#sound design

[prokopetz]

RPG Maker horror game where at first you think it's doing the "menu/UI sound effects are moist-sounding for no particular reason" thing that so many games of the type do, but later you end up temporarily switching characters at various times and it gradually becomes apparent that nobody else's menu FX are moist. Just yours.

[wangleline]

[polaritydisturbed]

Ok no, I have to get it out of my system, Conrad is bad at podcasting. And just recording anything in general.

The sound padding is doing absolutely nothing. Sure, they’ve got it slapped on the walls, but it’s off to the side. Not behind them. Not in front of them. Just... chilling. Which is useless. You want that padding facing the source of the sound so it can catch the waves before they start bouncing all over the place.

Since both Ruby and Conrad are facing forward with the padding off to the side, her voice is bouncing off the wall behind him and hitting his mic again a split second later. That would be making the audio sound muddy and hollow. Having the foam off to the side like that is like putting a bandage next to your cut and wondering why you’re still bleeding.

Right now, the foam is just there for vibes. Bad vibes.

And who told this man to record in a glass box? Glass is terrible for audio. Everything bounces. Nothing gets absorbed. It turns your voice into a pinball machine. You could have a thousand-dollar mic and it would still sound like you’re talking inside a fishbowl. Plus, that room looks like it’s in the middle of an office space? Why, Conrad, you amoeba-brained sycophant, would you record anything there ever?? The background noise alone would be hell on Earth to try to edit out.

Pop filter and foam windscreen (mic cover)??? Both are designed to reduce plosive sounds—like "p" and "b"���by dispersing the air before it hits the microphone diaphragm. While it’s not wrong to use both, it’s redundant unless you're outdoors or in a particularly plosive-heavy environment. Stacking them can even dull the audio a bit.

Your mic doesn’t need two hats. Calm down.

Not an audio note but a soft box light in the shot?? No. Just no. They should be behind the camera, pointing at you. Or at least off to the side, not pointing directly down the middle. And what really gets me? There are windows. Real, working windows with actual sunlight. And what did Conrad do? He covered them with that useless sound padding. So now it’s badly lit and echoey.

He blocked out free, natural light to keep in the bad sound.

"But what if the sun’s there right when he’s trying to record?" some might say. That’s why curtains exist. And the soft box would still be in a bad spot.

Also, his camera audio is peaking like crazy. Even if he's not using the camera mic for the final cut, it’s still useless to record it like this. You know that Xbox early Halo/COD mic sound? That’s what this would sound like.

This happens when the input gain is too high, causing the audio to clip. Basically, the mic can’t handle it and the sound gets distorted. Ideally, you want your audio levels to peak in the yellow zone, around -12 dB to -6 dB. Not constantly slamming into the red at 0 dB. That’s reserved for 13-year-old prepubescents cursing you out for ruining their kill streak. And that’s it.

On top of that, both the left and right channels on the camera audio look identical, meaning the audio’s been merged into a single mono track. Which isn’t wrong for speech, but it kills any sense of space or direction. For dynamic audio, especially in a two-person setup, you don’t want everything crammed into one lane. (OR they’re both just peaking at the same time continuously, even when they’re not talking, which means it’s picking up background noise at a level so loud it’s pushing the mic into clipping.)

And to make things worse, the little "LIVE" tag in the bottom corner implies this is a livestream. But there doesn’t seem to be any livestream software open on his laptop, so I’m assuming there’s either a second offscreen computer handling the stream, or it’s hooked up to broadcast natively.

Either way, unless those mics are also connected to the camera or that other computer, that peaky, crunchy camera audio is what people are actually hearing.

Finally... it really helps if you hit the record button. He’s just playing back audio. I think that’s more of a “show” thing, but still.

(look I got a fancy degree in this stuff and I have to use it somehow)

[lackadaisycats]

Do the characters of lackadaisy in the comics make cat noises just as much as they do in the animation or was that just added in the animation for some extra flare?

Like does comic Mordecai make grumpy cat growls when he’s irritated just like animated Mordecai?

In my mind, in working on the comic, I didn't really envision them making cat noises at all, save the occasional growl or yelp that could be construed as human or as feline. Kennedy Phillips, our sound supervisor, thought it was a travesty that the animated pilot didn't make use of cat vocabulary, though. So he inserted some as proof of concept. He and Fable eventually sold me on the idea. It just seemed to work really well with Freckle in particular, who is otherwise quite reticent. It helps that Rika, Kennedy's cat, is a consummate voice actress. Most of those sounds were custom-recorded by holding her up to a mic.

[patholopsy]

Here's a list of Free tools and resources for your daily work!🎨

2D

• Libresprite Pixel art + animation • Krita digital painting + animation • Gimp image manipulation + painting • Ibispaint digital painting • MapEditor Level builder (orthogonal, isometric, hexagonal) • Terawell manipulate 3D mannequin as a figure drawing aid (the free version has everything) • Storyboarder Storyboard

3D

• Blender general 3D software (modeling, sculpting, painting, SFX , animation…). • BlockBench low-poly 3D + animation.

Sound Design

• Audacity Audio editor (recording, editing, mixing) • LMMS digital audio workstation (music production, composition, beat-making). • plugins4free audio plugins (work with both audacity and lmms) • Furnace chiptune/8-bit/16-bit music synthesizer

Video

• davinciresolve video editing (the free version has everything) • OBS Studio video recording + live streaming.

