Hey everyone

First post here! I've been listening back on some of my projects lately and wondering why so many of them sound so flat and simplistic compared to professional quality stuff and I've realized that (among many other things), my tracks are pretty heavily lacking in the subtle details in the background. I've got a few soundpacks from Vengeance and so-forth with sweeps, crashes and such that I pull from for my tracks but in general most of them end up sounding kind of generic and out-of-place.

I don't have a good handle on how to engineer those sorts of sounds myself other than just your super basic white noise sweeps.

So my question I guess is...what do you all use for atmospheric effects? Do you create your own? Do you buy samples and then edit? Are there good tutorial resources for this somewhere? Most of the tutorials that I've found on production seem to focus on more forward elements like writing leads, creating pads, basslines, drums, etc. I've had trouble finding good info on essentially building tension and adding depth via effects.

Thanks!