A collection of blog posts, and a special edition of the Game Audio Podcast, have been coordinated by Damian Kastbauer and David Nichols on the dense subject of racing game audio. The remarkably in-depth studies (which feature video examples) rip apart audio techniques for the racing genre, investigating subjects such as tire squeals, surface types, camera perspectives, and of course, the sounds of the engines themselves.

From the Lost Chocolate Blog;

These informal game sound studies aim to expose the technical side of game audio by making an assessment of current generation titles. The assessment is then used as a way to better understand the differences in approach, aesthetics, and progression of techniques across a small sample. By turning the focus onto emerging details that arise during the course of the study we are able to identify area’s of significance and interest that help communicate the current state of the art. These finding are then represented in a content-rich report that includes: videos, article links, and specialized interviews. The goal is to help raise awareness for the technical side of sound design and help in the understanding of what is often not very well represented in current literature.

Check out the study in all it’s glory at the following links:

Vroom Vroom – A Study of Sound in Racing Games ( Introductory article in Game Developer Magazine )

TrackTime Audio blog – Racing Game Sound Study

Lost Chocolate Blog – Racing Game Sound Study

Game Audio Podcast – Racing Game Sound Study (with guests Mike Caviezel, Mike de Belle and Tim Bartlett)

David Nichols, of the Track Time Audio blog, has posted a second part of his interview with Nick Wiswell, the Audio Director at Turn 10 and audio overseer of the Forza Motorsport games. In this part, Nick discusses how his team used FMOD to implement the audio, how they sourced rarer vehicles, the complexity of Racing audio, and working with Lance Hayes on the UI sounds and music to create the atmosphere the team was looking for. The full interview can be read here, and you can view part one of this great interview here

TTA: Racing game audio is, as I understand it, very unique in the video game world (much like the racing genre is rather unique). It seems like it takes the right kind of person who’s really into cars to produce a great racing game. Do you feel this is the same way for racing audio? Are there particular challenges unique to racing games compared to other genres (technically and/or creatively)?

NW: Creating audio for racing games has a very different set of challenges to creating audio in most other types of games.

Most games require lots of one shot sounds for things like character movement, footsteps, weapons, VO, world objects and object interactions etc. with a small number of constant sounds for moving objects, vehicles or background ambience.

With a racing game most of the objects in the game and making sounds created from many layers of continuously changing sounds.

Read the rest of Nick Wiswell returns for part 2! on the Track Time Audio blog. ( Thanks David!)

The vehicle focused Track Time Audio blog has posted an interview with Turn 10′s and ex-Bizarre Creations Creative Audio Director Nick Wiswell,  covering the production of Forza Motorsport 4 and the pipeline of recording sessions to finished in-game audio for the car engines.

TTA: Could you talk a bit about the process a vehicle goes through between recording session and finished in-game? I think the work involved after the recordings are made are under appreciated by gamers because they just don’t know how much work goes on.

NW: It’s a long process, so I’ll break it down into stages like a recipe:

To record a car you will need:
* A car and a chassis dyno, or an engine and an engine dyno
* An 8 – 10 channel recording device with multiple microphones to capture the engine, intake system and each exhaust pipe sound independently
* A dyno operator who understands that “full throttle” means all the way to the floor, and a car owner who won’t freak out when you do that
* An hour or two of time

1. First thing to do is set up the car on the dyno (your dyno operator will usually do this for you) and set up all the recording equipment
2. Then run the engine, do a few throttle snaps and a power run or two, and walk around the car trying to find the spots that have the sound you are looking for
3. Then set up close microphones on the engine, intake, turbo (if fitted) and each exhaust pipe plus microphones at points where you found interesting sounds
4. Press “record”, set levels and ask the dyno operator to run through the following sequence:
·Full throttle power pulls in different gears or at different speeds (depending on the type of dyno)
·Held steady RPMS at 500 RPM intervals from close to idle up to close to redline
·Idle
·Acceleration and deceleration through the gears (if possible on the dyno)
·Simulated track driving (if possible on the dyno)

View the rest of the interview on the Track Time Audio website

New article from Develop Magazine, October’s Issue:

PUT TOGETHER Forza Motorsport 4 and racing car audio specialist Nick Wiswell, and arguably you have a marriage made in game audio heaven. UK game audio’s loss was US studio Turn 10’s gain as Wiswell and his family upped sticks, moving from Cheshire to Redmond just over one year ago.

