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I am hearing a lot of tracks being filled on the top end with this crispy sparkle noise but I am not really able to reproduce it that well. I will use a track that is pretty widely talked about around here...Terror Squad for example. The snare in the intro has a really crisp and long noise decay. I find it a little over the top for my liking but that is a good example of what I am talking about.

I get the idea of layering noise over a snare or hat but are there any other effects to add to the noise to crisp it up like that? High passing from a certain frequency? Overdrive? Other times it sounds like there is some noise just hanging out in the background to fill up space. It seems as though this high crisp noise is just as important as sub bass these days so I am curious if anyone wants to explain how they are using it to achieve that ultimate crispen sound.

I'm listening to a fair bit of noisia atm and think I know what you're on about. an idea to experiment with is distorting a sound and then highpassing the fuck out of it so you're just left with the very top harmonics. Modulating the frequency of the high pass filter can give some nice variety

It's a common concept in EDM. To get that crispy high end noise you want to use ride samples from vengeance sample packs. The newest ones are the only usable, for example VEE3. The old ones are just casual ride cymbals and they don't work that well.

Soundcloud

Here's a quick demo. In context, with more elements the noise is less noticable, it adds to the "unconscious" factor.

I think your looking for some specific EQing/reverb. To make the snare pop try adding reverb with the diffusion starting around 3khz in addition to an slight high end shelf eq around 6khz. The same shelf on hihats or cymbals around 10khz wouldnt hurt either if its still not sounding as bright as youd like. Compress it right and the track should pop and sparkle nice. You could also experiment with layering the main snare with 909 or 808 snares

outbound wrote:I'm listening to a fair bit of noisia atm and think I know what you're on about. an idea to experiment with is distorting a sound and then highpassing the fuck out of it so you're just left with the very top harmonics. Modulating the frequency of the high pass filter can give some nice variety

^ This.
Or just put saturation/distortion after your plate (snare) reverb.
It's about creating harmonics

Ah thanks, that should give me some stuff to play around with.

Try lightly but crushing your highs.
I sometimes frequency split basses and do this.
Or just high pass a duplicate channel and crush to taste

but crushing sounds really unpleasant.
OP distorted and filtered noise is what you want as mentioned by everyone aha. but you can make it wide and twinkly by adding chorus/unison and/or phaser in parallel and in small amounts to really make it sparkle.

Good stuff. Think I will skip the but crush though...

One of my favorite tricks for a nice high end noise thing is to use a vocoder on a send, use noise as the carrier and your drums/whatever as the modulator. Use a high pass, saturater, lowpass and you can get a nice noise layer that works well with the drums. You can tighten up the response with a gate side chained to the modulator signal ie; your drum track, between the envelope controls on the vocoder and the extra control from the gate, you can really tailor the sound in a wide number of ways. Great way to thicken up any percussive element and it sounds more organic than just layering noise.

knobgoblin wrote:One of my favorite tricks for a nice high end noise thing is to use a vocoder on a send, use noise as the carrier and your drums/whatever as the modulator. Use a high pass, saturater, lowpass and you can get a nice noise layer that works well with the drums. You can tighten up the response with a gate side chained to the modulator signal ie; your drum track, between the envelope controls on the vocoder and the extra control from the gate, you can really tailor the sound in a wide number of ways. Great way to thicken up any percussive element and it sounds more organic than just layering noise.

Interesting stuff... I'm just thinking what kinda genre of Dubstep tune would that work in...

^Why does it have to be a certain genre of dubstep? Just curious as to why you say that.

Its just a technique.

Isn't dubstep the genre? use it anywhere you want tasty noise bits to layer on your perc

Changing my response. - Get nice noise and layer. Sorry I am not reading questions correctly lol