Make your Monster Sound Effects Instantly Better
*Please note that this blog post may contain affiliate links*
If you’ve ever tried to make a monster sound effect before, you’re probably familiar with trying to record your own voice and then moving the pitch down an octave or two. And this usually works out decently well.
But you may have also noticed that the further down you try to go, the blander the sound effect becomes. You start to lose a lot of high-frequency information in the sound.
In this article, we’re going to be talking about how you can make your monster sound effects instantly better using just one simple, free plugin.
As a gift to you, I created some monster sound effects which you can get free here!
Multiband Compressor
In order to “bring back” the high-end frequencies to the sound, we’re going to use the free plugin OTT by Xfer. OTT is a multiband compressor that does both upward and downward compression, but for today’s purposes, we’ll just be using it as a downward compressor.
OTT helps balance out the frequencies of a sound so that no frequency is more present than another. At least, that’s how I like to use it. Simply including this plugin on your sound effect in this way instantly brings more life back into the mix.
As soon as you try it out, you’ll see how the multiband compressor adds more high and mid frequencies to the sound effect, which instantly makes your monster sound more lively and characteristic. You could also double stack it if you really want to double up on this effect.
Within the actual plugin, you don’t even need to change any of the settings other than the amount of upward or downward compression you want. I usually like to just move the upward and downward compression knobs all the way down and see what effect I am getting. Usually, just this will help make the sound effect sound better.
Once that is in place, I may experiment with the “depth” knob to hone in the mix of the effect.
What is happening?
For the particular example in the video, when we look at the frequency spectrum, you’ll see a peak around 200-500hz, and then the frequencies start to drop after 1000hz. This is what causes that lack of character when pitch shifting down without adding anything else to the monster sound effect.
But with OTT, you’ll notice that the entire file is a lot more balanced. The frequencies are flatter on the spectrogram so that no frequency is sticking out or dropping off. That’s why the sound feels fuller and more balanced.
Another way to do it
OTT by Xfer is a free plugin, but if you don’t want to use it, you can use any other multiband compressor and get a similar effect.
In this case, on your choice multiband compressor, you can bring down the threshold until the limiter starts peaking. I’m usually looking for -3dB of reduction (check out my Youtube video to see an example) and I’ll bring this down across each band until each band has a gain reduction of -3dB.
Sometimes I’ll also stack OTT with a multiband compressor because they adjust the frequencies differently so you get a different result (although it may not be very noticeable).
That’s it! It’s nothing complex, but it makes all the difference. This very simple process can help bring a lot of character and liveliness out of your monster sound effects, or any sound effect for that matter.
Try it for yourself.
Try it for yourself.
Download OTT and place it on a sound effect and see how it changes the frequency balance of the sound.
A reminder to download your free monster sound effects HERE.
You can watch the full video tutorial on my YouTube Channel.
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