Creating the illusion of distance

[Olli H]

Good thread

Some minor ideas to add:
Instead of EQ (or with EQ) I usually flatten the signal with tape saturation. I'm using Massey TapeHead. It gives me an effect I can easily hear.

With reverb one might try to add more early reflection instead of tail. They work nicely if one wants to move singer from 1 inch to 10 inches distance. Valhalla reverbs have excellent adjustable early reflections. And of course Oxford reverb. Probably many others also, but I don't have any experience of them.

 

[danbortz]

Yes, everything above but something not mentioned, maybe because of it's simplicity or DUH factor. If that thing in the distance is loud and moving at you...a slow fade-in or moving side to side (lawn mower) (jet fly by) pan right to left...sometimes both. I guess these are post distance effect achieved.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

To spell out a little more explicitly something that's been alluded to in passing here, compression can help here as well. Signals with a strong attack have a lot more impact and "punch" to them and tend to sound a bit more in your face. Using a compressor to pull back that attack can take away some of its immediacy, which can be very effective when combined with some of the other suggestions here, like careful work with EQ and a reverb, and potentially some stereo movement.

 

[Chibi Nappa]

I haven't read the whole thread so I don't know if this has been mentioned, but:

*Roll off the high frequencies
*Lower the volume
*Add reverb


Bam. Now it is far away.

 

[stefsound]

I think to add distance, it is a good idea to look for the difference between a sound nearby or a sound far away. Our brain calculates distance. If we hear a sound in a natural enviroment, the brain will interprete the position and distance from the sound derived from the information our ears send us. The first wave that arrives will be the carrier - our brain mainly filters out sounds coming later than the first wave that arrived.
That's why it's impossible to make a mix when there's a wall behind you. Your brain tends to hear the reflections first and only interpretes them instead of the audio information coming straight from the speakers. That's psychoacoustics: how does your brain process the incoming information.
We have two ears, one brain and one point of sound we need to place farther away than the point where we have recorded it. A trick I use to create distance is to fool the brain into hearing reflections first: duplicate the track you want distant, damp low and high frequencies (as distance does), compress it slightly (as distance does take the agressive attack out), and put reverb on it. Set the reverb to completely wet, blend the track with the original one and now the brainfooling trick: set the delay of the track to something negative (-10 ms or -20ms) so the reverb's reflection information comes sooner than the original sound. Now the brain thinks the original sound is far away. Ofcourse you will have to play with reverbtimes, mixblending and predelay times according to your specific needs. But the only good way to make the brain think something's distant is to recreate the parameters that makes a brain PLACE something distant.