How to make a sound "smaller"?

[ATS]

eq

[Auplant]

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.

I'm gonna take you up on that, it completely depends what way you tweak the compressor. A compressor can modify the envelope of a sound similarly to ADSR envelope if you do know what you're doing. Like that guy said, small attack and large release will make make the sound "smaller" as perceived by the listener. How compressed it should be depends on the ratio..and threshold setting.. A strong compression does make the listener perceive the sound to be smaller, you can conclude this easily with a drum sound which originally had a long decay. To preserve the volume you would use make-up gain, so compression is still valid in my opinion.
Anyway, the original points you made on the first page were on point as well so I'm not bashing that and I didn't mean to come across as a jerk. I also use a room reverb technique to space out the sounds and make them sound like they are not right in the spotlight, and I like to use reverb more than compressors in mixing whenever possible. Too much compression can take the life out of sounds.

[himalaya]

Like with most things in audio, there are no rules but what sounds good and correct in the context of whatever one is doing, and so if we can accomplish this task with suitable compression settings then that's mission accomplished.

However, editing the envelope of the sound with a compressor is just over kill where a simple volume envelope in the DAW or a sample editor would do the trick in no time. By the time an average person would set the compressor to do what they want, I would have the sound edited with a simple volume envelope fade, rendered and ready, playing in the mix.

Further, you will never be able to create a suitable decay envelope in a compressor like you can with a dedicated volume envelope (in the DAW, or the sampler). Maybe there are some advanced compressors with elaborate envelope shaping, I don't know as I'm not into such tools. But still, why waste time looking for that perfect combination of compressor settings, where a simple vol fade would do the trick?

[pepelogu]

eq

This.

Plus reduced stereo field.

[himalaya]

eq

This.

Plus reduced stereo field.

EQ won't work alone, by itself. Especially as the OP does not want to change the timbre.

You need that....envelope shaping.....

[pepelogu]

eq

This.

Plus reduced stereo field.

EQ won't work alone, by itself. Especially as the OP does not want to change the timbre.

You need that....envelope shaping.....

Envelope shaping changes the timbre enormously. Eq doesn't have to if you do it right. (imo)

[himalaya]

Trimming the decay of a sound does not change its underlying timbre. You'd need to really trim so much as to remove the main 'body' of the sound, leaving perhaps only the attack stage, which is not what we are after here. But like I've mentioned in my first post, EQ is the second process I'd look at. However, to effectively change the perceived size of a sound with EQ, we need to EQ the top and the bottom end, and this does alter the timbre, or the 'colour' of the sound, even if the original sound is still recognisable, its timbre will be altered.
More importantly, such deeper EQ editing will alter the volume which the OP is not after.