Help listening for Impact/Clunk effect

Hi Leah!

Excellent question, and as usual in this forum, there’s no simple answer.

It’s hard to explain sound in words any better than "Slam" or "Clunk", so instead I’ll show you how to bring the effect out, with a few visual examples.

I created a test file containing what I call "fat impulses". They’re bass-heavy recurring clicks, and sound pretty wimpy by themselves, but as they are clicks, they contain all frequencies, thus giving the plug-ins something to work with while resulting in a very clear alteration of the audio. Each impulse is a chopped piece of a 30 Hz wave. You can download the original file here:
[attachment=1:1t2h0xj8]fat_impulse.zip[/attachment:1t2h0xj8]

Here’s the original Fat Impulses, spaced 1 second apart (ideal for testing Bass-EFX)

Fat Impulses, spaced 1 second apart, after Bass-EFX Level 3

Here’s the same fat impulses but spaced 1/6 seconds apart. [attachment=0:1t2h0xj8]fat_impulse2.zip[/attachment:1t2h0xj8]

Fat Impulses, spaced 1/6 seconds apart – Original

Fat Impulses, spaced 1/6 seconds apart, Clunk level 3

Fat Impulses, spaced 1/6 seconds apart, Slam level 3

Looking at the above, you can see that "Bass-EFX" at level 3 adds deep thunderous bass lasting for more half a second, from a tiny little click! (In reality, it doesn’t actually ADD the bass, but it does spread out the energy that’s already in the click, so that it becomes audible).

Clunk adds some high frequency resonances to the click, and Slam adds mid bass resonances. The zoom level in these images is different from the Bass-EFX screenshots (due to there being 6 clicks per second instead of just 1) so you can see that the effect doesn’t last nearly as long.
av-Adobe-Audition.png[/img]

Looking at the above, you can see that "Bass-EFX" at level 3 adds deep thunderous bass lasting for more than half a second, from a tiny little click! (In reality, it doesn’t actually ADD the bass, but it does spread out the energy that’s already in the click, so that it becomes audible). If you were to just boost the bass of the original click, there’s nowhere for it to go — the peak is at maximum already. However, if you boost the bass after you’ve applied Bass-EFX, you can boost A LOT before you’re at the rails.

Clunk adds some high frequency resonances to the click, and Slam adds mid bass resonances. The zoom level in these images is different from the Bass-EFX screenshots (due to there being 6 clicks per second instead of just 1) so you can see that the effect doesn’t last nearly as long.

So anyway, having seen what the plug-ins do in extremely controlled conditions, if you play the fat impulses on repeat while turning the different plug-ins off and on, you’ll hear exactly what they do — and then should be able to hear it on actual program content too. It’s subtle — at this level of detail, most things are — but it’s there, and does add an extra flavour which is hard to get any other way.

Thanks for the excellent question! This answer’s going in the manual.

Best regards,
///Leif

Nope, and I had to make new screen shots too since she asked about Impact/Clunk 🙂

///Leif