With a wealth of experience garnered whilst working on global hits like Project Gotham Racing, he nevertheless faced some fresh career challenges. Previously heading an in-house team of sound designers and audio programmers, he was confronted with a fundamentally different modus operandi – a small core staff team ‘focused on the bigger picture’ scaling up with outsourcers and freelancers based on specific project needs and using audio middleware.

“The manifesto for audio was clear: to make the racing sound more exciting, improving the car audio to be more visceral,” explains Wiswell. “My predecessors had been looking at the potential for additional dynamic mixing and DSP which fell right into my wheel house; so I took that and ran with it. We didn’t want to over-amp things too much and break realism, but we were definitely looking for enhanced excitement.”

Download here.

Firelight Technologies has been uploading new tutorials created by sound designer Stephan Schutze. Topics include multri-track events, interactive music, platform settings, car recording and more.

More videos at FMOD TV.

Thanks to Wit for the link.

Electronic Arts has started a 4-part series dedicated to explore the sound of “Need for Speed: The Run”. The first episode features product manager Jeff Sharma and audio directors Charles Deenen and Rich Adrian.

HP and Need For Speed present a 4-part series covering all aspects of sound in the latest entry into the Need For Speed franchise: Need For Speed The Run. We will take a behind-the-scenes look at how the team captures everything from a super car engine to the sound effects of a tense action sequence to create one of the most well-respected soundscapes in gaming.

California City is one of those places with no apparent reason for being. It’s stuck out in the middle of the Mojave Desert where it’s brutally hot in the summer and windstorms will sandblast the paint off your car any time of the year. Fewer than 15,000 people live here, and if they didn’t have jobs at Hyundai’s nearby proving ground, a lot of them would leave. But California City has an airport. And since that airport is never, ever busy, it’s the perfect place for Peter Brown to record car sounds.

Click here to read the complete article.

I have the privilege of getting my first interview with the awesome, excellent, Watson Wu.

TTA: First off, some of your work with NFS ProStreet — this game emphasized more on the fun of the game than on the realism of driving, did this slightly different emphasis have any effect on the recording technique for the vehicles? Were there any cars that proved difficult to record well? Lastly, did you use predominately dyno-based recordings?

For ProStreet I was hired to field record passbys and help the EA team apply microphones on GT race cars in Sebring, Florida. We were capturing Corvette CR06, Cadillac, and Viper cars during their practice runs around the track, speeding at 170-190mph. The Corvette CR06s are The Loudest race cars I have ever encountered! They were like constant sustains of gun shots, painful to our ears. While many of the microphones were able to withstand the constant pounding of the high decibels, I was given from the team mic pads to cut off the extreme sounds going into my field recorder. While EA as well as a few of their external contractors sometimes use dyno-packs, I most of the time capture vehicles while in motion. Many of us believe that this recording on the go produces the more natural sound. As we have learned from years of recordings, we constantly strive to achieve better or nastier recordings with newer microphones and push the limiters to the extreme for that more aggressive sound. after all, video games and films are fiction based.

Continue reading here.

Home Digs

“Transformers” is a mega-hit franchise for Hasbro with a huge fan base fueled by cartoons that beckoned to us in our formative years during the 80’s. The battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons has raged on for decades now, with seemingly no end in sight, and we still line up to see it, be it new toy line, game, and movie releases.

When Activision handed down the “Transformers” mantle to us after “The Bourne Conspiracy” was released, we knew this was going to be quite a bit different than anything the studio had done before…and FUN. Finally I had the chance to work in the science fiction genre, something I’d always wanted to do.

In the very beginning, we weren’t sure what the story was going to be, but that didn’t stop us from jumping in and recording a new library’s worth of material in a few short weeks. Much of that was in anticipation of creating a whole new soundscape of material that didn’t exist much in our libraries with the prior game titles we had worked on. Fun times indeed!

