A Breath of Fresh Sound

Reference Mix for Game Audio

2012-05-02T01:39:00.001-04:00

This is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately and have been trying to do with my current project. Create a reference mix to be used through the production cycle on a video game.

Shaun Farley wrote a fantastic post on Dynamic Interference about Ideas for the Use of Loudness Metering in Game Audio that triggered this post. I highly recommend reading that article and his other recent post on loudness metering

I talked about calibrating monitors and a few general mixing ideas in my last two posts here and here. Go read those for a general understanding of level standards if you are new to all this.

So the idea I'm discussing here is creating a reference mix. This is something that I feel would cut down on extreme crunch time at the end of the production cycle, which seems to be inevitable for the audio team. The reference mix doesn't have to be anything crazy. During preproduction (if you get that luxury) create a few simple assets and mix them to the standard level you want to set through out the game. These assets could just be an ambience bed, simple dialogue (enough to get the feel of the mix across), mocked up weapon sounds (if you have weapons), simple UI sounds, and possibly some other common sounds (footsteps and other foley, collisions, explosions, etc.) Once all these assets are gathered do a simple implementation and create a scene. Then mix.

Once you have this mix set you'll have a nice template premix to base everything else off of. As you create real game assets you can level them to the premix. Then during post production it only takes a few quick passes to get the whole thing mixed correctly because you took the time to premix.

There are still, of course, a few issues that come into play here. One is not having the time to do this preproduction step. It's not uncommon for audio people to be brought on at the very end of the project. The other is when your higher ups come back to you at the end and say "turn up the volume." Which is another not-so-uncommon issue within the game audio world since we do not have any officially set standards. These are issues that have to be solved by us audio people getting the point across that audio is important to the project, and so is dynamic range.

I would love to hear what other ideas and comments people have on using a reference mix for game audio.

Mixing in a Small Room

2012-04-29T19:46:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I wrote a post about mixing levels and game audio mixing. This post will be an addendum to that one.

In that post I suggested using a 79dB at -20dBfs pink noise calibration level. This is a good level if you are mixing in a large room and are seated a decent distance from your speakers. If you, like many people in the game audio industry, are sitting only a couple of feet from your speakers in a small room then this level is going to seem way too loud when referencing other material and therefore make your mix too quiet. A more practical level to set would be 73dB or lower for this environment.

For extended reading on this topic there is a great gearslutz post in it: Mixing levels and dynamics: Hand me the tylenol.

Also, here are the Dolby Facility Requirements that state that the theatrical mixing level of 85dB should be from a listening position of at least 13 feet and 4 inches from the screen.

Mixing Levels and Game Audio Mixing

2012-04-26T20:43:00.000-04:00

Standard mixing levels and monitor calibration are two things that everyone working with sound should understand. Most people starting out in sound don't even realize that they should be calibrating their monitors for a specific level standard.

As far as game audio goes, there is no existence of a standard mixing level. It's understandable why it would be difficult to create a mix standard for games though. In a completely interactive medium, you never know how or in what order the sounds are going to play. This unpredictability makes mixing even more important in game audio.

Mixing for games should start before the audio assets are even thought about. A mixing level should be selected and monitors calibrated before the sounds are created and implemented. I would suggest 79dB at -20 dBfs full pink noise, but it's up to you and your studio to set the level. Next, a focal point should be determined to mix around. For most large scale games that would be dialog, but for some games it may be another important sound. Once production of the sounds begins everything should be "premixed" as it is created and implemented. Time should be set aside for just mixing at the end, but if for some reason you get pushed right up against the deadline (not so uncommon) your overall sound will already be somewhat close to being leveled correctly.

I understand that trying to adhere to mixing standards isn't always easy. Especially if you work at a studio that keeps telling you to turn the volume up. It is our duty as sound designers and implementers to deliver the best sounds possible with the best mix possible though.

Here are a few links that go into mixing for games more in depth:
GameAudioMix: Top 11 Video Game Mixing Tips
Game Audio Podcast: Episode #10 Reference & Mix Level Standards
Gamasutra: The Game Audio Mixing Revolution

This is a great gearslutz post on standard mixing levels for several different mediums.

