The
sound of thunder
is one of the most relaxing and sublime sounds in nature and capturing
it's uniqueness is one of the things we do here. But simply recording
thunder claps is just the beginning of the process. Here are
a few examples of a single thunderclap digital transformation into
a virtually real thunderclap.
Here
is a the sample we begin with. A simple mono recording of thunder:
Here
is the same recording with a little stereo rumbling added:
The
same recording with audio depth to enhance its 'spatial' quality.
In this particular case this is done by adding the same sound byte
slightly offset and panning in the mirror opposite of the original
clip at a lower volume. The idea behind this is to emulate the separation
of our left and right hearing:
And
finally enhancing the finishing rumble:
When
it finally does gets mixed into a dreamscape it might go through
more digital manipulation (i.e. noise and distortion cancelation, rate adjustment
and such) But why all this work for a single thunderclap? Simply
because those nature sound machines never did it for me.
I could always pick up on the looping involved and soon their
effectiveness would wear off... not to mention the lack of
quality in the recordings. I think
the sound of thunder is more
relaxing, and therefore sleep inducing, if you can really picture yourself
in the intended environment.
