How to make my sounds less "air-like"?

[The Kombine]

My sounds are all too blurred out and have too much reverb.

Lately I've been trying to achieve a more gritty sounding atmosphere. But it's getting difficult to achieve.

Any ideas/tips/advice/etc.?

 

[Mania]

...less reverb?

 

[Josephm561]

...less reverb?

 

[bantam]

...less reverb?

Simple answer but most probably the best shout. Maybe use a send instead of an insert? Also, your samples may be lacking some low end? As well as the frequency content of the samples, make sure you are using samples that have the sound you want. Again sounds simple, but can easily be overlooked. If you post some examples we can probably help further...

 

[Dugg Funnie]

Can you give us an example? Part of the problem in audio engineering is the use of miscellaneous adjectives to describe sounds, so when you say it sound "airy" I can think of at least 4 different meanings for that which have 4 different solutions so without examples this thread gets drawn out way more than it needs to.

 

[miszt]

''Air'' in a sound, is around 10Khz, so thats a good area to play with if you want to take a little bit of shine off the sounds (simple shallow notch EQ to start) - however, as already stated, if it sounds too verby, then theres to much verb, an no amount of EQ is going to get rid of it



my personal preference for dark atmospheric sounds, is to use a High Passed Reverb, but only a little bit - i personally like the air/shine and wouldnt take it out of most sounds

 

[Boooke]

As Dugg Funnie said, example plox. Maybe we're addressing different problems here.

Though, IMO with reverb: Control the space of the reverb, something might not need to be in stereo - use mono, "less stereo" reverb. A good way to control this is using the free epicVerb plugin, if your reverb doesn't allow it. It's my favourite reverb by far. Before reverb, EQ the sound for a preferred dry sound, then put on the reverb and EQ the reverb. To me, the reverb is quite a mixture of feeling and presence. Make a very high passed or sometimes low passed, barely audible, but it will get that wide "hall"-sound anyway. Sometimes a bell in the 15 KHz and up area can help, but generally, if you need to heavily EQ the reverb, say +-6 dB, you'd probably wanna look into your reverb settings.

When dealing with stereo reverb, I usually cut pretty much everything below 200 Hz, and usually, it's more likely to be around 1 or 2 KHz, since I consider everything below mud in a lot of sounds, especially in busy tunes.

In some cases a stereo imager can do the job better, if you just want a wide sound. It's much more controlled. Delay is also a possibility. I rarely use delay, and could probably count the amount of time I use delay on one hand (Except for phasing effects. Echo-phasing is awsum ), though I've seen it recommended sometimes instead of reverb.


Also, less reverb.

 

[The Kombine]

Can you give us an example? Part of the problem in audio engineering is the use of miscellaneous adjectives to describe sounds, so when you say it sound "airy" I can think of at least 4 different meanings for that which have 4 different solutions so without examples this thread gets drawn out way more than it needs to.

You're right, I should have thought about that.

So when I say my sounds are "airy"... It's kind of hard for me to explain. But listening to this track will definitely tell you that there is too much juxtaposition between the "airy" sounds and the very dry sounds.

https://soundcloud.com/https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fthe-kombine%2Fbig-brother

When I really want to have my ambient sound something like the ambient tracks from Half Life 2 (I've been told I'm really good at making Background Music so I wanna incorporate that into my future drum 'n; bass tracks). This one in particular.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnN8QgPiYsY

 

[brkchk]

My sounds are all too blurred out and have too much reverb.

Lately I've been trying to achieve a more gritty sounding atmosphere. But it's getting difficult to achieve.

Any ideas/tips/advice/etc.?

less verb outta do the trick.

reduce either the overall wet volume or room size (preferably room size depending on the effect you want)

reverb is necessary to create atmosphere almost all of the time but too much can take away from the effect you want.