Stosh Tuszynski

NATO Protest Chants 2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:56:00 -0500

Hate it or love it, NATO is here in Chicago. While the summit doesn’t start until tomorrow, the expected protests are in full effect. This morning I found out about a march toward Rahm Emanuel’s home in the Ravenswood neighborhood. When I saw the newscast I saw what seemed to be 100-150 people gathered in a park. By the time I arrived, I was surprised to see approximately 500-600 protesters marching toward the Mayor’s home.

I tried to capture a few different perspectives of the march. For the most part, I was ‘marching’ right alongside the protesters in the middle of the street recording the various chants. Here’s a collection of what I caught:

Soon, I heard about an even bigger protest beginning downtown. I arrived just in time for the protesters to begin their march from Daley Plaza to McCormick Place, the location of the summit. This seemed to be a much larger scale event, with perhaps 1500 protesters and hundreds of police and SWAT officers in riot gear. The protesters completely shut down the area as they marched down Michigan Avenue.

Again, I found myself in the middle of all of this, trying to capture the feeling of being in the march. The chants sounded really neat in the downtown environment. All of the buildings allowed for some interesting reflections/reverb.

We decided to leave at around 6:00 pm. I was satisfied with everything I caught. I had over 2 hours of recordings along with a nice sunburn. While (as of now) I’m not sure what happened after we left I have to say I’m proud of how everyone handled things today. There didn’t seem to be any kind of vandalism/fights/etc. I only witnessed one arrest, and the tension between the police and protesters was relatively minimal for the situation. I’m glad I got the chance to capture as much as I did.

All recordings: Zoom H4n Internal Mics | 48/24 Stereo | Unprocessed

UPDATE (05/20/12)

Sorry to say things took a turn for the worst today. From what I saw on the news it seems like the police handled these more violent protests very well.

Project Portal: Update 4

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 13:45:00 -0500

Another big step of my Project Portal mod is complete. Yesterday, I finished replacing all of the delightfully depressing dialogue of the Aperture Science standard-issue floor turret.

I hadn’t planned on replacing any dialogue when I started this mod. I was really only interested in designing SFX. I don’t know what it was, but one day it just clicked. “Stosh, you must turn your girlfriend into a Portal turret”, a voice said in my head. So I set out to do exactly that.

For recording, I wanted to try a technique similar to the way Ellen McLain voiced GLaDOS. First, I took all of the lines and ran them through a text-to-speech app. I then took those lines and (to use technical terms) autotuned the crap out of them. This resulted in some really neat reference dialogue for the talent to go off of.

The first thing we tried in the recording session was voicing some lines exactly as the reference dialogue sounded. While these takes sounded pretty cool, they obviously lacked any emotional inflection, which I didn’t like. So next, we tried a hybrid of the reference dialogue and how a real person might say the line. I was really happy with the way that turned out, but for fun, we tried ditching the reference dialog altogether to try the lines however she felt like doing them. It was these takes that I was really impressed with. In fact, most of the lines I chose to use were from that final set. You can listen to a couple of the dry and processed recordings, as well as the original game files below.

I kind of had mixed emotions after realizing most of the takes I used didn’t sound much like the reference lines I created beforehand. In the end, was it worth the trouble? I say yes. I think the process of mimicking the reference really helped to get a unique style of voice going. Without the effort, I don’t think the lines would’ve turned out as nice as they did.

Other Project Portal Updates

I’ve finished quite a few more sound effects since the last update:

All portal enter/exit components
All energy ball components
All other floor turret components
Energy platform loop
A few randomly triggered ambience bed components
Fluorescent hums
All Elevator/Buttons/GLaDOS beeps and dings
Character free-fall “whooshing”
Character landing impacts

I feel like I’m learning new things every step of this process. For instance, Valve (and I’m sure plenty of other developers) were smart and efficient enough to create a fluorescent hum by looping a file only 735 samples (0.016 s) in length! It seems so obvious to me now, but I’m not ashamed to admit it was a little bit of a revelation for me at the time.

