Creating very distant sounds: any tips?

[Marbarbaar]

For a project of mine I want to make a "prehistoric drumtrack", as if you would hear it from over the horizon -from the past actually;-).
I have enough patches of drumsamples (etnic drums and all) that sound great but I still have difficulties with making them sound like they're far away.
Tried a lot with eqing, delays, chorus, verbs etc.
of course I can make them sound far away with verb, but that always sounds like your in a hall and all.

So,not really looking for that 'wet' kind of distance, but for 'that outdoors sound'.


'd love to hear some good suggestions.


Regards!

[studio19sound]

Do you have any sampling reverbs (IR/ Convolution) I know Space Designer in Logic has some outdoor impulses that sound pretty convincing.

Another thing I could see being interesting is setting up the drums in question to be played through a speaker, have them able to get fairly loud...then take a mic(or 2) and move them far far away from the speaker playing the drums--if possible, do this outside at some quiet place to get the most true sound.

Blast those drums and record w/ your mics--the product should create a 'distant' effect.
Gooooodl uck!

[edyer]

Originally Posted by studio19sound

Another thing I could see being interesting is setting up the drums in question to be played through a speaker, have them able to get fairly loud...then take a mic(or 2) and move them far far away from the speaker playing the drums--if possible, do this outside at some quiet place to get the most true sound.

Blast those drums and record w/ your mics--the product should create a 'distant' effect.
Gooooodl uck!

That's the trick!! I did it once myself. Not with drums but with a guitar amp. Then walked up the the speaker with a mic. Really cool effect.

[mogWai]

My suggestion would be the pure physics of it.

Bass travels further than treble so far away sounds sound muffled. Also maybe you need a lot of random echos.. or a huge pre-delay. A loud sound will hit you and then (using your basic Speed, distance, time equation) the echos will hit you.

[Marbarbaar]

Originally Posted by studio19sound

Do you have any sampling reverbs (IR/ Convolution) I know Space Designer in Logic has some outdoor impulses that sound pretty convincing.

Another thing I could see being interesting is setting up the drums in question to be played through a speaker, have them able to get fairly loud...then take a mic(or 2) and move them far far away from the speaker playing the drums--if possible, do this outside at some quiet place to get the most true sound.

Blast those drums and record w/ your mics--the product should create a 'distant' effect.
Gooooodl uck!

I like that one! But no such place out here unfortunately, unless I also want the sound of the freeway coming from the past. ;-)

(does waves have outdoors impulses?)

[studio19sound]

cant be too sure, but I'd imagine that the Waves IR-1 would have some.
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Just checked... http://www.waves.com/content.asp?id=658

It shows a couple outdoor on that list, and I'm sure you can find more.

[Marbarbaar]

Thanks guys, so far it working nicely.
I simply use a verb with room size on minimum and with a lot of high dampening (+ high cut).
And indeed a massive predelay -about 200 ms- works wonderfully.

The waves outdoor IR's are still caverns & caves, so thats kinda 'indoors', though I'm still gonna check out that courtyard IR.

[Nu-tra]

What about some sort of filter to mess with the freq and resolution like on an analolg syth.. you can dull things up by tweaking the knobs after you've processed it with a verb...

[7rojo7]

use a low pass and a high pass filter on the drum mix then the volume before you use any ambience. When it already sounds like some thing far away then add your ambience (a plate might surprise you) and use the same filters there (put the ambience in with the drum mix). this is an opportunity to use an upward expander for a creative purpose!
I suggest 400 and 1.2 kHz as the rolloff points, 12 dB/octave.
McDSP F2 is a resonant HFP/LFP that can help you tune in the distance, I use it in parallel with compressors all the time.

[AnalogUniverse]

Originally Posted by 7rojo7

use a low pass and a high pass filter on the drum mix then the volume before you use any ambience. When it already sounds like some thing far away then add your ambience (a plate might surprise you) and use the same filters there (put the ambience in with the drum mix). this is an opportunity to use an upward expander for a creative purpose!
I suggest 400 and 1.2 kHz as the rolloff points, 12 dB/octave.
McDSP F2 is a resonant HFP/LFP that can help you tune in the distance, I use it in parallel with compressors all the time.

this was along the lines of what i was thinking as well.. narrow the bandwidth before you run into your effects, you could even mix the original with the filtered version to vary the intensity.

good luck

[Marbarbaar]

yeah, I'll try that.
Unfortunately without the mcDSP & other AU & RTAS stuff.
I do have a Delta 1010 but the damn thing is broken and I'd have to buy protools Mpowered.


Thanks agin for the comments