Sonic Design / Task 2 - Auditory Imaging

Sonic Design  / Task 2 - Auditory Imaging

October 27, 2025

27.10.2025 - 04.11.2025 / Week 6 

GeXianjing / 0377636

Sonic Design/Bachelor of Interactive Spatial Design (Honours)

Start Working on The Auditory Imaging Project

The choices scenario are:

1. Wildlife + Background
2. Everyday Home Life + Background
3. Cities + Transport + Exterior Atmosphere
4. Industry and Electronic sounds + Background
5. Weather + Background
6. Market + Rural atmosphere + Background

Sound Effects Resources

• Freesound Org
  https://freesound.org/
  
  
• BBC Sound Effects
  https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/

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🌧️ Reason for Choosing “Weather + Background”

I decided to develop my final sound narrative based on the Weather and Background theme because it allows for a more dynamic and emotionally expressive composition.
Unlike the Everyday Home Life scenario — which depends heavily on multiple small, overlapping sound layers such as footsteps, dishes, and voices — the weather theme naturally carries its own rhythm and progression.

The transition from calm wind to heavy rain and thunder provides a clear narrative arc that can be achieved through gradual control of volume, reverb, and equalization.
It gives me the opportunity to explore spatial depth and intensity in sound — how a soft breeze transforms into a storm, and how silence after the rain can convey calmness and emotional release.

Technically, the Weather theme is also more manageable:
it requires fewer distinct sound sources, yet each element (rain, wind, thunder) can express a wide range of feelings through parameter adjustment.
This makes the mixing process smoother while still demonstrating strong creative control and spatial awareness.

In short, the weather environment offers both clarity of structure and rich emotional potential.
Through this theme, I can focus on how environmental sound alone can tell a story — one that moves from tranquility to chaos, and back to serenity again.

Type	Example	Description
Foreground Sounds	Alarm clock, blanket movement, footsteps, curtain pull, metallic tap, window slam, tape recorder click, mug on table, clock ticking	Direct human interaction or mechanical sound driving the narrative
Background Sounds	Wind hum, thunder rumble, rain intensity shift, wind chime, tape hiss, jazz music, ambient city tone	Environmental and emotional texture creating space and mood

Introduction: From Simple Sound Clips to a Narrative Soundspace

This sound design project began with a simple rainy-morning setting and gradually expanded into a fully developed auditory narrative. Across three iterations —
First Draft → Second Fine-tuning → Final Outcome,
I explored how sound layers, reverb, EQ, and auditory pacing work together to form an immersive narrative experience rather than just a sequence of sounds.

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First Draft: Establishing the Core Structure

In the first version, I focused on building the basic timeline of the story:

• Quiet morning ambience

• Wind increasing before the storm

• Heavy rain and thunder

• Closing the window

• Turning on the tape recorder

• Rain tapering off

✅ Strengths

• Clear atmosphere

• Complete beginning–middle–end structure

Audio layers in Adobe Audition multitrack

material

First Draft

⚠️ Limitations

• Soundscape felt flat and overly reliant on rain

• Lack of character presence

• No clear spatial contrast between indoors and outdoors

After listening to my first version of the soundscape project, I realized that although the atmosphere was well established — the rain, thunder, and tape recorder created a calm and cinematic mood — it still lacked a clear sense of human presence. Compared to my senior’s version, mine felt more like a background ambience rather than a living story.

Her work carried emotion through tiny gestures — footsteps, breathing, a sigh, the movement of objects. These details made the audience see the person through sound, and follow their emotional rhythm. That’s the layer I want to build into my piece.

Therefore, I plan to add sounds that come from the character’s actions, such as:

• the rustle of a blanket and a soft sigh during the waking moment,

• the sound of bare feet stepping onto the wooden floor,

• a hand opening the window, letting in the storm,

• the clink of a coffee cup as the music begins to play.

These human traces will help transform the soundscape from a passive environment into an active narrative experience — one where listeners can imagine the person’s body, movement, and emotions through each small sound.

By expanding the use of Foley sounds, I aim to make the storytelling more immersive and dynamic, allowing every sound to not only describe space, but also reflect a change of feeling and rhythm in the story.

Second Fine-tuning: Adding Actions & Spatial Depth

In the second iteration, the focus shifted to transforming the piece into an auditory narrative.

✅ 1) Adding Character Actions (Foreground)

I inserted more action-based sounds:

• footsteps on a wooden floor

• curtain sliding

• window latch clicking

These bring the listener closer to the character’s movement and perspective.

✅ 2) Foreground vs Background Layering

I reorganized all audio into two layers:

Foreground:
character actions, button clicks, cup sounds, tape recorder

Background:
rain, wind, distant thunder, indoor hum

By applying volume automation, I created depth and distance, making the soundscape more dynamic.

✅ 3) Reverb for Spatial Contrast

I began tailoring reverb settings:

Small Room Reverb: indoor ambience

Small Room Reverb

The old radio

• Medium Hall Reverb: softened outdoor rain after window closes

• Light Reverb: for music to “sit naturally” in the room

⚠️ Limitations

• Some transitions still abrupt

• Actions were present but emotional pacing was not complete

Second Fine-tuning

Lecturer’s Feedback

Your second version demonstrates clear improvement in spatial realism, but the piece still lacks sufficient emotional depth. Although you introduced additional Foley elements, the narrative continues to read as a sequence of actions rather than a lived, internal experience. Consider integrating micro-expressive sounds such as breathing, fabric movement, and chair resonance to strengthen the character’s psychological presence.

There are also issues in the mixing balance. Certain foreground sounds—especially the cup collision—are too sharp and overly loud, disrupting the overall dynamic structure. Applying controlled gain adjustment, transient softening, or limiting will help create smoother emphasis. Some background layers show frequency masking, suggesting the need for more targeted EQ reduction and cleaner fade-ins/fade-outs.

