and the other an octave higher, with the second sine turned down far enough to barely be audible. You want it just loud enough to add character, but not loud enough where you can tell there are two separate sine waves an octave apart.

(I also want to point out that there's a thread for trying to find a certain sound. Unfortunately it's a bit underused as of late, but people WILL help you when you ask!)

Thanks; I will keep this in mind.

[Anorax]

I stand corrected on my tuning stuff I told you. I found the file I was testing with, and this is what I had done in the past.

You will use three sine waves. Second sine wave will be an octave above the first. The third and octave above the second.

Your second sine will be your "base" note (even though it's technically not), as it will be your loudest frequency. Have this sine at 100% volume. The first sine will be around 40% volume, to give some "body" to the second sine (as it's an octave lower, again as I said in my first post you don't want to make it obvious you have several sine waves playing together). The third sine should be around 30% full volume. Play around with these values a bit.

I didn't have quite as fast an attack as timaeus did, you will want to mess with that. With a slightly rounded attack, it doesn't sounds as percussive, and adds more of a muffled, underwater effect.

Long story short, I also added a ton of reverb, layering and mixing it using send tracks. Here's my audio example, with a further description on-site.

I hope either myself or timaeus (although preferably both) was helpful to you!

if you're not quite sure what's going on, I'll gladly throw in some screenshots as far as what I'm doing in my synth

Edited September 3, 2014 by Anorax

[timaeus222]

I didn't have quite as fast an attack as timaeus did, you will want to mess with that. With a slightly rounded attack, it doesn't sounds as percussive, and adds more of a muffled, underwater effect.

Long story short, I also added a ton of reverb, layering and mixing it using send tracks. Here's my audio example, with a further description on-site.

I hope either myself or timaeus (although preferably both) was helpful to you!

if you're not quite sure what's going on, I'll gladly throw in some screenshots as far as what I'm doing in my synth

When I said that the reverb should have a low dry mix and a sorta high wet mix, it basically already creates a slow attack, even though I actually wrote 0% for the attack in the ADSR. Reason being that more of the reverberation is present, which doesn't usually start at the same time as the dry signal. In a sense, we're both right because if we go with the vague description of the reverb that I gave and with the layering suggestions that you gave, if the attack was somewhere around 0~20%, it would be likely to sound pretty similar because the percussive attack is less audible.

As for the reverb, if I go into more detail, it seems to involve a high amount of "Diffusion"[*1] and "Density"[*2], which means it smears the early reflections and creates somewhat of a hissy, smooth reverb tail, which is part of what the original sound seems to have. Also, if you listen further into the SF track, you might hear a little distortion in the sound before the piece kicks into higher gear.

*1 - Diffusion is when a sound hits a wall and disperses back in a certain way; the higher the diffusion, the more reflected "instances" there are after the sound hits a wall. The higher the diffusion, the more smeared the reverberation. Another way to say it is that the higher the diffusion, the less smooth the surface is that reflects the sound back.

*2 - Density is the number of computed reflections per second. In a sense, it's like bitrate, but for reverb reflections instead of bits. The higher the Density, the smoother and fuller the reverberation.

Quoting from the ArtsAcoustic Reverb manual for a nice read:

Diffusion in an acoustic sense is the degree of dispersion of the spreading sound waves after being reflected. Aha. So let's try to imagine it with an example: You take a ball and throw it straight against a wall – it surely will bounce back and hit you in the head. Now you take a jet of water and also point it straight against the same wall. You will also get hit, but the water will also splash in all other directions besides your head. This – admittedly far-fetched – example should explain to you, how a diffuse reflection works. A sound beam is dispersed in all (or at least many) directions, depending of the structure of the wall‟s surface. The returning sound does still sound similar to the original signal (compare the water example), but will be a lot more diffuse and indirect. With a hard reflection the reflected sound is a lot more precise and more concrete. If a reflection is hard or diffuse depends on the material and the object that is reflecting. When it has a big, smooth surface, the reflection will be hard. The more the surface is structured, the more angles and relief it has, the more diffuse the reflection gets.

Using Density you can adjust the number of computed reflections per second. “Excuse me?!” Ok ... ;=) The difference between Density and Diffusion is the following: Whereas Diffusion mainly focuses on the first buildup of the reverberation, Density is influencing the complete reverberation. In a natural room the number of reverberations generally strives for infinity, even in a lesser diffuse room. Only the time until then is differing and depending on the Diffusion. With little diffusion you will hear single discriminable reflections in the beginning, but later on only a homogenous reverberation. At a low Density on the other hand you will hear single reflections during the complete reverberation!

Edited September 3, 2014 by timaeus222

[Necrox]

You guys both helped. Thanks for your time!