Another lesson learned: Cue Points. This was a less graceful lesson. I won’t go into details, but it took me way too long to figure out. Certain sound objects in the game (especially those that loop) require embedded points in the files to tell the engine where the start and/or end of a sound is. I didn’t really understand the point of these at first. I figured, hey if my .wav file loops perfectly, why do I need to explain where it starts and ends? After a little bit of digging around I began to realize cue points bring a lot more flexibility from a single sound file. They can tell the game to trigger or loop only a specific portion of the file rather than all at once. Once I wrapped my head around that, it was easy to realize the potential creative and efficient implications of cue points.

Last but not least, a lesson half learned. I had a bit of a scare when I tried to implement the floor turret dialogue files I had spent so much time on. To put it simply: they wouldn’t work. The game repeatedly triggered the original files no matter what I tried. I checked the usual suspects. I made sure the new files had the correct file path/name/sample rate/bit depth/etc. No strange metadata (or cue points!) to be found in the originals. After some research online, I found a number of people had the same problem. For some reason, the turret dialog seemed to be locked to the original files. Eventually it clicked in my head to rename the new files and rewrite the turret soundscript to match the new names instead. This way, the game would be forced to at least attempt to play the new files. And what do you know? It worked like a charm!

So, I put that here for the chance someone else might be in a similar position with their Valve custom sounds. If anyone is, and needs help rewriting the script, I’d be glad to give a more detailed explanation of my process. Just get in touch!

What's That Sound? - 02 - Update!

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:36:00 -0500

Ready for another sound effect guessing game? I think I made this one a lot easier than the first, but I’m looking for a specific answer here. Same as last time: Guess the sound and it gets posted for free download (personal or professional use). Let me know your guesses on Twitter!

Thanks to @bobbaffy you can now download this 48/24 stereo recording of a Playstation 3 with embedded metadata for free! Hmm… what to upload next…

Download “Playstation 3 System Noises.wav”

April Thunder

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:14:00 -0500

I recorded some freaking sweet thunder last week. Here’s one of my favorites. Careful, this is loud!

I’m starting to amass a nice thunder library :D

Recording Notes

Zoom H4n Built in Mics
96/24
No Processing

Columbia College Chicago’s reverb chamber has a fitting...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:36:00 -0500

Columbia College Chicago’s reverb chamber has a fitting entrance.

That's a Flashlight?

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:05:00 -0500

I’m always amazed at what a little general processing can do for a recording. You might remember me recording various electromagnetic fields a while ago. This sound came from a color changing flashlight you can see in the video. The original recording was pretty cool, but add some compression, sweeping harmonics, and (Paulstretch) time stretch, and you’ve got what sounds like an alien spacecraft. In my case, I’m hoping to layer it into a robot for a short film project I’m working on.

What's That Sound? - Update!

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:39:00 -0500

Let’s play a game. Listen to this sound I recorded. Try to figure out exactly what it is. Let me know your guess on my twitter. When someone figures it out (or gets close enough), I’ll update this post with a link to download a nice 48/24 stereo .wav of the recording for any personal or professional use. This is a raw recording, by the way, no processing trickery.

Depending on participation, maybe this could become a regular thing! After all, who doesn’t like free sound effects?

UPDATE

Thanks to @jamesdbryant for guessing this first one! You can download this sound by clicking the link below.

Download Aluminum Foil Sounds 3.wav

Wandering Man

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:35:00 -0500

Ran across this in an ambience track while entering metadata into my sound library. Recorded in the Chicago Union Station Great Hall. It’s hard to tell exactly what he’s saying, but for some reason I just love the sound of the voice.

Lexicon IRs

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 23:00:00 -0500

Today I bring you more impulse response nerd fun. I recently finished recording and processing almost 100 IRs ran through a Lexicon LXP-15 “Multi-Effects Processor”. They ranged from basic rooms to stranger ones like “Jumpin’ Beans”. Since you’re cool enough to check out this post, here’s a link to download 10 of them (stereo and mono). These are Altiverb 6 IRs that have been tested to work on both PC & Mac.

