Yesterday I heard an interesting stream-like sound while watching one of Federico’s VCV Rack tutorials. I thought about whether I could try to make this sound a bit more realistic. You can find Federico’s video under the following link. The sound can be heard at 03:05 for a short time. https://youtu.be/vxOE0jhsn7A?t=185

As a basis I took the macro oscillator 2 from Audible Instruments and configured it like in Federico’s video. With the modulation of the timbre button the click sounds were played in shorter intervals, which I hoped to simulate fast flowing water. Unfortunately the result with an LFO and sine wave sounded more like a wooden xylophone, much too fast and too regular. I more or less solved the problem with a faster frequency on Macro Oscillator 2 and the LFO from Bogaudio. With the SLN Sampler from Amalgamated Harmonics, I wanted to achieve a bit more variation in pitch. Since the lower tones sounded more artificial than the higher tones, I used the VCF module to remove the low tones.

Next, I tried to get more of the water splashing with the Alright Blob module and make the sound more spatial with Plateau. That didn’t sound bad at all. Unfortunately I still missed the lower frequencies from deeper places in the water. To solve the problem I used the texture synthesizer. First of all I lowered the pitch and changed the output noise so that it simply sounds a bit different from the original.

Finally I practiced mixing with the new Mind Meld EQ Master
1. I took out the low frequencies of tones that should sound high.
2. Took out the high frequencies of sounds that should sound lower.
3. emphasize frequencies that sound more or less good

Unfortunately, water splashing still sounds very artificial with headphones, but at least with loudspeakers a little better. Unfortunately, I couldn’t reproduce a real stream ripple either, but rather something that sounds like a stalactite cave. More practice is needed, hehe :D

Example sound starts at ~ 33:33