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.

Charles Deenen has published a useful guide on his site explaining how to setup Dropbox for sharing Pro Tools sessions quickly between a group of people, in the cloud.

Dropbox allows you to work “virtually” in a group with Protools, sharing sessions almost instantly. However there are a few rules to follow during the workflow, to make this process smooth. The following is assumed:

• You’re working with Protools 9.x
• You work with a library program like Soundminer / Netmix etc.
• You work with other people in a group, and need to open up their sessions
• quickly from various locations.
• Each editor / mixer has the necessary plugins to listen to the session (if needed)

Waves has published the results of the sound design competition where Designing Sound collaborated. The winner is Toby Hulse, who did a fantastic job on the video. Take a look:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Congratulations, Toby!!!

You can read a detailed description of Toby’s process and use of the plugins/sounds here.

Judges’ comments about the video:

Charles Deenen: “Oh, nice! The sounds provided were not over-processed, but enough so they nicely fit within the story. Sound was complimentary to the experience, and pulled me in. Well done.”

David Farmer: “Grabbed me first time through—rocked. Solidly put together and nice weaving of elements. Very tasteful. I liked this from start to finish. The process on the zoom to the mirror is great, and focuses the listener’s attention. Excellent execution of the “story,” and I felt guided through the piece.”

Scott Gershin: “I like the way you designed each section, the choices you made, and the way you contoured and designed the sound to work emotionally with the visuals. Nice pacing, well executed, on the debris field, not too sharp. I like the final touch—tasty. Excellent job.”

Tom Ozanich: “Good story telling, good flow, great sounds, well done all around. Each section had its own sound/feel, yet it all flowed well into each other.”

Top 10 Finalists

1. Toby Hulse
2. James M. Wearing
3. Josh Osiris
4. Ryan Thompson
5. Ariel Echarren
6. John Morgan
7. Alexander Pugh
8. Brett Hinton
9. Jeremy Rogers
10. John Loranger

More info at Waves

Waves Audio has released the Sound Design Suite, a new bundle packed with 30 plugins oriented to sound design tasks. It was developed in collaboration with Charles Deenen and Scott Martin Gershin.

With over 30 plugins hand-picked especially for sound designers and post production facilities, the Waves
Sound Design Suite is a comprehensive and cost-effective collection of audio plugins that provides all the essentials—without breaking the bank. And to be sure we included the perfect plugins for sound design, Waves worked closely with two of the hardest-working pros in the business: movie maven Scott Martin Gershin (Star Trek, Hellboy 2, Chronicles of Riddick, American Beauty) and game guru Charles Deenen (Need for Speed, Fast & Furious 1and2).

From conventional effects to creative sonic textures, Sound Design Suite covers all your bases. With compression, EQ, pitch shifting, level maximization, and more, you get everything need to mold, modulate, and mangle your sound. If you’ve been looking for an all-in-one, off-the-shelf audio processing solution, Sound Design Suite is it—no more mixing and matching plugins from different bundles.

Whether you work in TV, movies, or games, the Waves Sound Design Suite gives you essential sound-shaping tools, for endless sound design possibilities.

Sound Design Suite is available from Waves at $1380 (Native) and $1920 (TDM).

Waves also added two great interviews:

Some days ago Charles Deenen gave a webinar talking abou the use Waves plugins for sound design, and also answering some questions from the attendees. The webinar is available for viewing online now!

After clicking on a video link you will be prompted to sign into the webinar system. Please use the following information to view any of our previous webinar videos:

Username – webinar
Password – waves

Please note: Due to limitations of Adobe’s webinar software, skipping through the webinar may cause the video to go out of sync. Therefore, we recommend watching the videos from the beginning, without fast forwarding.

Charles Deenen – Sound Design Webinar

Special thanks to Charles for recommending Designing Sound in one of his answers.

“Don’t be pushed off though by the “3 year experience” phrase. The work will speak for yourself.”

-Charles Deenen

Here are the answers to the questions you made to Charles Deenen. Even if you don’t made any question to him, you could find really great infromation related to different topics.

(some questions are combined and/or edited down)

Designing Sound Readers: 1a. Every single company I look at, and every website I go to always says the same thing; “Applicants must have at least 3 years experience in the field of Sound Design” and leads me to my question: How are you meant to “start” a career in Sound Design when every single place you look tells you that 3 years experience is needed. How did the people who work for these companies get their first job without the 3 years? I mean you can’t have 3 years experience. . . if every job (even your first) needs 3 years experience to actually get into!
Any advice for someone like me who is seemingly staring into a black hole of nothingness.