As the vehicle technology behind the “Bourne” game’s Mini Cooper was being expanded and improved to make a vehicle mode viable for Transformers combat and transportation, I began editing all of the best vehicle source we had from the overused commercial libraries most sound people are familiar with out there. As anyone who’s done this knows, there isn’t much to work with. At least much that’s usable from a game standpoint. Still, I prided myself on getting all sorts of tractor trailer squeaks and hisses ready for Optimus Prime and muscle car engine audio ready for Bumblebee.

However, we soon learned that the story of the game wasn’t going to take place on Earth at all. Instead, the focus would be on the Transformers’ home world, Cybertron, as we jumped into the story of what happened before coming to Earth, an area not thoroughly-covered by Hasbro’s existing canon.

This was exciting news indeed.

With the robots no longer needing the ability to transform into human-designed vehicles for disguise purposes as they did on Earth, this opened up the sonic palette quite a bit to experiment with what it might sound like for these Cybertronian citizens to zip around in their own vehicle form, aligned with their own advanced civilization and technology.

Listen To My Bumblebee…

The first vehicle form I tackled was the class that was to represent Bumblebee in the game. It was multiple looping tracks, meticulously-crossfaded together at differing speeds, heavily processed with varying degrees of MondoMod, MetaFlanger and Enigma (three Waves plug-ins that I finally got to “dust off” after years of neglect). When I was sure I was done, I played it for some of the guys and the first thing Mike said was, “that’s cool, but it sounds more like a tank”.

A…tank? Here I was focusing on trying to get something zippy-sounding for a smaller sci-fi car and it ended up being this heavy-sounding vehicle instead.

Sure enough, that sound became the basis for the tank class and remains relatively untouched since that initial day. So funny how you can miss the mark sometimes!

Wu to the Rescue

Despite the fact that the Transformers’ vehicular modes were now going to be very different from their Earth-born disguises, including hovering being a key feature, we wanted to keep the vehicles’ sound grounded in reality, which meant we needed better source.

Even though we would have loved to seek out and record several vehicles on our own to gather this material, due to our condensed development cycle for the game, we decided to work with another industry professional that seemed to have quite a few connections in the vehicle arena – Watson Wu.

One of Watson’s specialties is recording cars, and once we contacted him, the man was out with a portable recorder auditioning several models for us right away to see what we think would work for each of the Cybertronian vehicle classes in the game. Optimus Prime no longer needed to be a tractor trailer, nor Bumblebee a Camaro or Volkswagen, so we chose the basis of these characters’ vehicle modes mainly on the character of some of these auditions that Watson was providing.

This 2005 Porsche Carrera GT was used for Bumblebee:

A 2003 Hummer H2 was used for Optimus Prime (owner John Corcoran pictured):

Many, if not all, of these other cars were featured as well, though the remaining details escape me as to which was used for which:

2005 ProCharger Corvette:

1969 Corvette Dragster Twin Turbo (owner Steve Keech pictured):

1965 Cobra Replica:

2007 GMC Sierra SLT Turbo Diesel (with owner Shawn Koss and Mr. Wu pictured as well) – used for Ratchet and other “truck”-class vehicles:

Digging In

After Watson recorded each of these vehicles with multiple onboard mics, along with pass-bys, revs, and a slew of other unique recordings capturing the vehicles’ personalities, he delivered the high-resolution recordings to us and I began incorporating these sounds into the design of the vehicles. Each vehicle type has their basis defined by these recorded performances, except for the tank and jet classes, which were designed with other source.

Every vehicle can boost and jump in the game, to give the player as much maneuverability as possible while in vehicle form. When you boost, the wheels come out and you drop down from a native hovering state, giving you greater speed, though with less steering ability, which is great for straight-aways and escapes.

In the end, each vehicle ended up with about 4 or 5 main loops for main engine, a boost loop mode for each, with boost-on and boost-off sounds, jumps, lands, with some careful ducking and DSP usage woven in.

There are many different electronic-sounding, modulated motor sounds blended with the car sounds to help give that sc-fi quality to them – including an electric razor resonating a stainless steel strainer idea that yielded a wonderful tone (and idea I stole from Ben Burtt, though he used a salad bowl). It was a lot of fun to experiment with things like this, and I achieved some really cool results.

