Sound Effect Help

tedwardo24

tedwardo24

Member
I am using Soundtrack Pro, and I have a sound effect of a police siren. What effects, filters, etc would I use to simulate the police siren being 5-6 city blocks away in the distance (aside from lowering the amplitude).

Thanks in advance--
 
hhhmmm..., jut thinking out loud, but I would start by getting eq on it, and lower the volumes of some of the fequencies a bit, to make it a bit more muffled, maybe even add a slight bit of a delay or echo, also I'm not sure, but I might pan towards the direction of where it is supposed to be coming from.

I might even add some reverb to give it a bit of life/space. but you need to be carefull here, you could easily make it sound like it's stuck in a shower.

- Derrick
 
Play it through a speaker outside and record it at a bit of a distance. Lower the volume, add ambiance and or run it through a convolution app with a distant Impulse response.
 
Sounds that occur outside are usually going to have little or no ambience, because most outdoor environments are extremely large and don't have many reflections. The greater the distance from the source, the more attenuated the highs are so probably just roll off some high end and mix it down low is all you need.


Are you trying to simulate the sound of a siren that is moving? If this is the case I suggest you emulate the doppler effect, since a moving siren is essentially THE classic example of the effect.
 
He's talking in a city. Lots of hard surfaces so you do need to get some of those reflections in for it to sell.
In case you were refering to my mention of adding ambience, I was a bit unclear. I didn't mean to add it to the siren but to get some city Amb. on a track to play with the siren so that it would sit down in a "reality". Dry it will never sell.

But you know the best way to make this work? Record a siren a few blocks away, or get a recording from someone that has. Truthfully the "big Hollywood" trick to this kind of thing is that crews record a LOT of sounds in post. Then the keep all those sounds in a nice big library. I would guess that something below 10% of the sounds in a "Hollywood" feature are from libraries that you can buy. That varies a lot with budget and who exactly is doing post and how big their personal library is but pretty much all shows record some of the sounds and better shows record most or all (or pull from their library).

tigeba said:
Sounds that occur outside are usually going to have little or no ambience, because most outdoor environments are extremely large and don't have many reflections. The greater the distance from the source, the more attenuated the highs are so probably just roll off some high end and mix it down low is all you need.


Are you trying to simulate the sound of a siren that is moving? If this is the case I suggest you emulate the doppler effect, since a moving siren is essentially THE classic example of the effect.
Click to expand...
 
I was going to suggest "Just record a siren outside" like Noiz, but I pretty much always say that, and I didn't want to sound like a broken record. Since he mentioned it, I would have to agree it is the best suggestion! :)
 
One other thing. STP includes a LOT of sounds. That is great except a lot of them are from Sound Ideas. SI has a huge library but they tend to be VERY clean and dry. If you want a sound to sit in the mix it needs some "real life" to it and SI takes some doing to get the FX to sound like they exist anywhere but on a stage. Also beware that a bunch of the sounds are "surround". I don't know for a fact but most of the "surround" sounds sound like someone just played with the panners to "move" the sound around. IF the movement matches you picture cool, but most of the time it wont and that makes many of the "surround" sounds useless most of the time.
 
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