Additionally, the “rain outside the window” lacks clear distance cues. Introducing high-cut filtering and a mild convolution reverb will better simulate glass separation and reinforce the interior–exterior spatial contrast.

With refinement in dynamics, spatial depth, and emotional nuance, the narrative impact of your piece will be significantly enhanced.

 My Reflection & Response

This feedback helped me recognize that my work still focuses too much on technical layering and not enough on emotional storytelling. I now understand that micro-sounds—breathing, fabric movement, small physical gestures—are essential for creating a believable human presence.

I also acknowledge the issues in mixing consistency and distance rendering, especially the overly sharp cup sound and the overly close rain layer. Moving forward, I will refine dynamic control, reduce frequency conflicts, and redesign the rain layer with more realistic spatial depth.

Overall, this critique reminded me that sound design is not only technical, but an act of shaping emotion and space.

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Final Outcome – Complete Analysis

After three rounds of refinement, the final version of my sound design project presents a complete and emotionally layered morning scene. This version combines narrative structure, spatial audio contrast, human micro-sounds, and multi-layer weather ambience into a cohesive sonic storyline. Below is the full analysis of the final outcome.

 1) Human-centered Micro-sounds

To strengthen the listener’s sense of presence and make the character feel “alive” in the environment, I added multiple subtle but emotionally rich micro-sounds:

• chair sliding

• pouring coffee

• cup touching the table

• clothes rustling

• breathing and soft sighs

Applied audio

These details transform the scene from a generic ambience into a lived-in moment, giving the narrative intimacy and realism.

 2) Indoor–Outdoor Spatial Contrast

One of the most significant improvements in the final version is the clearer spatial contrast before and after the window closes.

Before the window closes (Outdoor space)

• wide stereo field

• bright high-frequency wind textures

• strong low-end thunder

• large dynamic range

Before the window closes

After the window closes (Indoor space)

• muffled rain filtered through the glass

• reduced high frequencies

• closer, tighter reverb
  

• smaller stereo field

After the window closes

This shift creates a clear sense of movement between spaces and becomes the backbone of the narrative flow.

 3) Multi-layer Weather Ambience

I divided the weather ambience into multiple layers to avoid monotony and to add atmospheric depth:

• soft rain layer

• heavy storm layer

• thunder layer (near and far)

With EQ and reverb adjustments, these layers build a dynamic environment in which the storm feels alive, shifting, and cinematic.

4) Four-part Narrative Structure

The final version follows a four-part structure to maintain pacing, emotional direction, and scene clarity.

Part 1 – Waking Up

bird chirping, distant car noises, soft wind, wind chime, alarm clock, bed movement

Part 2 – Approaching the Window

footsteps on wood, curtain sliding, window latch, initial raindrops, sudden heavy storm

Part 3 – Settling Into Thought

chair movement, coffee actions, breathing, tape recorder click, warm music ambience

Part 4 – Reflection

Drizzle, distant thunder, soft atmosphere, quiet fading ending

This narrative arc goes from calm to chaos and back to calm, reflecting the emotional flow of the characters.

Due to the addition of many detailed action sounds, I have compiled them together

 5) Reverb and EQ as spatial tools

Reverb and EQ became essential tools for shaping distance, emotion, and realism.

 Reverberation usage

• Short reverb: indoor action, intimate intimacy

• Medium reverb: General room ambiance

• Long reverberation: Thunder tail, large outdoor space

• Muffled reverberation: rain behind closed windows

Analog latency

Room presence

EQ use

EQ fine-tuning for early morning birdsong

Master the EQ adjustment

• Reduce rainfall and simulate indoor noise silence
• Enhance the spatial depth of lightning at low frequency
• Micro-sound enhanced midrange to highlight human movements

Master tape adjustment

From the front line

 6) Emotional coherence

The final work has a continuous flow of emotions:

• Calm (morning vibe)

• Interrupt (alarm)

• Chaos and tension (storm)

• Comfort and routine (coffee, music)

• Reflection (soft rain, quiet ending)

Emotions and sounds evolve together to create a cohesive listening experience.

Final Outcome

Google Drive

Self-examination

This sound design project reshaped my understanding of audio—not as scattered clips to be assembled, but as a narrative structure built through space, movement, and emotion. My initial draft was merely a collection of sounds, complete yet lifeless. Through multiple revisions, I began to realize that meaning emerges only when sounds enter into relationships with each other and with the imagined space they inhabit.

As I refined the piece, I became increasingly aware of the subtle micro-sounds that give everyday life its texture: the scrape of a chair, the rustle of clothing, the quiet resonance of coffee being poured, the soft click of a window latch. These small details brought warmth and presence to the scene, reminding me that the most affecting moments in sound design often come from the smallest gestures.

Equally significant was my growing sensitivity to spatial contrast. Before the window closes, the rain, wind, and thunder sound open and immediate; after the window shuts, they fall behind a layer of glass, softened and distant. Through EQ, panning, and reverb, I learned to shape these spatial boundaries and to let them guide the emotional arc of the narrative.

By the final version, I no longer thought of sound effects as decorative. Instead, they became integral to the story: the storm outside, the quiet interior, the pauses between actions, the gentle shifts in mood. Together, they formed a morning that felt inhabitable and real. Sound moved from the background to the heart of the narrative, teaching me that the essence of sound design is listening—listening to environments, textures, emotions, and silence itself.

This assignment showed me that sound design is not only a technical skill, but also a practice of sensitivity and perception. If given more time, I would explore recording my own Foley, developing richer rain textures, and experimenting with directional spatialization. For now, this project has taught me how to build a scene with my ears, and how to let sound tell a quiet, intimate story.