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Is something simple I just can't wrap my head around...some of my favorite artists like James Blake, Nicolas Jaar, and Shlohmo have a way to make these pulsing white noise waves and trails on drum hits. My problem is that no matter how I filter out the high frequencies or how quiet in the mix I put the noise, it still sounds piercing to my ears and leads to quick ear fatigue. I've tried using samples and Massive w/ only the noise oscillator on without any luck...any advice would be really appreciated.

Here's a couple examples also:

James Blake - Sparing the Horses @ 1:50



Nicolas Jaar - Specters of the Future (This is just a warm vinyl crackling sound, but even that sounds piercing more often than not)

maybe don't distort or over saturate the 15khz+ area? Only problem I can understand myself is maybe theres too much compression or effects to brighten the noise.

I actually havnt been processing the samples,or massives noise oscillator with any thing but a low pass filter and occasionally a vinyl distortion unit..just sounds so harsh and piercing as opposed to warm (as far as noise goes)

I like to low pass my white noise to a certain degree...also a good amount of reverb at the end of the chain helps as well.

turn it down? stereo filter delay, and artificial stereo field plugins (or 'spread' control on synth) can soften it up. make a little cut in certain regions 14-22khz if it's piercing.. also i almost always hipass with low Q around 800-1000hz, idk

bandpass -> low pass slightly -> reverb as an insert -> eq the highs a bit.

love working with whitenoise

such a mysterious and sexy sound

EQ it. Somewhere around the midrange sounds like vinyl crackle.

Oviously keep low- and high-pass filtering it.

Maybe pan it somewhere.


EDIT: I hipassed at 200, lopassed at 4600, cut at 500, and boosted at 300 and 1200.

Maybe try distorting it.

highpass it at like 3khz, and put a slight eq dip at around 4,5khz to make it less harsh. this is one way, but definitely try different eq settings. use a reverb on it.