KVR Audio

juno987654321 · Post by **juno987654321** » Tue May 04, 2021 4:26 am

Hey - What's all that noise here?

...I mean the noise in this Snap song from 9-14 seconds in the background of the song:

I also isolated the noise from a more HQ sample using an EQ so you could hear it much more clearly here and the above video is only supposed to give you the context:

https://sndup.net/7bdm

I've tried to reconstruct it using simple highpassed types of white noise but that won't sound like it at all. So it must be a special type of noise or some special effects must have been added to it? I've had this kind of problem before and it seems to be a general issue in trance songs, so maybe I'll need a special effect plugin???

I tried to get this kind of noise the other day using Serum. I got closest to it with a type of noise called "AirCan5" or "CymLoop" in combination with a HP filter 12db/oct with resonance, tried to pitch it up, tried some EQing... still not REALLY the sound!

Then I tried to search for special noise plugins or tutorials on noise online - no luck!

So what's with that NOISE now?

juno987654321 · Post by **juno987654321** » Tue May 04, 2021 8:59 pm

It's a dificult topic, isn't it?
Maybe ask in the hardware section if anyone remembers how they created such noise with the hardware tools back then?
How else could I find out how to recreate the background noise in this trance song?
Anyone?

synthgeek · Post by **synthgeek** » Tue May 04, 2021 9:35 pm

Sounds like a drum machine? You could try the old trick of amplitude-modulating square waves together, which some machines used for hihat/cymbal type sounds.

Take a bunch, like 6 or 8, square waves at pretty high frequencies--say, starting around 8kHz. Amplitude modulate these together in pairs, and add the outputs together (or do more AM if you want). Using inharmonic frequencies for the AM pairs (like 8kHz x 11kHz) will sound noisier. This would, of course be easiest in a modular setup of some kind, VCV Rack should have everything you need if you don't have something that would work.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Tue May 04, 2021 9:55 pm

Sounds like a sampled 606 or 808 hat pattern with pitched up samples that add aliasing. That or just highpassed white noise enveloped to sound like open and closed hats. It may be artifacts but it does sound aliased to me.

juno987654321 · Post by **juno987654321** » Tue May 04, 2021 11:18 pm

Thank you. This is possibly a good starting point although I don't know what most of this means yet because I'm still a beginner.
So synthgeek, if I do this in Vital I can take 3 oscs. Then I should amp-modulate them you write. I saw a button once besides "FM" that said "AM". Is that amp-modulation as opposed to frequency modulation then? I think it is.
OK, I can pitch them up, no problem.
VCV rack sounds interesting. It's free and I could learn how to do all that but it will take me loooong time to get there and I wanted to do first things first. Isn't there a way to do this in my simple Vital plugin?

Ah Dziz recommends the drum machine hihat sounds pitched up - OK, I can understand that and there are tutorials how to make a hihat sound in Serum or Vital. I think I could do that.
But then add aliasing? I'll have to check what that means and how to do that. Isn't aliasing phasing issues you get with unison voices e. g.? I remember something. So do I need to add unison voices?...

I thought there may simply be wavetable sounds for Serum or Vital that emulate these old school trance noise sounds, something like "AirCan6"

because I think the "AirCan" sounds in Serum are always in the ballpark already, though not yet "it". They are close but no cigar...

Anyways, I always like to create sounds from scratch much better so it doesn't matter TOO much if I can't find such wavetables and if you also don't know where to find such.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Wed May 05, 2021 12:29 am

Aliasing is caused by using a sample rate reducer (sometimes called a bitcrusher (but includes a bitcrusher and sample rate reduction effect) or just a lofi effect.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Wed May 05, 2021 1:08 am

More generally it is caused by a digital system trying to reproduce a frequency at more than half the sample rate that the system is running at (also called the nyquist frequency). Which causes high frequencies to fold down back into the audible range.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Wed May 05, 2021 1:41 am

Also , just to be clear, I cannot hear anything even remotely like the "noise only link" in the song that's posted. That sounds like some highpassed noise layered in with the synth that lingers between notes. I'm context you could probably just layer some rhythmic noise with a low volume and all the low frequencies cut out with the synth and it wouldn't be very different on most listening systems. There's a chance that that synth part was sampled from somewhere else and what you're hearing is what was left after they tried to eliminate the high hats from the sample.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Wed May 05, 2021 1:46 am

Based on the music you are often trying to figure out the sounds from on here, you are very often going to be looking for samples rather than synth patches. And unfortunately making a synth sound like a sampled record's a heavy task. You should probably start reading up on "who sampled" and similar websites as well as checking out some of the rom based synths that were big back then and trackers too.