2D Animation

• Synfig Vector and puppet animation, frame by frame. Easy. • OpenToon Vector and puppet animation, frame by frame. Hard.

↳ You can import your own drawings.

For learning and inspiration

• models-resource 3D models from retro games (mostly) • spriters-resource 2D sprites (same) • textures-resource 2D textures (same) • TheCoverProject video game covers • Setteidreams archive of animation production materials • Livlily collection of animated lines

[ceroro]

the world of solo gamedev leads you to learn strange things

such as synthing crickets

[nintendocompositions]

sorry I haven't posted much today, I've been working (hyperfixated) on ~sound design~ for this really funny gif I saw on reddit posted by u/TEOX956 lol

[exotonplanet]

bone hound broadcast

[hippocrafty]

I just have to shout out the sound designers on the Terror. On my rewatch (from 'Horrible from Supper' onwards), I'm really noticing how straight up disturbing the sounds are for some pivotal scenes. The Jirv murder with the off-key song, Jopson's crawling scene (I'm sure there are more but these two spring most immediately). Does anyone know if they used infrasound or some other low-frequency effects? I swear I'm getting the heebie-jeebies from the sounds alone!

[sandplague]

post from IPL's twitter

[postpunkindustrial]

Alan Splet, David Lynch, Ann Kroeber – Sounds Of A Different Realm CD

RIP David Lynch a voice so unique that you could easily take him for granted. A voice so singular that Lynchian is a word that you immediatly know what it means but have trouble describing it to someone who doesn't.

We are without him now.

So it goes.

Sounds of a different realm is a 3 disc set containing the sound design of Alan Splet and Ann Kroeber in collaboration with David Lynch.

Producer – Ann Kroeber

Recorded By – Alan Splet* (tracks: CD1-1 through CD2-38), Ann Kroeber, David Lynch (tracks: CD1-1 through CD2-38)

Sound Designer – Alan Splet* (tracks: CD1-1 through CD2-38), Ann Kroeber, David Lynch (tracks: CD1-1 through CD2-38)

Download this from my Google Drive HERE

[prokopetz]

I don't mind predominantly atmospheric video game soundtracks in principle, but I do admit I miss the way some older console games would have a dense, bombastic soundscape suddenly go soft and atmospheric to communicate that You Are In Danger.

[wangleline]

I'm working on a new turbo banger

[tincanaudio]

Vertical Editing - A Tiny Essay Zine!

Behold! My first entry into the 2024 Fiction Podcast Zine Festival organised by @boombox-fuckboy. It's a tiny essay about the way I edit audio and why I think it leads to more immersive stories.

This was scribbled together really quickly just to see if I could do it.

Page scans with subtitles under the cut

[VERTICAL AUDIO EDITING - a tiny essay by AMBER DEVEREUX]

[Hi! My name is Amber...and I can't draw. BUT! What I can do is EDIT AUDIO. I often get asked how to make IMMERSIVE SOUND DESIGN in audio drama. Where dialogue and sound design blend together. THE ZESTY SECRET IS VERTICAL EDITING]

[See, the typical editing pipeline for audio is usually horizontal, like this: (a sketch of an audio project file with 3 tracks: 'Vocals' 'SFX' and 'Music' next to each track name is a long rectangle with a label for which kind of edit is which 'Dialogue Edit' for Vocals, 'Sound Edit' for SFX, 'Music Edit' for Music)

Each part is edited separately then put together at the end. Which means all the elements sit on top of each other. It's clean, yes, but is it IMMMERRRSIIVE? BEHOLD! VERTICAL EDITING!

(the same sketch of an audio project, except the rectangles have been chopped up into smaller pieces, some bits of the Vocals overlap with the SFX, some bits of the music overlap both Vocals and SFX. There are also vertical lines through the middle and end of the picture, denoting scenes)

Dialogue, SFX (and sometimes music) are all editing together at the same time. So all the elements interact with each other from the start: The dialogue becomes sound design!

The sound design becomes dialogue!]

[Of course, this approach isn't perfect:

if you're working in a big team, it's not always possible

edits take longer, with more notes per edit

it's also just a lot more work and creative responsibility (which, sometimes, is the last thing you want)

BUT it also allows you THE MOST HUMBLE AUDIO EDITOR To have more of a voice in the sound design, and it allows you most of all, to be AN ARTIST]

[THANKS FOR READING! This zine was made for the 2024 Fiction Podcast Zine Festival.

(A drawing of the Tin Can Audio logo. A square with 3 lines on the inside. On each line there is a rectangle styled to look like a fader on an audio mixing desk. In each rectangle there is a letter, spelling TCA)

TINCANAUDIO.CO.UK]

I had a lot of fun putting this together! I've definitely caught the bug and hopefully I'll make a couple more before the month is out.

[lackadaisycats]

The pilot has so much delightful foley in it, but the one that never fails to make me giggle is when Rocky rolls down the hill with his violin in the beginning. Would you have any insight to share about what went into the foley work?

I checked in with M Gewehr, who did sound design and music composition on the Pilot. Here's what they had to say about it: "The foliage and cloth and stuff was from a sound library but the violin sounds were my grandfather's violin from the 20s that i was very carefully getting painful sounds out of."

-------------- We also originally had voice audio for Rocky in that scene, shouting oofs and ouches on the way down, performed expertly by Michael Kovach. We realized along the way, though, that the whole thing came across much funnier if Rocky was silent as the poor violin voiced the sequential agonies of tumbling down a steep, brushy incline like that.