Rain Sound for Masked Subliminal

[Fonzy3]

Hi there

It rained today and I just thought the sound of it would be a calming as well as nice to fall asleep too.

Thanks

Fonzy

[Shannon]

Rain has always been one of my favorite sounds. Whenever it rains, I turn everything off and just listen. One of my favorite CDs of all time was one of a thundering rainstorm. However, it is easier said than done to put it to use and into production. I originally attempted to offer it as an option, back when I was in 1 and 2G, but people only wanted Ocean Surf.

Trickling Stream won out when I created 4G. But I cannot add another cover track and re-do everything with it, even if I could find a good enough example of rain, or a thundering rainstorm. There comes a point where it becomes too costly in bandwidth, time, disk space to have all these different cover sounds. Otherwise I would have one for a gently thundering rainstorm, and one for rainforest sounds, and one of waterfalls, and gently lapping waves on the shore, and several others I think are worthwhile.

[Fonzy3]

Ok I understand. Personally i'm quite fond of trickling stream and ultrasonic but just out of curiosity would you be able to add rain to a custom sub that a person would want to buy?

Thanks

Fonzy

[Shannon]

For a custom sub I can do almost anything as long as I am not violating copyright law in the process. That is... I can't put subs in music you supply unless it's in the public domain.

[claudia]

Hi Shannon,
Could you please explain why we couldn't simply blend your "ultrasonic" silent track with a recording of rain?

In thread-2290 you say

You're welcome to do spectral analysis on my mp3's and see for yourself that the audio on the ultrasonics exists in a band between about 14.5 and 20 to 23 kHz.

and

it assumes that all subliminal audio is ultrasonic (pitch differenced), when masked subliminals are volume differenced instead.

From that I assume your masked subliminals are volume-differenced too (and indeed from a quick look at the spectrum in Audacity there doesn't appear to be anything above 19 kHz on your trickling stream masked subliminal of Absolute Self Confidence). Does that mean simple addition (of the silent + rain tracks) won't actually work? Even though playing each track separately (on 2 different audio devices) does work?

[nept]

I would assume it would be fine to play rain sounds along with it at a low level. If it weren't, we'd have to ensure a quiet room to listen to the ultrasonic and I've never seen that recommended.

It might be useful to not have a ton of audio playing in the 18k range to compete with the ultrasonic, but If we're listening to mp3's, that range is often attenuated anyway in the compression process.

I've found a few websites that allow you to mix your own nature sounds and thats been enjoyable to me from time to time, though I typically use the nature sounds in my clock radio to go along with the ultrasonic sub.

I'll be interested to see Shannon's response about whether this is bad or not.

[Shannon]

Hi Shannon,
Could you please explain why we couldn't simply blend your "ultrasonic" silent track with a recording of rain?

In thread-2290 you say

You're welcome to do spectral analysis on my mp3's and see for yourself that the audio on the ultrasonics exists in a band between about 14.5 and 20 to 23 kHz.

and

it assumes that all subliminal audio is ultrasonic (pitch differenced), when masked subliminals are volume differenced instead.

From that I assume your masked subliminals are volume-differenced too (and indeed from a quick look at the spectrum in Audacity there doesn't appear to be anything above 19 kHz on your trickling stream masked subliminal of Absolute Self Confidence). Does that mean simple addition (of the silent + rain tracks) won't actually work? Even though playing each track separately (on 2 different audio devices) does work?

You are welcome to blend the ultrasonic track with a "cover sound" if you like. But, in doing so, you need to be mindful of two things.

1. You must not alter the original audio of the ultrasonic.
2. You must set the volumes properly in tandem.

If you want to create a rain track with ultrasonics in it, it's easy to do. But saving your mixdown must be done in a lossless file format, such as .WAV, .AIFF or .FLAC or you will strip out or damage the subliminal audio.

[Edo]

You are welcome to blend the ultrasonic track with a "cover sound" if you like. But, in doing so, you need to be mindful of two things.

1. You must not alter the original audio of the ultrasonic.
2. You must set the volumes properly in tandem.

If you want to create a rain track with ultrasonics in it, it's easy to do. But saving your mixdown must be done in a lossless file format, such as .WAV, .AIFF or .FLAC or you will strip out or damage the subliminal audio.

So, my guess is, it's okay to mix it. Example: I put the ultrasonic in audacity, and another background sound (rain, waterfall, or maybe a binaural/isochronic tone) and mix it (with Mix and Render in audacity) and then produce it into .FLAC?
How about rather than .FLAC (not many mp3 can play it) I use WAV signed 16 bit PCM (I'm afraid this WAV aren't good enough but this is the only WAV format in audacity) or AIFF signed 16 bit PCM?

[TheGraduate]

I would think that the best sound to sleep to would be something similar to a Marpac Sound Conditioner.

[Benjamin]

For some reason I read that as "a marpac vacuum cleaner" and was wondering how you would sleep to that.



"Alpha Male Stage 1 Masked Vacuum Cleaner".

Don't ask me why I thought that. :Z

-Ben