Howling Wind

How it's made

Source

wind blowing past the corners, eaves and window gaps of a building. The air is turbulence (pink noise, decorrelated left and right) through a broad band-pass (Q ≈ 0.7) that rises from ~300 Hz to ~2.5 kHz with wind speed; strong gusts excite the edges.

Body

edge tones and gap cavities ring as narrow resonances. Three howls sit at ≈ 420, 640 and 910 Hz (Q 40–60, each with a faint 2.01 partial). Their pitch rises ~30 % with gust speed (edge-tone frequency scales with flow speed) and each is gated so only gusts above ~20 % of full strength wake it.

Envelope

one gust envelope (periods of ~5–30 s) drives level, brightness, pitch and howl gating. The three howls answer the gust at 0, 0.4 and 0.9 s delays, so the whistle moves between openings; level grows faster than linearly with speed, giving strong swells and lulls.

Cold

dry cold air carries more high-frequency energy and little warm rumble, so a thin 4–8.5 kHz hiss rides on the gusts and the sub-bass (30–90 Hz) is kept low.

Variation

`rng` varies the howl tuning (±6 %), the gust shape and the left/right noise; presets change gust strength, howl amount, howl pitch, coldness and rumble.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.