Download Lexicon LXP-15 Sample IRs

One of the things I was most interested to find out with these IRs was if the pitch shifting of the unit would translate well. The short answer: No.

Many of the presets raised or lowered the pitch of the reverb by a fifth/octave/etc. It turns out the preprocessor wasn’t able to recognize the sweep in most of these cases. Some presets that only slightly shifted pitch were able to process but don’t sound the same in Altiverb. Have a listen to “122_Gated Dive”, which is included in the download.

When I listened to the actual unit preset, there was a very clear progressive drop in pitch. As you can hear in the IR, theres almost none of that. However, if you listen closely to the last two signals, you can hear a frequency response shift. It’s sounds like a band of frequencies on a downward sweep in an EQ. Either way, I learned a lot through this and can’t wait to use some of the strange presets for sound design. Hope you enjoy them as well!

Recording Electromagnetic "Sound"

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:00:00 -0500

Whether you realize it or not, you’re surrounded by electromagnetic fields almost everywhere you go. Anything with an electric current has one. That means your computer, phone, TV, hair dryer, vacuum, toaster… everything electronic. Recording an electromagnetic field as sound isn’t a new idea; this is the way the pickup on an electric guitar creates sound. The guitar produces these fields in a way that (hopefully) translate into beautiful, musical tones. The electromagnetic fields surrounding most electronics, however, aren’t exactly musical. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be beautiful!

Recently, I set out to capture some of these strange sounds with a small pickup meant for telephones. I went around my apartment waving the pickup around random electronics. I ended up with a bunch of beautiful hum, buzz, static, clicks, clacks, and other kinds of chatter. Check out some of the results below.

I want to mention that these aren’t the raw recordings. Everything in this video is compressed and has EQ applied to either bring out or cut certain frequencies. In the case of the cellphone I took out a very loud buzz that drowned out some of the cool sounds from operating the phone. Everything else was generally EQ’d to make them ‘beefier’.

My favorite? Actually the hair straightener. If only because it was completely different than I expected. It almost sounds like a growling robot. I already have plans for it!

A Day of Sounds

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:00:00 -0600

Inspired by this #LinkOfTheDay, last week I set out to make my own type of “time lapse phonography”. So one morning as soon as I woke up, I grabbed my Zoom H4n and started recording the typical sounds of my day. This time lapse consists of 45 five second clips recorded from 8 am - 4 pm. Listening to this, I can’t help but think of how nice it would be to get from bed to class in 55 seconds.

Worldizing vs. Processing

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:00:00 -0600

A few days ago I read a great post on “worldizing” by Andrew Quinn. To be honest, I hadn’t heard that term before, but I understood the concept. Worldizing is an old technique used to replicate the quality of a sound played in a space or piece of equipment. To do this, the original recording is played back in an environment, and the result is recorded.

Today, convoluted reverb plugins like Altiverb, Waves IR, TL space, etc can achieve the same result with much less work. With these plugins, an environment only needs to be sampled once with an impulse response, and it can be used on anything you’d like. Andrew’s demo made me wonder how true convolution reverb is to worldizing. Is there a noticeable difference between the two?

To test this out, I decided to try out and compare both techniques on a few things. To get an idea of the reproduction of different amounts of reverb, I worldized/processed my bathroom, living room, and stairwell. I also ran tests on a cell phone, TV, and pillow speaker. In each test, the sound source and recorder remained in the exact same relative position for worldizing and impulse response. You can check out the results below. Each example has alternating, worldized, and processed versions.

The Results
Note: I used voice-over lines in the rooms, and music for the devices. I made this choice because I was primarily concerned with decay time for rooms, and frequency response for devices.
Rooms:
Stairwell
The processed version sounds pretty convincing, however the worldized version has a noticeably longer decay. I want to note that I made a complete new IR for this stairwell even though I had one previously made. Again, I wanted to make sure the sound source and recorder were in the same position for both tests.

