Hey, I used to have a vst years ago that would let me for example, put a recorded sample of running water and this vst would then do its magic to make it into a nice sounding pad.

I have forgot the name.. It was a powerful vst that worked well.

Someone know vst like this perhaps?

 

Pass it through a granular fx or a shimmer reverb!

 

https://sonosaurus.com/paulxstretch/
and
https://danielgergely.net/emergence

These are some free granular plugins, which should work for your purpose.

 

Using Vital, Serum or other synths that can create wavetables would be an option. There's plenty of tutorials you can search for to watch on how to do it.

 

Water is a VST format synthesizer for water sounds.
www.kvraudio.com/product/water-by-xoxos

Rain Maker 2 is a FREE 64-bit virtual instrument plugin for both Windows and Mac.
Produce ongoing rain and thunder soundscapes for your audiovisual projects or any type of music production
https://quietmusic.eu/rain-maker-2

 

Last edited: Apr 15, 2025 at 12:50 PM

Another thing I like doing is using a reverb with freeze: Capture the running water in the reverb's delay lines, turn on freeze, put another reverb after.

Also https://spectral-plugins.com/. Spacer is free and comes with a grain verb and grain delay, both can shift pitch in their delay lines.

 

Maybe Izotope Iris 2?

 

I'm not sure about a specific plugin for this (though great suggestions here), but I approach this as a "pitched noise" sort of a thing. So if a sound doesn't have a discernable pitch I impose one with tuned resonators (mixed in parallel not to get too ringy) or a bank of playable bandpass filters, again mixed in slightly.

 

As a little addition, I found this interesting free one.
It“s called „Oi, Grandad“.

https://github.com/publicsamples/Oi-Grandad

 

Cheers, good suggestions. Trying them all.