Sound Processing of Recorded Sound Effects

In this blog, I will be covering a process of processing sounds I had previously recorded.

I was very lucky to be given the chance to use a high end field recorder, a S0und Device 552 Field Recorder.

It was lent to me by a good friend to use for a weekend, along with a Schoeps Colette MK4 Mono Set.

So I decided to set the gear up and record a bunch of sounds, using props and different objects that were found around the house.

Sounds from toy marbles to our pet dog munching on his favourite biscuit, I covered a lot of ground in the short amount of time I had to use this equipment, before needing to return it.

With all these different sounds recorded, it was now time to go through them all; edit them and get them polished and ready for use.

I created a brand new Pro Tools session, and dumped all my audio into the timeline of my session.

First thing I did was I made a copy of all the audio, so I would still have an original copy of what I had recorded, before doing any editing and processing.

From there, after organising all the audio files I had recorded within Pro Tools, I had now set up some routing, on how I was going to process my recorded sounds.

Essentially I would be sending my recorded audio through a series of plugins, process my recorded audio using these plugins to each audio clip on my Pro Tools timeline, then print my recorded audio with these changes I have made to them onto a new separate audio track after my plugins chain.

On top of my plugin processing and re-printing of my audio, before printing my recorded audio that I had processed with my plugins, I would also be using a few Izotope RX tools for cleaning up and repairing my recordings, as a lot of these recordings had some unwanted sounds (mainly a bit of background noise, but also the occasional click and bump that needed to be edited out).

I would do this method of audio repair, audio processing with plugins and printing out my changes for every single audio clip, as I worked across the whole timeline in my Pro Tools session.

This method worked well, as different sounds I had recorded needed different things added/removed from them.

So being able to do tweaks and print the audio with my processing done to them out onto a brand new track, saved having to have many instances of plugins and using a lot of unnecessary CPU, as I could make changes with the plugins in real time, print the newly edited sounds out as a brand new copy therefore consolidating my work done to them, and not have to worry about losing any work I had done when continuing to edit and tweak my plugins in my plugins chain.

With processing the sounds I had recorded, while I did use quite a few different plugins, there were a couple of plugins I used for the majority of processing these sounds:

Fabfilter Pro-Q 3 - The Fabfilter Pro-Q 3 has been my go to EQ plugin for quite a while now. The visual response of what frequencies your sounds cover really helps with taking out/enhancing certain frequencies. That and the fact you can have as many EQ edit points as you want, makes it very handy for getting really surgical and precise with your EQ changes.

McDSP ML4000 - The McDSP ML4000 has been yet another go to plugin for me. I chuck lot of sound sources through this plugin. Being a Mastering Limiter it has some fantastic features, been able to really push and make your sounds more upfront, as well as been able to expand and compress certain frequencies across the whole frequency spectrum for whichever sounds you put this plugin on.

A/B Comparison:

SFX: Sticky Tape Plastic Rip Pull (No Processing)

SFX: Sticky Tape Plastic Rip Pull (With Processing)

SFX: Plastic Wine Bottle Handling Open Close Small (No Processing)

SFX: Plastic Wine Bottle Handling Open Close Small (With Processing)