JJ

synthgeek · Post by **synthgeek** » Wed May 05, 2021 2:14 am

juno987654321 wrote: Tue May 04, 2021 11:18 pm Thank you. This is possibly a good starting point although I don't know what most of this means yet because I'm still a beginner.
So synthgeek, if I do this in Vital I can take 3 oscs. Then I should amp-modulate them you write. I saw a button once besides "FM" that said "AM". Is that amp-modulation as opposed to frequency modulation then? I think it is.
OK, I can pitch them up, no problem.
VCV rack sounds interesting. It's free and I could learn how to do all that but it will take me loooong time to get there and I wanted to do first things first. Isn't there a way to do this in my simple Vital plugin?

Ah Dziz recommends the drum machine hihat sounds pitched up - OK, I can understand that and there are tutorials how to make a hihat sound in Serum or Vital. I think I could do that.
But then add aliasing? I'll have to check what that means and how to do that. Isn't aliasing phasing issues you get with unison voices e. g.? I remember something. So do I need to add unison voices?...

Right on, it struck me after I posted that might be a tad technical, sorry about that. You are correct about the FM/AM thing.

If your synth can do AM between oscillators, you should be able to approximate what I was talking about by stacking instances or something like that. I'm not familiar with Vital, but what you would be doing there is using an instance of Vital for each pair of square waves and mixing it all together at the end.

That said, I also found the series of articles article where I first learned this trick myself:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... -synthesis

It reminded me that some of those early drum machines (the 808 is the example given) didn't even do the AM part, but did also use band-pass filters. So maybe try just mixing a bunch of mismatched high-frequency square waves together with said filtering. No need for unison. There's a block diagram in the link there that should help clear things up, in the section talking about the 808.

This video explains the aliasing thing a bit in case you want more detail, but I do agree with Ah_Dziz that it's probably getting more into the details than necessary for the sound you're after here:

juno987654321 · Post by **juno987654321** » Wed May 05, 2021 2:16 am

Good first input!
The sample I gave you has some synth sounds in the background, I know. I couldn't filter everything out. It's just something that makes it easier to hear the noise at all that I'm trying to recreate.

I think to me both makes sense: recreate sounds from scratch and get samples/wavetables (that help to recreate the sounds from scratch).
But I won't give up trying to recreate everything from scratch. No, no: it's a crazy thing I must always try to do.

But I'm not content with just highpassed noise or with the AirCan5 preset noise (which at least comes closer), so I will try to figure out how to make this based on the tips I can get here.

juno987654321 · Post by **juno987654321** » Wed May 05, 2021 2:19 am

Oh, something else just arrived from synthgeek again. Thank you very much. I will check it out and see what I can learn from that.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Fri May 07, 2021 9:12 pm

Juno,
My point was that in that era of club music, artists had few synths, so the sounds you're looking for, if you want to make them exactly how they were made, will often be samples. If you want the actual sound from the record, you will have to sample what they sampled. A synthesizer is never going to sound like a sample from a record exactly. The route to take would be to find the record that was sampled and then recreate that as perfectly as possible, and then resample that and play it in the way it was played.

juno987654321 · Post by **juno987654321** » Sat May 08, 2021 11:33 am

OK, I've reposted this to the sample forum section as well.
I'll try to find the original sample and then I could recreate it even better on a synth because that way you could hear the noise in the original sample better as what you can hear in my sample.
I think I've got your message now.

I'm already a bit closer again. I used some distortion and a compressor on the AirCan5 noise in Serum. If I then play certain dyads rather than just 1 note the noise sound will be broader across the spectrum and it is already starting to get closer and closer to the original. But it's a very complex noise sound and it's not just some pitched up hihats and definately not just highpassed white noise or something.

Above it has been suggested to try and mix together many high pitched square waves using a complex technique that requires modular synthesis. But alas, I checked up on this today and I found out that this also won't be the right route to take. It was only a technique they used to create cymbal sounds of an 808 drum machine which sound much different from the sound we're aiming at here. So even if I learned how to do all that in modular synthesis I still wouldn't get the sound though it might be interesting to learn how to recreate 808 sounds in modular synthesis at a much later time.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Sat May 08, 2021 11:41 pm

Most of the original synthesized x0x cymbals/hats were made from a blend of square waves/ RM/ AM and noise along with filters. It's worth playing around with a simple modular or semi modular synths to see how they are done. Many of the other artifacts you find in the tracks you've been posting will require additional processing or resampling to make them sound exactly like the record.