Follow along in this tutorial to understand how ambience presets can be designed and operated in Krotos Studio Pro.

Building a basic ambiences preset

Here’s a simple step by step to creating your own Ambience preset, using your own sounds in Krotos Studio.

1. In the hamburger menu, click load factory presets, open the preset templates folder and select ambience template.

This template comes with the performance area pre-mapped in the same layout as many of the factory ambience presets. There are two XY pads, with two layers on each pad. The modulation is pre-assigned to the volume parameters of each layer, enabling you to control the balance by moving the puck around in the XY pad. Layer 1 is mapped to the Y axis, Layer 2 to the X axis of the first pad, and layers three and four are mapped in the same way on the second pad. This enables you to control the volume of each layer separately, or blend them together.

Note that this preset uses the Granular core engine in all 4 layers. Note trigger is disabled, and loop and autoplay are already enabled. These settings are important for a smooth and infinitely repeating soundscape.

Building a city preset

Let’s re-create the city preset with some custom sounds to demonstrate the process, then you can replicate this with whichever layers you want to use for your own project. We have skyline, traffic, sirens and horns across the 4 layers here. Let’s find something similar…

• Search for ambience, drag to layer 1

With each new layer I add, I rename the tab to match the sound content. This enables me to have a clearer overview of which sounds I have added, and where they are located.

• Search for traffic, drag to layer 2

The traffic here is a little rumbly, so I have adjusted the pitch slightly to mix it better with the ambience layer

• Search for helicopters, drag to layer 3
• Search for walla, drag to layer 4

I’ve chosen samples that are relatively long and consistent, which will give the Granular engine some flexibility to work with. Now, when I move across the axes in the XY pads, I can blend seamlessly between the layers, and my performance is captured automatically.

When in the DAW, I can assign each of the four layers to record out to their own track, enabling me to fine tune the individual layers afterwards.

The ambience template

…There you have a basic Ambience triggering preset. Hopefully you have been able to follow along and build an Ambiences preset from your own library of sounds. Try to experiment with some other parameters too!

Ideas to try when designing ambience sound effects with Krotos Studio Pro

Dragging the pitch parameters to a macro dial to control the pitch of your Ambiences.

Add another surface to a sampler and map the volume to a macro dial, to add in additional texture

Creating an Ambiences preset from a template

This template is set up to allow you to create your own version of the Krotos Studio Ambiences workflow.

The essence of an ambience preset is that the layers begin to play back automatically. You do not need to click inside the XY pad to trigger the sounds like you might for a footsteps preset, for example. Instead, the XY pads act as mixers between elements of an ambient soundscape. This is achieved through the Autoplay functionality.

Exploring an Existing Preset

The ‘Quiet Village’ preset consists of two 4 zone XY-pads in the performance view, with three sounds in each. Below we show how many combinations can be achieved from a single preset.

Mixing Layers

Mute

Just Bells (1 Layer)

Bells and Birdsong (2 Layers)

Bells, Birdsong and Wind in the threes (3 Layers)

Bells, Birdsong, Wind in the Trees, Activity (4 Layers)

Bells, Birdsong, Wind in the Trees, Activity, Water Fountain (5 Layers)

Bells, Birdsong, Wind in the Trees, Activity, Water Fountain, Car Passbys (6 Layers)

By combining 6 layers in this way, there are up to 720 permutations that you can achieve from a single preset.

You will notice that the bottom left corner of each pad is left empty. This is done to to mute the entire XY pad if you wish. Position the pucks in the empty corners, and the sound will be muted.

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Want to learn more? Check out our other tutorials

How to create an ambience Preset

How to create a footsteps Preset

How to create an advanced footsteps preset

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