KVR Audio

greendoor · Post by **greendoor** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 4:47 am

This might just be a really dumb idea, but I would like to know if anything exists already, or if this would work ...

Seems to me that some reverbs and white noise have a lot in common. You can use samples of white noise in a convolution reverb.

Imagine a reverb plugin that functions rather like a compressor side chain. Imagine an incoming sound, like a snare drum. This would create an envelope similar in shape to the snare sound, and with controlable Attack, Threshold, Ratio and Release.

Then - imagine this is used to control two freerunning white noise generators. Two for stereo. EQ or filters to shape the sound.

I suspect this would sound remarkably like a dense smooth reverb, and might be very musical. Especially if the frequency spectrum was also factored into the envelope control. Maybe like a multiband compressor.

Been done?

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 5:24 am

I'm not sure I follow. Excluding the sidechain gating try this: Load a simple synth with a white noise generator. Adjust the ADSR, filter to taste and hit a key.

Here's what it sounds like. I was just using xhip with the oscs turned off.

The resultant sound will be the exact same as your experiment, the only difference would be that instead of an internal envelope generator, you'd be using an envelope follower.

Is there more to it?

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 5:29 am

Regarding frequency affecting the envelope, here's a demo I made of the Audio Damage 907a filterbank a while back. It's just white noise and the filterbands automated.

Kind of what you had in mind? If so, it's a fairly common technique in sound synthesis.

timo at artsacoustic · Mon Dec 12, 2005 8:29 am

Hi greendoor,

the idea is good, but not new...

There even are reverb algorithms out there which produce white noised IRs!

With "white noise reverbs" I found always a few problems:

- they don't sound natural. Natural rooms have resonances, a lot though, but not lots enough to produce a white noised IR
- they don't set right in the mix. Means, they sound smooth, however they tend to sound muddy in a way
- they have no character...

- Stereo reverberating with two white noised IRs leads to a completly uncorrelated reverb signal, which brings a wide, but not a spatial reverb. For a good spatiality the reverb signal has to be corellated in some way

So, in my opinion, a "white noise reverb" isn't ideal at all! Just my 2 cents

Music Engineer · Post by **Music Engineer** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:31 pm

greendoor wrote: I suspect this would sound remarkably like a dense smooth reverb, and might be very musical. Especially if the frequency spectrum was also factored into the envelope control. Maybe like a multiband compressor.
Been done?

yes, i tried that too and i liked the sound. as for the frequency spectrum - one could apply (time-varying) higpass/lowpass filtering to the noise - especially when creating it with a subtractive synth. the idea could be taken further by comb-filtering the noise in such a way, that the spectral peaks match the key-tune of the track. seems to me, that this could be very musical (didn't try it yet).

loopdon · Post by **loopdon** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:51 pm

so like a mixture of

Elevayta Clone Boy

to sculpt the appropriate frequency out of the white noise and

Amplitude Imposer by ndc or
MIDI-Controlled ADSR by ndc
or similar

to apply the the adsr settings of the say snare to the white noise??

wouldn`t this come close to using a resynthesis plugin on a send?

or am i way off

greendoor · Post by **greendoor** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 9:11 pm

Thanks for the comments everyone. Yes, I know this is a common synthesis technique - and if using sampled drums it would be logical just to sample or synthesis it and shape with adsr.

I'm getting into recording real snare now, and I kind of like those explosive '80's white noisy snares. I believe some of those were done with gated white noise.

I also know you can use white noise in convolution reverbs, but that gets repetitive and boring.

My idea of two free running white noise generators is to get some (very) subtle differences between left and right, and avoid the perfectly sampled repetitive sound.

I could probably just create a synth patch for free-running white noise, and a gate with sidechain (or use a stereo-ganged gate and send the snare down the left hand side to open it, and the white noise down the right hand side. And then duplicate this to get a left hand version.

splattabreakz · Post by **splattabreakz** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 12:54 pm

from your description, the smothness in particular it sounds a lot like something autechre might use on their minimal stuff... would be nice to have something that generates that... tried messing with white noise a lot myself to get that sound but couldnt get close... sampling it then pitching it up, passing it through lots of different filters...

sounds cool to me anyway.

living sounds · Post by **living sounds** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 7:49 pm

had this idea, two! I've also been using white noise as impulse responses for years, you can get very reverb effects.

White noise reverb idea ...