Living Room
I have a very hard time picking out any differences between these two. Decay time and frequency response seem almost perfect to me. If anything, there’s a touch more high-end in the processed version.

Bathroom
The bathroom also turned out really well. Decay time in the processed version was spot on again, however the worldized recording had less high end when compared. It’s easier to pick this out on the alternating version.

Devices:
Pillow Speaker
I’m pretty satisfied with this one. Both the worldized and processed versions sounded very similar. The one difference I noticed was the processed version having a little more low end than it should. You might notice this in the third and sixth changes in the alternating version.

Cell Phone
Another convincing performance. However, the processed version lacked in the hints of inherent distortion of the cell phone’s speaker.

TV
If I had to pick the least comparable example, this would be it. Listening to the two separate, it might not be apparent. However, there are some noticeable changes in frequency response between the switches in the alternating version. The worldized version has more energy in the low end and the processed has more in the high freqencies.

Summary
I was pleasantly surprised with the overall performance of convolution reverb. At the same time, worldizing was a blast to try out. Nothing beats freaking out neighbors by blasting GlaDOS lines in an apartment stairwell.

There was only one instance of noticeably different decay, and that was the stairwell. This one really surprised me. I can’t definitively blame this on the program, it could be human or equipment error. Perhaps level differences between the sine tone sweep and voice over led to differing results.

When there were discrepancies in frequency response, the processed version tended had more high-end. Now, there are a number of reasons this might happen. In the case of rooms, it’s possible that my playback equipment wasn’t quite up to par. However, I don’t understand the frequency differences when it comes to the devices. The devices don’t play back with a flat response, but that’s exactly what the plugin needs to replicate it.

One thing I new convolution reverb couldn’t replicate was distortion. I knew this before hand, so I tried to keep all of the devices’ volume at an appropriate level., but it was still evident in my cell phone examples.

When it comes to applying these techniques, it’s a question of preference, time, and money. Maybe the authentic distortion of that particular cell phone is important to you. Many times you may want the inherent “flaws” (I use that word lightly) of a space or device. While it’s certainly possible to add distortion and decay to convolution reverb, you might not have known to do this if you hadn’t heard the worldized version in the first place. However, worldizing does take a lot of time. It needs to be done for each and every piece of audio you want to use. Maybe it’s not worth the time to do all that work for simple rooms. Convolution reverb offers a much quicker turn out time, and (this is a big one) allows for changes to be made to the dry recording. It’s much harder to edit a worldized recording. If changes need to be made, you might have to worldize the whole thing again.

I really recommend checking out Andrew’s post on the subject. He has some great videos and links to even more information.

Technical notes
Sine tone sweeps
Bathroom: 30 second sweep + 3 second silence
Living Room: 30 second sweep + 3 second silence
Stairwell: 30 second sweep + 7 second silence
Cellphone: 30 second sweep + 3 second silence
TV: 30 second sweep + 3 second silence
Pillow Speaker: 30 second sweep + 3 second silence

Equipment
Playback (Rooms): M-Audio AV40
Recording: Zoom H4n (48kHz/24bit)
Processing: Audio Ease Altiverb 6

Cellphone: Motorola Droid 2
TV: Panasonic TC-P42G10
Pillow Speaker: Unknown

Project Portal: Update 3

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:00:00 -0600

Who wants to see a test run for some Project Portal sounds? You do? We’ll I’m glad I asked! In this update I bring you an in-game sample of what I call the “portal shoot sequence”. There are three core SFX triggered each time a player shoots a portal: shoot, portal open, and portal close. These have a multiple versions that are randomly triggered. Most of the other sounds were unchanged for this test.

A few lessons this project has taught me so far…

1. Be organized—>Be efficient.
I have to admit my first Project Portal sessions were a mess. I’d like to think all of my sessions are organized, but in this case I didn’t yet understand how I was going to go about designing and replacing sounds. However, after a bit of trial and error, I routed up with a great desk to both design new sounds and reference the old ones.