I wanted the vehicles to feel like they were always accelerating, so even if you’re in the game and are traveling at your top speed, there is a pitch envelope that continues to raise the engine loops incrementally higher for around 30 seconds or so. Of course, you never really get to experience that much during gameplay as you are too busy shooting and evading, but its there. J

Conclusion

“Transformers: War For Cybertron” was a great game to work on, and though I ultimately left for Sony Online around the game’s alpha milestone, I look forward to the new releases from High Moon and their audio crew, which will be even better than what has come before. Rock on, guys:

Pictured left to right, top row then bottom row: Ian Mika, John Drelick, Mark Loperfido, Aaron Marks (visiting), Watson Wu (visiting), Robert Burns, Rodney Gates, and Christian Sakanai (missing: Mike Niederquell)

Credits

These gentlemen provided the vehicles that were recorded and used for the game – they drove, of course J:

Steve White

• 2005 Porsche Carrera GT (V10 – one of only 2 of these supercars)
• 1965 Cobra (Backdraft Roadster replica with Rouse engine)

Steve Keech

• 1969 Dragster Corvette (twin turbo, 1200hp, 9 liter (this car killed one of Watson’s lavalier mics during a burnout session)

John Corcoran

• 2005 ProCharger Corvette (supercharged sleeper)
• 2003 Hummer H2 (V8)

Shawn Koss

• 2007 GMC Sierra SLT (turbo diesel)

Disclaimer: I am writing these articles as an independent sound designer. Any views or opinions expressed here are simply my own, and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of any company, corporate entity or anyone else. Any images or sounds presented are subject to copyright by their respective owners, and are presented for educational purposes only. Any information given is correct to the best of my knowledge. Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary.

Action movies are pure sonic playgrounds. The busier the scene, and crazier the action, the more opportunities we have with sound to enhance the experience for the audience. But with that opportunity comes the responsibility to clarify the action, and focus the audience’s attention. We want to thrill the moviegoers, not pummel them with audio. As sound professionals, it’s our job to bring to the mix all the elements we think are needed. A great mixer then sorts through the dialog, music and all the sound effects to find the perfect balance from moment to moment. The ultimate authority, in the end, is the director.

Rob Cohen makes movies that are great for sound. His action sequences are visceral, and visually dynamic. He also knows exactly what he wants sound to do for his films. I’ve had the good fortune to work on four of his films, and each one has been a blast.

The Fast and the Furious

I began work on “The Fast and the Furious” in 2000, while I was still the “new guy” at SoundStorm. It was one of my first big movies. It also marked the first time I worked on a multichannel surround speaker system. Although I was exploring new audio territory on a huge project, I knew the soundtrack itself was in good hands.

Supervising Sound Editor Bruce Stambler knows cars. He assembled a top-notch team of recordists and started recording extensive car libraries of a huge number of exotic cars. Every featured vehicle was researched and a suitable sound-alike was found. Recording sessions continued on throughout the post production process. I was not present at the recording sessions myself, but I heard the results and they were phenomenal.

All the cars were cut by SoundStorm editors using the Fostex Foundation 2000 system. Imagine having only 8 tracks available at one time! The interface consisted of a small touch screen. You can see more pictures of the system in this French article here – it even mentions SoundStorm and my mentor/predecessor Lance Brown if you scroll down to “Sound Design”.

My tasks on the show were primarily traditional “sound design” moments, and a few specialty sounds: CGI point-of-view shots flying inside of an engine, all the hi-tech NOS activations and associated power surges, some slow motion scenes, fast car by sweeteners, and most importantly: the “sense of speed”. We also planned for a layer of animal sweeteners for the cars. The sound design workload was already heavy, so we brought in Charles Deenen to take over that enormous task. He delivered spectacular tracks that added a new level of ferocity to the already outrageously aggressive car recordings.