1b. I understand I could do freelance work. How would I go about becoming a recognized freelancer though? How do you become freelance? Is there an organisation that you become a member of that allows people looking for small Sound Design jobs to select you from a catalogue?

1c. I’m very intensely serious about becoming a sound designer, I’m working with an indie dev. team, and am paying a very healthy sum of money to attend an audio production school. When I get out of this school, how do you suggest I start looking for my first professional gig? doing sound design for commercials, or even cell phone GUIs, or just any gig that will pay me to make sound. Are there any like, job boards just for sound designers?

Charles Deenen: You’re asking the holy grail of questions :) The first question I think is “how is my work going to get noticed and liked enough for me to get hired”. My advice stems from how I hire new freelancers. This might be very different from other people though.

Often I’ll look for videos on youtube, vimeo and other places for new and exciting ways that people have used sound. Usually they’re easy to find, especially if people have commented about the use of sound. Then I’ll contact them and see if they’re open for a test or some small freelance work.

Another way I hire freelancers is when they send me some work to look at it, without being pushy. After several times, something might catch my eye and will keep it in the back of my mind for a future project. Don’t be pushed off though by the “3 year experience” phrase. The work will speak for yourself. If your work rocks, the developer or post-house would be crazy not to hire you. Tools and processes can be taught, but talent is hard to brew.

Sadly, human resources will indeed filter your resume by the experience, so find new and creative ways to get the Audio Director/Lead to look at your work. Maybe even have them give you a specific task to do, so you can show off your work when given direction. This will show how you interpret direction. If time is critical, I have to admit I usually will go back to proven sources and/or word of mouth recommendations.

A catalog of sound-designers? I don’t know of any website or book that would be a catalog of sound designers. There are some organizations like the MPSE and unions that could maybe assist with this. Sounds like a great idea for somebody to make a site with demo-reels from sound designers. Would save a lot of hassle trying to find the right person.

DSR: 2a. Congratulations for your work on the NFS franchise, Shift is one of my favorite games! How you record those cars and all the noises of them? 
2b. Last week I recorded some engines and general cars sounds. I was satisfied with the work done on some recordings, but I had problems with other sounds. I can’t get the “heart” of the engine, maybe I’m missing something… So my question is: can you share some techniques you use on cars/engine audio recording? Is there a way to position the microphones to get better sounding engines?

2c. What mics you use for cars recording?

CD: Howdy, and thanks for the support on the NFS games. NFS Shift and all the other NFS games are the work of a team of people, but I’ll try to answer this for the team; Most of this is captured in the two “Need for Speed” articles that we just did on this site. We record cars in various ways, but we get some of the best results when doing it on the road vs. clinical environments with dynos etc. We also look for cars that have a lot more “bite” and pressure level vs. stock cars, Skids are done in a similar way, except we use the opposite car; a very quiet car with various tires, various surfaces in hopes to get the perfect artifacty squeel. Beyond that we got turbos, transmission whine, wind-noise, air-movement. All these get recorded in the traditional way, with lav & condenser mics near the sources. Most gets recorded onto Sound Devices 744T’s. We usually hire some of the best recordists to ensure the process runs smooth, and that owners leave happy. Hopefully the NFS articles answer most of your questions. If not, feel free to shoot me an email.

Regarding positioning mics; Without knowing what car, what mics, and what locations you tried already, this is hard to answer. I know this sounds cheezy, but use your ears, and learn what the characteristics are for each mic you use. Take your wind-shielded lav (MKE2’s and/or Audio Technica’s are common due to their ability to withstand high pressure level), and place it in several spots on the car, repeating the same movement. You’ll quickly learn what location that mic works best. When listening to the engine, you’ll notice there are locations with build-ups of “noise” (bad), and build-ups of tonality (good). Watch out for hot parts though! On the exhaust, we’ve noticed that placing it too close to the exhaust will get you a lot of air-movement, but little tone. Again, it’s critical that you find the location that will extrude the most amount of “tone”, and the least amount of “noise”. Practice, test, experiment, and learn.

Besides the aforementioned lav mics we use a plethora of other mics (neuman 191, SM57, 421, D112, Sennheiser MK’s etc.). But often its much more important on where to place it, then what mic to use. Placement for getting that aforementioned tonality, and resistance to wind is the most critical issue. Placement of mics comes from experience in regards to acoustics and aerodynamics, and having made many mistakes. If it makes you feel better, I still not happy with my results either.

DSR: 3a: Hey charles good job on the soundminer video, really great to see how you can get a great sound effect so fast. I see you use a lot of plugins there… Could you share more information about some of the best plugins you use for your projects (not the video)?

