Uncle Peti's Sound Den

[Petike the Taffer]

Thinking about sound effects and ambience matters in the last few weeks, but especially yesterday, I've decided to start a single thread for sound-related stuff I'm working on or might work on in the near future.

 

I've dug out a few interesting sounds I've recorded myself over the last few months and years, and read up on what sounds we still might be missing. Obviously, I'd prefer to focus on sounds we don't have enough of yet, or sounds that might be in need of improvement.

 

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I haven't worked on the ice-related effects for now, but I've done some recording on potential new sounds for the candlesticks. Contact with surfaces at various intensity, the usual thing. The surfaces were older wooden furniture and thick ceramic kitchen tiles (non-glazed). Surfaces that make sense in TDM, I hope. I'll be uploading these shortly, I still need to edit them a bit.

 

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For wilderness scenarios, I have the following recording of an owl's calls (made a few months ago). It's been edited down to only include the owl itself, and it's all in .ogg format :

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/p2mhh2rh4bl0uu2/little+owl+call+raw+record.ogg

Unfortunately, this is a bit of a raw record. I accidentally captured some humming in the background, presumably because my portable recorder was sticking out of the window and captured some device humming away in the interior.

 

I'll try to clean up the recording so we'll only keep the owl calls, and I'd honestly appreciate some help with this, if someone wants to try it.

 

The owl calls I've managed to record are a bit unusual, since they're more weepy-sounding than the more stereotypical hoot-hoot. This is because it's a little owl (yes, that's the species name in English for some reason), and they have a rather characteristic voice. I think it would be a creepy call to hear in a night forest, though.

Edited February 17, 2019 by Petike the Taffer

[grayman]

Cool.

[Petike the Taffer]

Cool.

 

Do you think that recording is salvageable ? I think the owl calls are really nice, but that background hum, as low-key as it is, just ruins the impression.

[Bikerdude]

You need to filter out all the noise thats not part of the owl call, Tried it in audacity and unfortunatly there is too much background noise.

 

And regarding the owl sound its not owl Ive ever heard of before, sounds more like a small mamel of some kind. That and the sound repeates a bit too often to useable as an ambient.

[SteveL]

The humming is pretty intrusive unfortunately I have no idea whether it's fixable. It makes the owl call hard to recognise.

[Petike the Taffer]

Yeah, thought so. Oh well, at worst, if I run across those calls again, I'll try recording them purely outside, and with some of the sensitivity of the mic toned down a bit.

 

You need to filter out all the noise thats not part of the owl call, Tried it in audacity and unfortunatly there is too much background noise.

 

And regarding the owl sound its not owl Ive ever heard of before, sounds more like a small mamel of some kind. That and the sound repeates a bit too often to useable as an ambient.

 

The recording is just a rough edit, I was planning on isolating two or three calls out of it, at most. It was meant for individual sound effects, not any longer ambience.

 

Though I'm no expert on owls, here's a video of a specimen of that species making calls. Sounds by and large the same to me.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Petike the Taffer

[Bikerdude]

Though I'm no expert on owls, here's a video of a specimen of that species making calls. Sounds by and large the same to me.

Fair enough, that does sound different, less like a mammal this time.

[Petike the Taffer]

Oh, you meant mammal. Sorry, didn't understand what you meant the first time.

 

In other news, I've edited the "candlestick sounds on wood" now. I'm still planning to relisten to them and check whether there isn't an echo in the recording. I might post the samples by Saturday (if I don't forget).

[Petike the Taffer]

It's been a while, but I've found some time to edit a few sound effects I've recorded earlier.

 

I'm still working on finishing the candlestick sounds, but until then, feel free to modify and use this sound for a loudly creaking door/window opening and closing:

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/cbqr4sp74y2wu2a/creaking_door_or_window_%28open_and_close%29.ogg

[Petike the Taffer]

Okay, here's the first batch of candlestick sounds. These were all done on a wooden surface, and include differing levels of picking up, putting down and dropping sounds.

 

Picking up candlestick from a wooden surface

 

Gently

Harshly

 

Putting down candlestick on a wooden surface

 

Gently

Hastily (with slight ringing) - three similar sounds, but I've put them into one file, with gaps

With a thump

Harshly

 

Dropping candlestick on a wooden surface

 

Gently

Hastily (with slight ringing) 01

Hastily (with slight ringing) 02

With a thump

Harshly

 

 

The candlestick I've used is apparently made of brass, and silver-plated on the outside. Just to give you an idea about the heft and sound of the thing when I was trying to generate various sounds with it. I used the same candlestick for the tiled floor effects, which I'll hopefully finish soon. Give it a few days and I'll probably post them.

 

The current batch still needs some improvements.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Petike the Taffer

[Bikerdude]

Only listened to the first too samples, and there is too much back ground noise...

[Petike the Taffer]

Only listened to the first too samples, and there is too much back ground noise...

 

Yeah, the first two aren't the best. The others are better, though I've been thinking of cutting some end bits from a few of them, since those have the biggest problem with background noise.

[Anderson]

 

Yeah, the first two aren't the best. The others are better, though I've been thinking of cutting some end bits from a few of them, since those have the biggest problem with background noise.

Yes, all that's left to do is careful editing.

[Gast]

Can't a noise-gate erase the little background noise?

[Petike the Taffer]

I've already cleaned up the worst of the background noise in these candlestick recordings, but as I'm not that experienced with noise gates in Audacity, I'll be reworking the samples until I get the best results.

 

I might try fiddling with the settings of my dictaphone too. While I maxed them out earlier for certain recording reasons, that was back when I was using them in conjunction with a proper desktop mic (for voice recording, in a home-made space shielded from background noise). I fear the settings might be a bit oversensitive at the moment and that might be causing some problems with the BN pick up.

 

P.S. If any of you want to try some editing with these samples, be my guest. Just hit download, next to the sound player on the other side of the link.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Petike the Taffer

[Hiradur]

If your recorder supports it you should record at a bit depth of 24 bit or higher to reduce the noise floor. You can bring the recording down to 16 bit later on (preferably with shaped dither).

But wait a minute, are you using a tape recorder? The background noise in the little owl recording sounds a bit like a tape running in the background.

 

"Noise gate" is not what you would be looking for to reduce noise by the way. The effect should be called "noise reduction" instead. However, in my personal opinion noise reduction makes the recording sound too artificial. If it's too noisy you should ditch it and re-record or forget about it.

[Gast]

You're right Hiradur, tried the noise gate on some of these samples ans it's not working at all.

[Petike the Taffer]

I'm planning to get a better quality mic, connect it to my dictaphone, and try to tweak the settings until I get better results. I really need to muffle as much background noise as I possibly can in every recording.

[datiswous]

Not sure if this is still interesting, but I get pretty good results at noise reduction with RNNoise . Available as a processing filter in fre:ac

Edit: aperantly OBS studio uses this.

Edited February 9, 2022 by datiswous

[Petike the Taffer]

I have a better quality mic these days, but I still need to acquire some sort of shroud for it, just in case. Currently not recording any sound effects nor voiceovers.