And here are some great references on monitor calibration and standard mix levels:
Blue Sky Calibration Instructions and Files
Dynamic Interference: Quick and Dirty Monitor Calibration
Avid Audio Forums: Room Calibration for Film and TV Post
Calibrating The 5.1 System by Bobby Owinski
Gearslutz: Dolby Facility Approval Requirements
Dolby 5.1-Channel Production Guidelines

I don't claim to know everything about mixing standards and calibration, but this should be a good starting point for anyone interested in these topics. If you have any insight, comments, or questions feel free to comment or shoot me an email.

Addendum: Mxing in a Small Room

Saw Louder, We Can't Hear You

2011-02-25T11:16:00.000-05:00

I want to start this post off by saying that our sound studio is no where near as acoustically treated as it needs to be. We know this and we want to fix it, but it is completely out of the question with the budget right now.

With that being said, the past two weeks they have been doing construction in our building. This week hasn't been terrible, a few knocks every now and again, but it is still extremely annoying when working with audio. Last week was absolutely terrible though. I'm not exactly sure what they were doing, possibly sawing through metal beams to cut doors or whatnot, but we couldn't even think about working on sound. This is a little taste of what we listened to for a few days straight in the studio.

Construction sawing behind wall by Googe

Recording Notes: Recorded with a Zoom H1

Snowocalypse Atlanta 2011

2011-01-11T18:40:00.001-05:00

Here in Georgia, we don't get snow often. When we do, no one knows how to handle it and everything shuts down. The people that try to get out and drive in it either don't know how to drive in the snow, or end up being the victim of someone who doesn't know how to drive in the snow. For this reason, I always "opt" to stay home and let the impending doom pass. By "opt" I really mean that I am forced to, seeing that my subdivision contains many shaded hills that never unfreeze.

We've had a few inches of snow on the ground for a couple days now. Which means that I have had a couple days of not being able to get to the studio. Since we don't get snow very often I took this time to get some recordings of footsteps and body falls in the snow.

Snowsteps by Googe

Snow Bodyfalls by Googe

Recording Notes: Recorded with a Rode NTG3 into a Zoom H4n. The body falls were created using the standard technique of packing a duffel bag with some books and throwing it around.

The Cry of Electronics

2010-10-24T01:48:00.003-04:00

Do you think you know what your electronics sound like? I doubt you know what they really sound like unless you have attached a telephone pickup coil to them or ran a guitar pickup over them.

I have had one of these telephone pickup coils for a while, but had used it minimally until recently. I was inspired to mess around more with this wonderful piece of equipment after reading Jean-Eduard Miclot's blog post Electromagnetism and seeing Richard Devine at the Propellerhead Producers Conference last weekend where he talked briefly about the pickups. If you've never used one of these I suggest you grab one and stick it on every electric thing you can find. The telephone pickup coils are pretty cheap at MCM Electronics, or you can stop by Radioshack and grab one.

So, on to the sounds. I stuck this little monster on every electronic device I had in my immediate vicinity. The first recording is of my iPod. The pickup was stuck on the wheel/buttons as I scrolled through menus and skipped through a few songs. The interesting part about this recording is that under all the electronic sounds, you can hear the songs that are playing. I did not have headphones plugged in, so the pickup was grabbing the music straight from the harddrive.

IPod Transducer by Googe

The next recording is of my Nintendo DS starting up, loading a game (Final Fantasy IV), playing the game a bit, and saving. The pickup was placed right under the power switch.

DS Transducer by Googe

The third recording is of the laser on my optical mouse.

Optical Mouse Transducer by Googe

This last recording is of me turning on and off my Markbass Little Mark Tube 800 bass amp. The first part is with the pickup attached to the top above the input and then moved back to the fan. The second sound is with the pickup on top over the fan. The third sound starts out over the fan and is then moved over the power supply, which is right next to the fan. The last part is over the power supply. I love the dissonance of the last part and the high pitched whine that comes after.

Markbass Little Mark Tube Transducer by Googe

Recording Notes: Recorded with a telephone pickup coil into a Zoom H4n.

This Glass is Made Out of Aliens!

2010-07-26T16:58:00.004-04:00

So a while ago we got the KarmaFX Synth Modular and I have spent some time making weird sounds and destroying library sounds with it. My favorite synth that I made is one that I named "Gloop" because it has this magical way of taking anything and turning it into a slimy gloopy sound. I slapped some glass debris in the sampler and this is what I got.