3b: Your video on sound design with soundminer is superb! You have a lot of effects there. I wonder how you know what effect has to be there? Any method to identify what could be the best plugin or the best structure to use in a chain? I already have some experience on that, but watching that video I get a little confused seeing some effects I don’t use and could help me a lot in the future.

CD: I’m going to try to answer these both at once. You got a few hours? There’s a HUGE list of plugs I use and love, but I’m still not the king of plugins. But I’m close to becoming the kings’ servant though :) Honestly, all kidding aside, I use whatever solves the problem. I naturally have a few “reach for” plugins like:

• Waves L1, Ren-compressor, Rbass, Z-noise & Mondomod
• Soundtoys Filterfreak, Soundblender & Phasemistriss
• Digidesign Lo-fi, recti-fi and d-verb (yes, d-verb for it nasty bad reverbs)
• A ton of the McDSP plugs like ML4000, Filterbank and Analog channel

Other plugins I reach for are the full GRM set, Eventide set (love their H3000 factory), Alitiverb, various granulators (KT granulator etc.), Avox warming plugin, PSP plugs etc.

The process usually is to reach for what I know, and if that doesn’t solve the problem, I reach for others. On the VST side, I try out at least 1-2 new ones every week or so, and sometimes run into some great gems. I visit some websites like KVRaudio.com, and find some new gems there occasionally.

However, plugins are tools. Tools to manipulate sounds which become part of a soundscape. All the plugins in the world won’t help you build a soundscape, but that’s quite obvious. Treat your plugins as your tools, learn what the tools do, so you can spend more time being creative with your sound editing. Knowing what effects to use stems from knowing your tools. You wouldn’t reach for a hammer when a saw is needed right? Often its also about experimenting, doing things you normally wouldn’t do. The answer to your question is not a straightforward one, but please read the section in my first interview on this site about the 3-day test I did to myself. Try to recreate somebody else’s sound with only a handful of sounds. You’re going to have to rely heavily on processing, and you’ll find a thousand ways of how -not- to achieve the result. But at the same time you’ll learn a thousand ways on how to get a different sound than expected. That experience will carry forward in you knowing what to use, when and where.

DSR: 4. I’m studying sound some time ago, everything by myself, with books, websites and practice (There are no sound schools in my country). Lately I’ve been working on some projects (redesigning videos) and feel I have already a good material to show. Now what worries me is how to get hired on a company without having “official” study. What you could advise me? What do you think would be the best way to get into the industry?

CD: We seem to be in the same boat, I haven’t had any formal study either, so never let that block your way. Just like question #1’s answer, the key to it all is to have will-power, and find ways to show your talent. In the early days it was much harder to reach everybody, but now with the internet you can show your talents to everybody, and send out links easily. Before you try to send your video to companies, audio directors and sound supervisors, get feedback, lots of feedback. There are several groups (like the yahoo sound_design group) where people are very open to share their feedback on your work. Learn from that feedback (especially the ones which request improvement), and resubmit. You learn from the mistakes, and mistakes will make you grow. Often you have to go through a hundred mistakes before you reach the solution.

2nd, before sending it out, really do a gut-check and question if your work can compete against the majority of productions out there in a commercial world. If not, maybe time to go back to the table, and research what you can improve. In my time I’ve met a fair number of sound designers who became “cocky”. They thought their work was amazing, simply due to the sheer amount of time they had put into their work, or the sophisticated differentiation they provided with their work. They forgot to check however if the work stood up against the “expected” norm for a commercial release. Their work might have been awesome in terms of an art-school project, but maybe too strange.

Also, the accompanying note can tell a lot about the person. During the 90‘s somebody send me a piece of sound design done solely on a violin. He plucked it, scraped it, banged on it etc. and in the end it simply wasn’t fun to listen to and plainly annoying. His letter stated it was the best work he’d ever done. If he had stated it was an experiment showing off what he can do with manipulation (which was awesome), we probably would have asked for a 2nd demo.

To better answer this, I forwarded the question to Tristan Beulah (one of EA’s new young sound designers) about how he got into the industry and give a different spin on an answer; “Even within the sound industry there are niches. As with any industry, the trick is to find out what makes you stand out and leverage that to your advantage. Work on your primary skills and demonstrate them in the best light possible. You obviously don’t want to end up as a one-trick-pony, so improve wherever you can. The idea is just to figure out what makes you you, and find out where you can slot in, then go for it.

