Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/7/2004, 8:21 PM
The best thing to do would be to record some sounds inside the car & outside. Then, compare the two. Since all cars are different it's hard to say. Last week, if you wanted to make a sound soundlike it was in MY car, you'd have to add a belt squeek constantly. :)

John_Cline wrote on 4/7/2004, 9:29 PM
Assuming you mean with the windows rolled up, you could just roll off the high end. Of course, then there is the matter of "distance perspective" but rolling off the high end will probably help create that illusion as well. By the way, there is no reverb inside a car, the passenger compartment is simply too small to reverberate.

John
patreb wrote on 4/7/2004, 10:46 PM
John, if i only knew what "rolling off high ends" meant...
busterkeaton wrote on 4/7/2004, 11:57 PM
It means getting rid of the high frequencies.

Click on the audio track controls and go to EQ. Grab the 4 and bring it all the way down. Listen. Now move the 4 to the left or the right and listen again. Find the frequency cutoff that sounds most like a car to you.
AlistairLock wrote on 4/8/2004, 2:16 PM
"there is no reverb inside a car, the passenger compartment is simply too small to reverberate."

There is, or at least I've always found it in the cars I've driven. Small and boxy, muffled and short, but always there. If a scene requires the characters to be in a car, I use the Waves Trueverb on its shortest, smallest setting. The early reflection program when blended to the right level with the voices, causes some nice phase cancellation which helps sell the fact that the actors are in a car, not standing in front of mikes in a nice warm studio.
Even if I put the actors next to each other in a booth, I still usually sweeten the acoustic with my Waves "car" set-up. Add a location recording of a car interior, muffle any other exterior sounds that they would be hearing, and, we're in a car.
vitalforces wrote on 4/8/2004, 4:01 PM
If you can get hold of any version of Sound Forge, you can apply the multitudinous free plugins called Acoustic Mirror impulses. Those effects include converting a signal to sound as if it's coming through the wall of an adjacent room.
patreb wrote on 4/9/2004, 11:06 PM
Thanks guys!
GlennChan wrote on 4/10/2004, 3:22 AM
I've found that the "Smooth/Enhance" filter is excellent for doing exactly this. It you think about the physics of the sound moving through a barrier, this kind of makes sense. I'd think of a squarewave hitting a window or barrier (like a wall). The sound hits the barrier and starts "pushing" on it, which causes to barrier to start to move. Because of inertia/momentum the barrier takes some time to move back and forth and there's some lag/roughness to its movement, effectively smoothing out the motion. I'm not 100% sure if this is what actually happens, but it makes sense and sounds right!

The "Smooth/Enhance" filter can get rid of the high end as the presets suggest, which mimcs dropping off the high frequencies with EQ.

Another thing you might want to consider is that a barrier will always have a resonant frequency. Sound passes really easily through this resonant frequency. You might get a more accurate sound by bumping up the fundamental resonant frequency and all its harmonics/overtones (not sure what those are called). You'd do this with multiple parametric EQs or with track EQ. I'll try this tomorrow and see if it sounds more accurate.