Original glass sound:
Glass Debris by Googe

Through the synth:
Bassy Slime Goop by Googe

After I bounced out that sound I pulled it into Sound Forge and did some random crazy EQing:
EQed Slime Goop by Googe

Then I ran it through Sony elastique Timestretch and got what made me think of aliens chatting:

Alien Radio Chatter by Googe

Recording Notes: The glass debris sounds were recorded with an Edirol R-44 and a Sennheiser ME67.

Laptop Fan

2010-07-09T11:51:00.003-04:00

So I was sitting in the office, minding my own business. Our recording engineer, Mark, was sitting on the couch behind me working on his laptop. I was reading an article about the climate scientists and the multitude of death threats they receive when from behind me I hear a horrific grinding noise. I turn around saying "What was that!?"

Mark casually replied "It was my laptop fan."

To which my natural response was to grab the recording gear and get a take, after finishing my article of course. This is what I got:

Grinding Laptop Fan by Googe

Recording Notes: Recorded with an Edirol R-44 and a Sennheiser ME67.

Amicalola Falls

2010-06-28T03:36:00.003-04:00

My dear friend Nikki and I took a trip to Amicalola Falls here in Georgia. We headed there to see the waterfall, of course, but also just to get away and spend some quality time with mother earth, which too many people don't seem to do anymore.

There is something about a waterfall that is awe-inspiring. Maybe it is the idea that something as simple as water and gravity, two things that are not uncommon in our daily lives, can make something so magnificent. Possibly it is the sense of power that this simple act of falling water gives off. You can hear some people talking and a bit of wind noise in this one, but you get the sense of what the waterfall sounded like: noise.

Amicalola Falls by Googe

Yes, I do realize that water and gravity are not simple things at all. And that in reality, all sound is noise.

We continued our trek through the woods enjoying the conversation and world around us. We noticed that the path that we were now walking on was recycled rubber, and that the newly patched areas were very bouncy. So we bounced our way down this path. I'm sure that anyone who saw us thought we were insane, and I am perfectly content with them thinking that.

We reached a spot a little ways into the woods away from the falls. There wasn't anyone in this area, I suppose most people were there to see the falls, not the forest surrounding it. I noticed a lovely bird singing it's song so I stopped and got a recording of it with the falls in the background.

Birds Chirping Distant Waterfall by Googe

By this point we were starting to get pretty tired. We had already hiked a bit and climbed 175 stairs and there were 425 more steps to climb to get to the top of the falls.. We decided to turn around and head back to the car and drive to the top.

Upon reaching the top we jumped out of the car and headed towards the top of the falls. The first thing Nikki noticed was that there was a coconut in the water.

We stood there and contemplated why there was a coconut in the water. It seemed completely bizarre to me that someone would throw a coconut in. Nikki finally came to the conclusion that it was some kind of tradition. I questioned this and then we shrugged it off and Nikki noticed something else. There was a spider slowly makes its way between the trees above the water, suspended in mid-air.

That little black dot in the middle of the picture is the spider.

Noticing this spider brought me to the question: "How did the spider get it's web from one side to the other?" I just did a search for "spider webs" and checked the wikipedia page "Spider web" which brought me to an interesting study done on spiders in zero gravity.

Here's a beautiful picture of the mountains that we saw when we found our way down another path that no one seemed to be using:

In the Middle of the Night

2010-06-16T11:15:00.001-04:00

About a month ago Frankie Loscavio and I took a walk out into the woods one nice night to record some ambiance. On the way out there, before the eyes have adjusted to the darkness, you expect something to jump out and bite your feet off. Because we live in an urban jungle, many sounds are unfamiliar, and you get a shiver down your spine every time a tree creaks or a limb falls. Once the eyes had adjusted to the unsettling darkness, your nerves calm just a bit, but you are still a little on edge.

