imagine a pencil drawing, you take an Eraser and partially degrade part of it, so some of the part you've erased is still there, ragged and patchy, but you've essentially partially removed it...it might be the equivalent of a bit of parchment where some words are illegible due to age..i thought of smearing or bitcrushing...i'd like to do this to a bit of a track or mix say halfway through for a couple of seconds....i'd like it to be less "bitty" and more out-of-focus/smeary if i had to choose, but ideally exactly like partial erasure...what would be its analogue/equivalent in digital sound, Is there a VST plugin/s or process whereby you can achieve this please...any spitballing welcome around this idea? thanks for any contributions.

 

Are you talking about an "equivalent" in sound FX of a "blur" in images? (always very roughly talking since I haven't understood well your question)

 

If I use my imagination I will probably think of automation of volume, eq and reverb, volume fade out, more reverb mix and a sudden cut of high frequencies in that moment should do the trick.

 

1. reverse the selected (unwanted) part
2. what if you heavily reverberate the previous word/phrase for the length of the selected part?
3. another wild idea: try phase-shifting that selected part

 

thanks xupito, yes its difficult for me to try to put it into words...i may try to find a picture to represent it..blur maybe the wrong word..fray..in design (titles for tv shows) about 10 years ago they started making things look grungey rather than clean and neat.there were crackles and frayed edges.grainy, jumping missing frames etc. ..i don't know what you'd call that in design terms, post-something?...maybe its better to think in terms of moving images rather than a photo..but its loose analogy anyway..thanks for having a go

 

thankyou for your responses...i suppose something along these lines, (but in audio terms of course so mute or ignore the music) ..whereas titles used to be clean cut and neat..this kind of fraying and crapness, degradation..i realise its a very nebulous idea i'm thinking around, but thats okay

 

..or even scratching away bits of the top layer of a mixed track to reveal layers underneath, in an artistic way?

 

You can partly phase-cancel a sound (depending on its panning and dryness/wetness) by using dual panning on the stereo output and listening in Sides mode (in that order).

 

You might find what you're looking for using SpecOps (unfiltered Audio) or Spectrumworx.
Spectral fxs, there is a whole array of processors made to degrade the sound, dephase it too or smear it, like it seems your looking for. Bonus is for both you can chose the frequency band where you apply the fxs.
In SpecOps modules like "smear", "MP3ify", "Decapitate", "Dustorm" or "Noisify", etc (in the "Effects" section), might get you there.
In spectrumworx : in the "timbre", "time" and "phase" sections you'll find the appropriate fxs, just test things out.

 

cheers @Baxter i don't understand re: dual panning, do you mean having two identical copies of the same mono information where one is panned to full left and the other full right..i'm interested though to hear how this sounds?

 

wow, thanks @Talmi so there ARE specific tools out there geared to this?

 

Yep, editing at a spectral level (individual harmonics, their phase, etc) is possible, sometimes needed when it's the best course of action for what you aim.
Those fxs can do similar things - although they accomplish it technically differently - than classical fxs, but they also can do much more.

That's why I enjoy Bidule so much....

 

https://sugar-bytes.de/effectrix

Combinations of stutter, filter and timestretching and chorus might give a sense of partial erasure and smearing to your tracks. IMO its much nicer and can be used more subtly than https://illformed.com/glitch.

A sidechain trigger [with its own channel muted] could be useful=for example ableton's auto filter, compressor or gate will allow you to scrub, filter or reduce volume according to when it hits- so for example you could use just a kick or even a full drumbeat to duck sections of your track/loop/sound.
Also the frequency shifter and grain delay in ableton could be perceived as to smear or blur or take sound out of focus...Combinations of erosion, overdrive or saturation mean there are a number of different ways to add [less digital sounding] noise and harmonics to the original signal, especially nice for smearing fx if u add chorus or reverb.
Try all of these as sends and resample results, try chaining these toghether in a few different ways, The https://u-he.com/products/uhbik/ especially frequency shifter and grain plugins are also great for this sort of thing.

 

Last edited: Nov 23, 2018

I might have made it more complicated than it actually is. I meant a stereo mix = dual mono (as in two mono channels, making one stereo channel).
You can can pan (pan modulate) a stereo mix into a M/S processor (with Sides solo'ed) and thus cancel out things that are panned and things that are centered. Depending on the spatialness of the sound (reverb, chorus, etc) you can cancel out sounds in various degrees.

Here is a free M/S plugin: https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/bx_solo.html

 

Melodyne DNA

 

Try:

DtBlkFx - Darrell Tam
ffttools - Smart Electronix
Specops / Byome - Unfiltered Audio
SpectrumWorx - Little Endian

 

did you try Boss' Metal Zone ?

 

i might do well to print some of these responses out. cheers

 

You can do this to some extent by using a classic noiseprint-based denoiser.
You select the portion of audio you'd like to "erase" and apply denoising which in that case won't remove noise but rather the sound you've selected.
This is however limited in practice as you often don't have access to individual sounds in a mix, often many sounds are mixed and hard to separate.
Before doing this, you might have a try with Melodyne, as @nobodyspecial said, and see how much you're able to separate before doing the denoiser trick.
Good luck!
It's fun definitely.

 

Magix Spectralayers

...Or iZotope RX