Cut down on the clutter: select your best works and put those in an easy to navigate portfolio. Don’t make it a chore for prospective employers and clients to find you and decide you are exactly what they are looking for. A web address is a lot easier to distribute than DVDs, too, so if you don’t have a website, you might want to start there.

Also, like any industry, you need to meet the people you’re trying to work with. That means directors, sound designers, studio managers, whoever. The majority of my peers just getting into the industry are making strides through acquaintances, not cold calling. Find sound related events, film related events, projects you can contribute to, anything that puts you in front of the people you want to work with. There’s no risk in putting yourself out there and making an impression. Don’t be a nuisance, just be a passionate sound designer and try to find projects you want to work on. Make friends in the industry. With experience, and time, you’ll work your way into the industry.”

DSR: 5. I can see you work with proprietary software at EA. Do you use middleware solutions such as Wwise and FMOD? What are the advantages you find to work with your own software?

CD: I personally don’t really use any 3rd party middleware for commercial projects, but several projects at EA do. I’ve experimented with them during my free time to see what the buzz is about. Usually the manufacturers have to make the 3rd party software super user-friendly, and fill the common feature-set. They usually can’t get to the specialized tasks that certain games require. The advantages of our own software is within that boundary. We can write it in a way it’s optimized for the game, does specialized processing techniques, and in general is more CPU friendly than “general” packages.

DSR: 6a. Hello Charles, thanks for the articles. Loving your special a lot. I was wondering if you can share some mixing tips to get great sound on cinematics.

6b. NFS trailers/teasers have really crazy cuts between different scenes. Do you know about a technique or tips to deal with that kind of videos?

CD: Great questions. Apologies that my answer won’t be great and probably something you’ve heard before. What you’re asking has to stem from doing; analyzing other people’s work, acquire (honest) feedback from people who’s work you respect, and improve. The basic tips on doing fast cut cinematics and trailers would be:

• Work with your picture editor to have him/her edit the picture to a pace. Regardless if that pace is music and/or soundeffects, they get inspired by the pacing of the sound, just like you’ll get inspired by the pacing of the picture. Without a picture editor who really knows how to use sound, sound intensity and pacing, you’ll always be stuck playing second fiddle trying to make something out of nothing.
• Work with your picture editor to build up trust. We often get the video, and will re-edit it a bit in protools to match pacing of a crescendo, breathing room, beat-cut or similar. Then we give the OMF or edit-list back to the editor to conform picture to.
• Don’t cut every sound that you see. When you watch the video the fist time, quickly speak out, or write-down what you were focusing on, and only highlight that sound. Those are the main sounds to work on.
• Then on pass 2, figure out where sound can provide enhancement; can it enhance the story, the pacing, the contra-feel etc. Any way to enhance the music? Are the hits big enough, are there holes which require FX support? are the drums sharp enough? etc.
• Pass 3: figure out which soundeffects can be tied together. It’s easy to edit a sound in for a car-by, followed by a wipe, but can you find a way to combine the 2 into a seamless sound so it won’t feel so choppy? Never edit exactly “on the cut”. You’ll find it often plays much better if you don’t attach to picture too closely, but instead ramp in and out. Move the sound out of the picture, don’t just stop it (unless it’s for an “effect”)
• Pass 4: figure out where you get bored. Are you providing enough intensity build-ups, does the video leave you wanting more? Is your heart beating just a tad bit faster? (this means that intensity build-ups were working) Do you find yourself breathing different while watching it? (if so, you probably provided enough gaps, valley and peaks)
• Pass 5: toss out anything not needed, especially sounds which are just noise. Less is more.

That’ll get you started with the general stuff. As always, listen and learn from other people’s work, then clearly figure out what sets your work apart, and how you can sell your skills.

DSR: 7. What could you recommend me to improve my sound design skills? Any practice or method to analyze or remake the sound?

CD: For this, lets go back to the first interview where I mentioned the 3 day test I put myself through. The best way I’ve improved on my sound design is by constant practice and tryouts, learning from peers and mentors and pushing myself:

• Know and learn your sounds/library, and what they represent in real life
• Go out and record new material. This will not only get you new source, but also exposes you to the real world. You’ll get to appreciate what happens to sound when it travels; air distortion, pitch-bending, phasing etc.
• Pick one of your most favorite sounds. Now pick 5 sounds from your library in random, 1 from each category (i.e. kitchen, gun, ambience, vehicle etc.). Then try to make that favorite sound from ONLY the picked 5 sounds. This will make you learn how to do processing. Don’t give up. Do this at least for 3 days. Again, it’s not important if you get the perfect result, but what is important is all the ways you found how to apply processing, and get to your learn what your plugins do.
• Now learn how to create movement. Listen carefully to real world movement (car by’s, jet by’s etc.). Then try to create that movement using your plugs, and bit of other sounds on your own sounds.
• Last but not least, and this is the harder one. Grab a video from somewhere that inspires you. Redo the sound, but give it your personal twist, and get feedback. Honest feedback. Find your harshest critic who you admire. The feedback might be painful, but improve, redo, and continue.