Just as important, is file organization. I’m working with the contents of .gcf files. These often have large folder hierarchies that are really going to matter when it comes to replacing sounds. I learned that you don’t create new .gcf files, but instead replicate their hierarchy in your own directory. At first thought it seems simple, but it’s easy to get mixed up when you’re dealing with hundreds of audio files. Each have an exact filename, directory, sampling rate, etc, and the game engine isn’t going to be forgiving with any errors.

Both of these ideas have helped me to be a lot more efficient with the time I get to spend on this project. I don’t take any more time than I need to fiddling with the session or finding files.

2. Redundancy
Most audio folks already understand this, but Project Portal has really hammered it down for me. Autosave is your friend. Backup everything. Backup those backups as well. Don’t trust your harddrives; they’re out to get you.

3. Test, Test, Test
Almost nothing is as useful and rewarding as testing out sounds through gameplay. For me, you can’t beat the feeling of your own sounds being triggered in-game. No matter how many test runs I do, I’m jumping up and down on the inside (and sometimes the outside) every time. Not only is the experience gratifying, but it’s the best way to tell if your sounds work from the player’s perspective. Maybe your sound is great alone, but only through gameplay can you tell if it jives well with other noise in the game or even if it get’s annoying after a while. Sound quality directly affects the amount of time you can play without getting fatigued.

View all Project Portal Posts

Project Portal: Update 2

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 23:00:00 -0600

Being back in my hometown of Galesburg has been great. Aside from seeing family and friends I’ve been able to get a lot of audio work done over this break. My work load toward the end of last semester brought my side projects to a halt, including Project Portal. With my free time back home, I’ve brought the project back to life.

I’m happy to say that I’ve made considerable progress on the mod. Galesburg has given me a lot of source material that I’ve already put to use in designing sound effects. I’ve made the choice to use 100% original sounds in the game. Every noise in the game is composed solely from my own recordings. It’s not the easiest route, but it’s sure the most fun. Nothing beats the feeling of having your own recordings, and putting them to work.

Recently, I took a break from designing individual SFX to design sound for the final “cutscene” moments in the game.

—- Spoilers ahead for the 14 people on earth who haven’t played Portal —-

Check out my work on the cutscene of GLaDOS being destroyed. Largely composed of sounds from a machinist’s workshop

Note: This is pre-captured gameplay. In-game, there are also scripted sounds triggered.

I was surprised how quickly this specific scene came together for me. Don’t get me wrong. I spent a lot of time on it, but compared to what it took for me to finish the two following scenes, it was a piece of cake (ha!).

3 Final Cutscenes

It’s not that the other scenes were more complicated. They’re relatively simple: outdoor ambience with fire, and swooshing through vents to find glorious cake. I’m starting to realize that overt sounds and environments are sometimes much easier to emulate than subtle ones.

View all Project Portal Posts

Happy New Year!

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:00:00 -0600

It isn’t new years eve at my parents’ house with out fireworks. This year was no exception, but this time I was right there to record the moment. We only got a couple lit off before we decided to call it quits. Local law enforcement doesn’t seem to enjoy fireworks as much as we do. The first was disappointingly quiet. I adjusted the recording level accordingly for the next. Let’s just say It was louder than I expected it to be.

Either way, enjoy the fireworks, and enjoy the new year!

A Machinist's Workshop

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 23:00:00 -0600

My girlfriend’s father is a great machinist. In his home shop, he works on his own air pistol prototypes. He uses all kinds of big fancy machines for this. Now, I have no clue how to operate them or how they work, but I do know they make a lot of noise. Noise is kind of my thing, so I don’t think I could ever forgive myself if I didn’t record them before I went back to Chicago. Luckily, he was more than happy to help me out. What a perfect way to test out my new Zoom H4n!

