Brown Noise Generation?

[Richard S.]

Hi, as the title suggests, I am looking for a way to create brown or black noise in Logic 10.8

The Test Oscillator only seems to offer white or pink noise.

After researching "brown noise" online, is seems that it is white noise with the higher frequencies attenuated, and the lower frequencies boosted. Therefore, am I correct in my thinking that I could simply create white noise, then EQ it to attenuate the higher frequencies, and boost the lower frequencies? Or am I missing an additional component?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Edited November 18 by Richard S.

[Atlas007]

6 hours ago, Richard S. said:

am I correct in my thinking that I could simply create white noise, then EQ it to attenuate the higher frequencies

AFAIK, yes.

Using EQ to filter or carve the frequency to your need would be the way to go.

[David Nahmani]

16 hours ago, Richard S. said:

I could simply create white noise, then EQ it to attenuate the higher frequencies, and boost the lower frequencies?

Yes, use Logic's test oscillator set to white noise, then add a Channel EQ with a 6dB/Oct low-pass filter starting at 20Hz, like this: 

Be wary that you're attenuating so much energy that you may have to turn up the volume to compensate, meaning that if you later bypass the EQ you'll get a huge blast of white noise which could damage your equipment and/or hearing. 

Here I've set it up for you with Gain compensation in the EQ, but always be very careful working with very low volume levels when changing any of the parameters!

Brown Noise.zip

[JakobP]

2 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

Be wary that you're attenuating so much energy that you may have to turn up the volume to compensate, meaning that if you later bypass the EQ you'll get a huge blast of white noise which could damage your equipment and/or hearing

To avoid that you could add the gain inside the EQ itself using its master gain slider.

[David Nahmani]

3 minutes ago, JakobP said:

To avoid that you could add the gain inside the EQ itself using its master gain slider.

Yes that’s what I did in the file I shared however of course if you bypass the individual EQ band then you run the same risk.

[Richard S.]

Thank you so much everyone, especially David who kindly provided the example file.

 

Much appreciated!

[David Nahmani]

Great, you're welcome! 🙂 

[Atlas007]

Probably using a brickwall limiter could prevent that.

The ice9 plugin is something I personally recommend…

[David Nahmani]

21 hours ago, Atlas007 said:

Probably using a brickwall limiter could prevent that.

Just make sure you always are careful by turning the volume way down before making any changes to a plug-in or the mixer, as a safety measure. 

It really depends on the conditions. The danger still exists for example if you have Logic outputing a really low level signal and you've raised your monitoring level to compensate. Now if Logic outputs a "normal" level signal, all of a sudden it's way too loud, and no limiter or ice9 is going to prevent that. 

So... safety first, always. 🙂 

[Atlas007]

2 hours ago, David Nahmani said:

So... safety first, always. 🙂 

Words of wisdom!