Creating Realistic Indoor and Outdoor Audio with Adobe Premiere

In the world of video editing, sound is as crucial as visuals. It sets the mood, guides emotions, and if done right, can transport the audience right into the scene. A critical aspect of this is understanding the difference between indoor and outdoor sounds. Why does the same music from a car radio sound so different when heard from inside the car compared to outside? Let’s learn how to recreate this sound transition using Adobe Premiere.

Indoor sounds are direct, clear, and detailed due to the contained environment and limited reverberations. However, step outside, and you are dealing with an open space where sound can travel far and wide, creating a more diffused, muffled, and bass-heavy effect. This subtle change can make all the difference in setting up the scene’s context and realism.

Enter the “Car Radio Effect.” The name comes from a common example of the indoor-outdoor sound difference: the change in audio perception when you hear music playing from inside a car versus outside of it. Inside, the music is detailed and full; outside, the music is more bass-heavy and muffled. To recreate this effect in your video, Adobe Premiere provides a perfect toolset.

Begin by importing your audio clip into Premiere. Apply a Low Pass filter to mimic the muffled sound when you’re ‘outside’. Experiment with the filter frequency until you achieve a sound that appears ‘distant’ and ‘outside’ of an enclosed space.

Next, adjust the bass frequencies. Sounds heard from outside tend to have more pronounced low frequencies, so boost the bass to achieve this. Adobe Premiere’s parametric equalizer is perfect for this task.