We split up the sound design for predubs like this:

DSN A = Animal swtnrs, day-night transitions (Charles’ stuff)
DSN B = Design FX (NOS, titles, whooshes, etc.)
DSN C = Car swtnrs (multi-channel pre-panned bys, tires, engines)
DSN D = Int car wind & “sense of speed” FX

Each character was represented by a different set of design material. The unique sounds highlighted the different cars from shot to shot, to help the audience keep track of the characters. It also supported and reflected each person’s character traits.

The NOS shots, like everything else in the movie, were larger-than-life events. The “inside the engine” shots were visually very dense. These all required very detailed work to convey such sonic complexity in a very short time. The best way I’ve found is to have little bits of sound follow each other in a sequence, instead of having too many sounds happening at one time. I think I spent about a week or so on the first 8 second trip through Dom’s engine. I used short pieces of evocative sounds: firey explosions, air blasts, spinning mechanical sounds. The cam shaft spins were created from an old slide projector sound effect. The “engine by” sound included a CU engine recording of my old dead Buick Skyhawk on the day it was picked up for spare parts. It looked just like this one:

“The sound of this car was used in FATF?? Oh the shame!!”

[I should note that I recorded another sound from this car that day… a sound that later became the Enterprise warp throttle down while the “parking brake” was on - but that’s another story.]

I kept going back to clarify the mix, and take advantage of the 5.1 speakers. For Temp 1, I delivered my design as a virtual mixdown. I was pleased to get a call during the final mix to send my original temp 1 mixdown to the stage, since they liked it so much. A year later I was pleasantly surprised to hear my entire “in the engine” sequence triggered from the DVD menu when the film is started.

The sense of speed was a fun challenge. During the high-octane race scenes I wanted to create the feeling of dangerous acceleration. In nearly all those scenes, there are tonal sounds that rise in pitch and intensity – either low end moans or high end turbine-type sounds. Another key aspect was a set of various wind sounds. Everything from high whistley winds (also slowly rising in pitch) to monstrous low end buffeting roars were used. I also created some subjective sounds to convey the adrenaline rush felt by the drivers.

Last but not least, are what I called “blur bys”. I made a variety of aggressive and fast whoosh bys that I cut for foreground objects whizzing by. I panned the blur-bys and other design elements and rendered them using a third party panning plug-in. This was 10 years ago! I was using version 5.0 of Pro Tools and surround panning had not yet been implemented at that time.

Brilliant, veteran mixer Dan Leahy mixed all the effects and design tracks. It was the first of many inspiring collaborations I’ve had with Dan. He brings incredible skill and enthusiasm to his projects in equal measure. At this point I want to stress again the team nature of the collaborative endeavor that is film sound. The sound crew for FATF included:

• Sound Design and Supervision: Bruce Stambler M.P.S.E., Jay Nierenberg M.P.S.E.
• Re-Recording Mixers: Michael Casper, Daniel J. Leahy
• Supervising ADR Editor: Becky Sullivan, M.P.S.E
• Sound Effects Editors: Steve Mann, M.P.S.E., Kim Secrist, Steven F. Nelson, Brian Best, Howard S.M. Neiman, Glenn Hoskinson
• Sound Design: Tim Walston, Charles Deenen
• Dialogue Editors: Mildred Iatrou Morgan, Robert Troy, Bill Dotson, Donald Warner, Jr., M.P.S.E., Cathy Speakman, Paul Curtis, John C. Stuver, M.P.S.E.
• ADR Editors: Nicholas Korda, Lee Lemont
• Supervising Foley Editor: Michael Dressel
• Foley Editors: Scott Curtis, Dan Yale
• Additional Effects Recording: Richard Yawn, M.P.S.E., Gary Blufer
• First Assistant Sound Editor: Paul Aulicino, M.P.S.E.
• Assistant ADR Editor: Marc Deschaine
• Assistant Sound Editors: Bradley Clouse, Bruce barris, Bill Cawley
• ADR Mixer: Jeff Gomillion
• Mixing Recordists: Charles Ajar, Jr., Andy Peach, Eric Justen
• Foley Mixers: Eric Thompson, C.A.S., Shawn Kennelly
• Foley Artists: Gregg Barbanell, Laura Macias, Sean Rowe

(Information taken from DVD credits)