We set up our field recorders and began to record the barrage of crickets and frogs that inhabit the woods around us. Here is a snippet of what we got:

Forest Ambiance by Googe

After recording for a while we decided to head further in. We walked for a ways and came upon a spot that seemed completed void of insect life. The only thing we heard was the sound of the breeze through the trees. We stopped to start recording again. As soon as we hit "record" a lone cricket began to play us his melody. Whether it was welcoming us to its domain or cursing at us for intruding upon its home, I can not say. It was beautiful nonetheless and I felt honored to be chosen to be serenaded by this majestic insect.

Quiet Forest Single Cricket by Googe

On the way back to the car I began to ponder on why urbanites get that tiny fear that something is going to grab them while in the darkness of the woods. Perhaps it is from watching movies of people wondering into the woods and confronted by a creature of some sort, or hearing stories of people disappearing into the forest to never be heard from again. Whatever it is, it is silly to be so afraid (being cautious is different) of something so harmless. The forests are not there to harm us, most of the time they are welcoming us, and the creatures within only wish to be left to themselves.

Upon reaching the edge of the woods we noticed that there was water dripping into the stream under a bridge. We made our way under the bridge where it was almost pitch black, which brought on another feeling of caution that something was going to grab my ankles and pull me into the depths of hades. We set our recorders once again and began recording. This recording is one of my favorites that we have captured. It feels so peaceful, despite the way I felt when we entered the area.

Water Under Bridge forest Ambiance by Googe

Dobro Bass

2010-05-02T17:15:00.011-04:00

A few weeks ago I got a new bass. It's a bass that most of you have probably never heard of, or even heard the sound of. Even many of my fellow bass and guitar players are unaware that these exist. It has a very unique sound, similar to it's guitar brethren. It is the Regal Dobro Bass.

As some of you may know acoustic bass guitars are not known for their volume. Most acoustic bass guitars cannot not even be heard when matched up acoustically with an acoustic guitar. This bass, however, is very strong in the mid-range. For those of you who don't know much about frequencies and equalization, the mid-range is what helps give presence to the sound. Which in this case allows the dobro bass to punch through and actually be able to stand up against acoustic guitars, volume wise.

Seeing as this is an instrument that very few people have heard. I decided to take a few recordings of it and share my experience with it here.

Micing a dobro bass is very similar to a dobro guitar. Micing the sound holes gives you a very boomy, low end sound. Micing the cone gives you that very twangy, signature dobro sound. Placing the mic several inches away and pointing it towards the cone gives you a more round dobro sound.

All of these recordings are single mic set-ups in each of the positions I mentioned above. As well as the three positions I have also recorded various playing techniques to give you a better well rounded idea of how it sounds.

The first set of recordings is with the mic positioned at one of the sound holes.

Dobro Bass Sound-hole Pick by Googe

Dobro Bass Sound-hole Finger by Googe

Dobro Bass Sound-hole Slap by Googe

Dobro Bass Sound-hole Flamenco by Googe

The second set of recordings is with the mic positioned at the cone, just behind the bridge.

Dobro Bass Cone Pick by Googe

Dobro Bass Cone Finger by Googe

Dobro Bass Cone Slap by Googe

Dobro Bass Cone Flamenco by Googe

The final set of recordings is with the mic positioned 6 inches from the guitar, facing the cone.

Dobro Bass 6-in Pick by Googe

Dobro Bass 6-in Finger by Googe

Dobro Bass 6-in Slap by Googe

Recording Notes: Recorded with a Shure SM57 into an Mbox2

Cades Cove

2010-04-27T19:49:00.005-04:00

A couple weekends ago I was in Tennessee for some R&R and spent a little time hiking in Cades Cove. I got some nice recordings of some small creeks and a tiny water fall.

Small Creek by Googe

Medium Creek by Googe

Samll Waterfall by Googe

There are several larger waterfalls in that area that I wanted to get recordings of, but didn't have time to get to them. I'll probably be up that way sometime again in the near future and I'll definitely do a post on just the waterfalls.

Being the curious person I am, I also got some pictures of other things that I found interesting:

Can you spot the beast!?

I found this shot to be interesting. They had just paved the road (they were paving it while we were there, thats how fresh it was!) This is where some dirt had eroded away and you can see the fresh asphalt that was poured on the old concrete that was poured on the original gravel that was poured on the dirt.

This is not the hairy back of some green beast I found out in the woods. This is moss.

Recording Notes: All three sounds were recorded with a Zoom H4n using the on-board mics in mono.