how to simulate the effect of wind on sound?

[speakerfood]

I'm doing a lot of post production on voices that are recorded in the studio but need to sound as if they come from a distance in a windy surrounding (like a beach, or a field). What are the tools to make this as realistic as possible? Volume of course, but also pitch? Phasing? Eq?

[Bill@AudioVision]

I'd dump the low end and make sure the voice performance is matched to 'fighting the elements' - i.e. - raised voices and hampered delivery as if struggling a bit against the wind. You can also add some early reflections, too, as if voices bouncing off some hard surface (ground) or building.

[Uncle Bob]

The performance of the actors is just as (if not more) important than the way the ADRed dialog is processed during the mix. When "real" people are conversing outside in most situations they must speak more loudly. The term "raising your voice" is in some ways literal, the pitch/timbre of the voice actually goes up; how much depends on the amount of ambient noise in the environment. (Yup, I know, you probably just get what you're given and have no control over the ADR sessions.)

The more realistically contextual the actual ADR performance is the easier it is to get to sit properly in the mix.

[danijel]

If this is just for background and needs not be intelligible, heavily reducing the transients and removing and quiet sounds like breaths and lipsmacks might help.

[D'Animation]

Originally Posted by danijel

If this is just for background and needs not be intelligible, heavily reducing the transients and removing and quiet sounds like breaths and lipsmacks might help.

Indeed, I've had to go one step further and actually pull out words a little but that was in a arctic storm setting, so probably more extreme than the case here. Definitely losing some of the 'definition' helps a lot in far away situations.

[danijel]

Hm, the man asked about the wind and most of us are off-topic - the discussion so far was mostly about making thing sound far away....
Anyway, apart from modulating the volume and/or eq in correlation the the wind gusts, is there some other trick? Pitch shifting makes sense, looking from the scientific pov, but does it make real-life noticeable difference?

[rhumphries]

In my minds ear, wind makes high end inconsistent and a bit swirly, so on my template "outdoor" aux, I essentially have a high passed slap echo of varying delay feeding a chorus.

-Richard

[pethenis]

I once did a scene of an outdoor party with quite a lot of wind blowing. The music at the party was played on a boombox and I had to simulate this in post. What I did was create two different Altiverb versions (speaker impulses) of the music, one thinner sounding then the other. These I fed to a MundoMod, very slowly modulating the pitch. By continously playing with the levels of the two tracks, they weaved in and out and I was very happy with how it sounded: it sounded like the wind was blowing the music around.

[JoeMilner]

Nice ideas!

[jackdanny]

Would it be feasible for you to try and 'worldize' the recordings? If you could set up some speakers and playback the sound to re-record it in an appriopriate space you could get some useful results?