Mixing Water / Water Fall BG's

Question

I have an entire scene that takes place at base of a small / medium waterfall. I'm trying to create the ambience for the scene, but everything I try comes out sounding like white noise, and therefore a little 'phasey'. To make matters worse, I'm working in 5.1.

I've tried, slowing water recordings down and layering them under normal waterfall recordings, I've tried taking two mono recordings and panning them left/right with a heavy mid range recording in the center, mid / side recordings, etc, etc.

Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated. I feel like this question might be a little vague, but I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has a good technique or idea for generally anchoring these kind of sounds.

Thanks!!

Answer 1

Nice, a sound design question :) It's difficult to create a clear and not phasey ambience with water sounds, but in most cases it's a matter of less is more.

How many different layers are you using and have you divided them up in 'tones' or 'colours'? A simple LF/MF/HF division can do a lot to keep things tidy.. and don't be afraid to use detailed trickles of water to highten the sense of closeness to the water in the mix. (I don't have a lot of experience in 5.1 so I can't be sure that it will work.)

Furthermore, can you add some details about the presence of dialogue in the scene and let us know what the character is doing or feeling? Where do you want the audience to be (point of hearing). Close to the other characters or detached from a group? That makes a lot of difference with regards to presence of the waterfall sound and mix of the soundtrack.

Answer 2

I think it helps to play with the mix of water layers subtly so that the sound is always evolving. Lighter sounds on top of the the more body or base sounds and changing the mix up a little bit. Adding some higher frequency and unique content like some splashes or drops will also help it. Since your working in surround you should have a little more room to do that without losing the focus of the dialog. Using part of a light stream recording could help also, getting the trickles and movement off of rocks without the rush of water.

Answer 3

Funny that you ask this, I was just watching a recorded webinar with Randy Thom where he speaks about designing the waves in Castaway and specifically how he kept them from sounding too noisy. He said that not only did they do what Arnoud said with layering by frequency content, but also frequently used sounds produced by waves much smaller than the waves on-screen, because the smaller waves had a much more watery quality.

Here's a link to the webinar

Answer 4

I had a similar problem very recently. I'm currently working on an exploration video game with many waterfalls, rivers & streams. The platforms for the game include iPad and other tablets, so I wanted to avoid blasting out white noise, as this would not sound good on tablet speakers. I ended up recording waterfalls and fountains much smaller than the ones depicted in the game, to achieve more definition (as described in the other comments) instead of a wall of sound. I don't really have experience in 5.1 though, so I can't comment on that.

Answer 5

Try to use one mono or stereo source, panned there, where you want water source to be. Then, use surround reverb to add space. This how you can avoid phase cancellation, but its a trade-off: scene will not be so "large" and "wide". To compensate this you can use "wide" reverbs.