How to make a sound "smaller"?

How to make that sound...
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Try to think about vectorial image. You have this sound, say a tom, and you want to make it smaller, with the same volume and same characteristtics. Just smaller. Like you had an image and vectorially make it smaller.

Any clues? :ud:

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Without directly hearing the sound in question (if there is a sound, and not just a rhetorical question), to keep the same volume and timbre, I'd first experiment with the envelope of the sound and create a faster decay. This will make the sound immediately 'smaller' by the fact that it will decay quickly. This will trim any inherent tails, reverbs, body resonances and make the sound 'smaller'.

Then look at the stereo image. If the sound is indeed stereo, try to use a plugin which can narrow down the stereo image or simply render the sound to mono.

Then try some EQ. Roll off the high end carefully - so that you don't change the main timbre - as that is your aim. If you weren't that bothered with wanting to preserve the volume and timbre then I'd recommend using the EQ in a more drastic manner. Taking out some lower frequencies will help to sculpt the sound and make it appear 'smaller'.

You can use room reverb to push the sound further in the imaginary space. The sound will appear smaller due to the fact that it's placed in a fake '3D' space, further away from you, but of course, you loose the volume balance which you want to preserve. This technique needs some care though. You can easily end up with the reverse effect where the sound is just bigger with a huge wash of reverb.

Good luck.
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VSTi and hardware synth sound design
3D/5D sound design since 2012

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formant shifting ?
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himalaya wrote:Without directly hearing the sound in question (if there is a sound, and not just a rhetorical question), to keep the same volume and timbre, I'd first experiment with the envelope of the sound and create a faster decay. This will make the sound immediately 'smaller' by the fact that it will decay quickly. This will trim any inherent tails, reverbs, body resonances and make the sound 'smaller'.

Then look at the stereo image. If the sound is indeed stereo, try to use a plugin which can narrow down the stereo image or simply render the sound to mono.

Then try some EQ. Roll off the high end carefully - so that you don't change the main timbre - as that is your aim. If you weren't that bothered with wanting to preserve the volume and timbre then I'd recommend using the EQ in a more drastic manner. Taking out some lower frequencies will help to sculpt the sound and make it appear 'smaller'.

You can use room reverb to push the sound further in the imaginary space. The sound will appear smaller due to the fact that it's placed in a fake '3D' space, further away from you, but of course, you loose the volume balance which you want to preserve. This technique needs some care though. You can easily end up with the reverse effect where the sound is just bigger with a huge wash of reverb.

Good luck.
This is a very good post! Thank you very much.

The sound is a tom, I often have toms that look like they are way too big in the mix, recorded by others.
Sound like a big boom in the middle of the mix and I want to make them just smaller, or sometimes I have acoustic guitar or clean that behave the same. Based on my experience I can say your post is good!
Last edited by mementus on Thu Jul 27, 2017 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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mementus wrote:Try to think about vectorial image. You have this sound, say a tom, and you want to make it smaller, with the same volume and same characteristtics. Just smaller. Like you had an image and vectorially make it smaller.

Any clues? :ud:
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Gate the toms and cut the resonating (booming) lower mid frequencies a bit.

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For human perception? Basic volume, filtering and compression

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I, for one, in imaged perceptions of sounds easily associates size with frequency

a low frequency may look big, heavy and (rather) dark ...if it doesn’t have much timbral content

in the contrary high frequencies may look bright, tiny, and rather incisive

...other considerations are on the way a sound spreads through stereo imaging : a mono source pointing at a precise location may look smaller than spreaded into the stereo field, IMHO !

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Build a smaller tom :D

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Then look at the stereo image. If the sound is indeed stereo, try to use a plugin which can narrow down the stereo image or simply render the sound to mono.
I would do the opposite - increase the side at a cost of mid. Center of panorama is reserved for the most important sounds, the less important can live at sides. Note that this will make sound more apparent in stereo, but smaller with mono sound system.

Also, EQ matters here. In particular I spend a lot of time optimising EQ for lead and other important parts, but FX and ear candies don't need to be perfectly equalized - they just fall in the free space of the mix.
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Totally second what Himalaya said,

Nip the decay down. Simply.

Wouldn't agree DJW with increasing sides - people will perceive enhanced stereo width as "bigger."
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Hi-pass, deconvolve / gate the tail, mix-down to mono.

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Short attack and long release on a compressor perhaps?

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yep and high ratio^

can't believe compression wasn't one of the first things to come to mind for other people

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phace wrote:yep and high ratio^

can't believe compression wasn't one of the first things to come to mind for other people
You just don't know whether compression came to our minds or not. Maybe it wasn't mentioned as compression is not the right tool for the job here? If you notice, the OP wants to preserve the volume, and the first thing you will do with compression is change the volume balance within the sound itself. Compression will add more body and density to the sound and this may create a perception of a bigger sound in fact. That's not what the OP wants. So this could happen with drastic settings. Then with small compressor settings there may not be any perceived change to the sound to make it audibly 'smaller'. So I would look at compression as the very last thing here. The envelope of the sound (the decay stage of the envelope) is the very first thing that needs to be looked at and edited, not compression.
http://www.electric-himalaya.com
VSTi and hardware synth sound design
3D/5D sound design since 2012

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