Hey all,
what do you think, how is the characteristic "Boom library sound" created? Especially, how do they get their samples so 'fat' and 'punchy' without getting too muddy (sample1+2). And how do they create the glitches (sample 3+4)?

I guess it's a mixture of layering, subharmonic stuff (like LoAir), transient designer, distortion (decapitator), heavy compression, doppler+tremolo and some glicht plugins (which ones?).

Here are some examples:

 

example 2 sounds hella muddy to me. the low end control on example 1 is impressive. i'd guess they did multiband compression on the low end and alot of eq among many other effects

 

Layering of multiple sounds along with automation. Basically it's about the mix, just like anything else. You layer all the elements of the sounds, clean each element with an EQ, buss them all together, level balance them and maybe eq them Throw a limiter or clipper on the buss, push levels into it and see how it behaves until it's right. Xfer OTT can be nice to squash things easily to see what happens to the sound.

Sound 1 ingredients: Wind, Water, Low end Rumble, LowPass filererd noise, Debris (sand, rubble), Sub-bass impact and automation on top of all of it.

Sample 4 are basically short squarwave burst with filteriung, some doubler/widening, delay reverb. pretty ol school sound reminiscent of 8 bit game era.

Not really hard to recreate, imo. BTW, being a sound designer, I don't think that these sounds are very characteristic and recognizable as particularly unique sounding or having a "THE boomlibrary sound" quality attached to them, nor that they are really useable.

To me they sound very stereotypical. If somebody would use sound 2 in a medieval game for a huge gate, I probably would think, yeah well that doesn't sound right. And that's how you can distinguish between mediocre and great sound design.

 

Last edited: Sep 9, 2021

Layering, processing, automation. You have rumbles layered with debris layered with impacts and swooshes, as well as spatial and panning automated stuff to get a wide soundscape. It's all there. If you look at the Boom Library versions, "Constructed" and "Designed", you notice how processed and layered the sounds are compared to the raw and unprocessed sounds. You hear the layers, distortion/saturation, EQ, splitting of frequencies, the added reverbs, etc.

 

Last edited: Sep 9, 2021

In most cases I would agree. Mostly, I do realistisc sound design where these sounds and such heavy processing don't fit. But now, I work on an animation video where everything has to sound larger than life. That's why I was asking.