The main thing I wanted to capture was this massive Warner & Swasey turret lathe, but we ended up recording everything from the phase converter to the garage door. I didn’t really have any specific use in mind for these recordings, but I think I’m going to be using a lot of them in the Portal Mod I’m working on.

Here’s a sample of the lathe running at a few different speeds.

"This Milk F***ng Rules"

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 23:00:00 -0600

Check out this hilarious short film by Muve Music/Cricket Wireless I helped do sound for. Step into the life of a shepherd who really loves his music.

TTTTTThor!

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:00:00 -0600

I just finished a fun project that came to me randomly. I decided I would make an audio mod for VVVVVV using only Thor. I’ve beat VVVVVV before and I’d like to think I’m pretty good at it. I’ve also used Thor before but couldn’t say I’m well versed in all of it’s parameters.

Thor is an amazing synthesizer found in Reason. What makes it different than a lot of other synths is that just about everything can modulate just about anything. You can have an LFO modulate a synths frequency. That same frequency signal could modulate the drive amount of a comb filter. Another LFO’s speed could be modulated by the frequency of that comb filter… and so on. To be honest, it’s still kind of tough for me to wrap my head around everything in Thor, but making this mod has helped me get a better idea of what’s going on.

Another lesson I learned making this mod was that games can be picky about sound file metadata. When I first tried playing the game, none of the modified sounds would trigger. I struggled to work that one out. They were the same 16bit/44.1 kHz mono .wav files with the exact filenames as the originals. Four Cokes and a lot more troubleshooting later, I finally found the culprit to be metadata. Or I should say, my boss gave me the idea it might be metadata. It turned out that removing the extra metadata that Reason or Pro Tools may have added to the files did the trick. My guess is that the game uses this data to authenticate the files.

Here’s a short video of me playing the modified game. I promise I’m only dying to demonstrate the sounds. :)

If you have VVVVVV and want to try out my sounds, you can download the modified sound folder below.

Download VVVVVV Thor Sound Mod by Stosh

To install on a Mac, control-click on the VVVVVV app and click “Show Package Contents”. The sounds are located in ‘Resources/data/sounds’. Simply replace the “sounds” folder with the one I’ve provided. You’ll want to keep a copy of the original sounds, of course.

I can’t give specific directions for installing on Windows, however I’m assuming the sounds are located somewhere in the “Program Files” folder. If you don’t have VVVVVV, get it. It’s an amazing game with an outstanding soundtrack for just $5.00. It’s the kind of game where dying over and over again only makes you want to try it again and again.

Monster "Legs" Sound Design

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:00:00 -0600

One of my final projects for this semester was to replace all of the SFX, music, and dialogue in a commercial. Out of all of the choices, this Monster.com spot seemed to fit me best. There’s a whole lot of things going on in this commercial, which required a lot of sound design. I also made a 5.1 mix, which is always fun. I especially loved how the elevator impact turned out being sent to the LFE. Too bad YouTube doesn’t support 5.1!

Sorry for the crappy video quality. It’s the video I was given.

Fun fact: The elevator hitting the ground is a combination of my stove and coffee table slamming shut.

Voice-over: Anya Pshenychny - www.anyavalerie.com
Music: Tillman Sillescu via www.freeplaymusic.com

I claim no rights to this video. This is a demonstration piece.

We've Got That IR!

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:00:00 -0600

This weekend I worked with my friend Drew to try out creating impulse responses for the first time. We used a sine tone sweep method. For those who don’t know, IR’s (in audio) are used to replicate the sound of rooms, spaces, equipment, etc. This is particularly useful when an actor’s voice is recorded in a studio but needs to sound like it’s in a space appropriate for a scene. You can also sample stranger things like refrigerators, vacuum tubes, and trash cans.

Check out an example of one of our IR’s in action. Here’s some dialogue I recorded in a Columbia College booth, first played dry, and then with the IR of my apartment stairwell applied. The result is a voice that sounds almost exactly like it was speaking in this all concrete stairwell. I can’t wait to try some of these out on future projects!