DSR: 8. I made some sound remakes to trailers and animations. I realized that the hardest thing is to evaluate yourself and see what are your mistakes… Could you list some of the most important things to analyze from a sound design reel or example?

CD: When I listen to somebody’s sound design reel I watch for a few things:

• Originality. Does it sound new, refreshing, or is it the same old stuff
• Clarity; does the sound designer understand the difference between simply placing a sound to picture, and placing it to picture for a reason.
• Does the sound designer really understand how to make a clear, clean sound-bed, without creating a wall of noise, or elements which “stick out” as improper.
• What are the mixing-skills, and musical skills of the sound designer. Do they understand musical timing, valleys, peak and musical tonality.

When evaluating yourself, compare your work to others’ who you admire, back to back. You’ll always find ways to improve. Sooner or later you’ll find that you don’t have to compare anymore, or can’t find anything really wrong anymore. That’s when you know you’re getting better (I’ve yet to come to that stage :)

Your work is never better or worse than somebody else’s, just different. It’s up to you to find out what the consumers click with. That’s what you’re really learning, and for all we know, you’ll come up with the next new sound-scape for others to learn from.

DSR: 9. Sometimes a sound completely stumps me and I have no idea how to make it, or even what to start with. When this happens to you, what do you do?

CD: AHA! Great to hear I’m not the only one. Welcome to the club of reality :) If I don’t have any ideas, I jump out of windows, take a dive of the empire state building, and swim on the bottom of the ocean… kidding aside, it happens to all of us. But I do have some methods to help me get ideas.

• If you have an example file you’re trying to emulate, Dissect. Dissect. Focus in on each frequency band, and try to figure out what’s happening there. Play the sound back at half-speed or even quarter speed. This will tell you a lot of info.
• When starting on a new sound, I often start randomly playing sounds in a library program like soundminer, and toss in some plugs, move the pitch, activate reversinator plugin etc. You’re looking for inspiration of a sound that moves you. You’ll hear it when you hear it. When I’m completely out of ideas, I’ll simply start putting random things to picture, and sometimes you bump upon something that really works well. Once that happens, your inspiration will take you further, and you’ll shape it. It usually is that first hump you have to get around. Most of the time that original sound that inspired you to begin with doesn’t even survive the cut.
• Hum/sing it a sound into a microphone, and then process that. Sometimes you can make the sound better with your mouth than you can find it in a lib, especially if they are surreal sounds.
• Use the peers around you. Talk to them, show them the picture and get ideas on what they would do. Sooner or later one of them will give you a route you hadn’t thought about which will totally inspire you.
• Acquisition of new sounds. Sometimes it just takes a few new sounds to get you inspired when you hear a certain element. Either record or buy a commercial library. Several sites (or so I heard) also provide free sounds. So there should be a plethora of sources to get you going.

Hopefully some of this was helpful. You can always reach me by email, facebook or linked-in if you have any further questions. I hope you had fun reading the articles this month. Cheers !

-charles

Every sound designer has to make new whooshes in record time. Whenever I’m stuck in that position I’ve always tried to come up with some quick automated ways. A long time ago I made a template that allows me to quickly make new whooshes, and on top of it it’s incredibly fun to “operate” since you get to actually orchestra the whooshes in realtime. I’m still using this template on some material in these days. On top of it, throw virtually any sound at it, bit of protools knowledge, and you’re set. It works best if you have a control surface (C24, Procontrol, D-command, Control 8 etc.) so you can throw the faders.

disclaimer: The first time you set this up, it’ll take you approx 45-60 minutes. Every consecutive use will only take you a few minutes.

• Create 10-20 tracks with continuously edited sounds for about 4-5 minutes. Place a sound, and use the “duplicate” command plenty of times :)
• Include sounds with specific characters you want (i.e Growls, distortion, tones etc.)
• Include single-shot sounds like hits, explosions etc. as well as tonal sounds. These will create the peak-points.

The following video-clip will solo each track to show what types of sounds I’ve picked. Notice there are several types of tonal ranges, flanged sounds etc. Track “Hit1” and “Hit2” are typical “punch” hits.

Variation of Lib sounds put on several tracks. “Bara” track contains sounds by maestro Dave Farmer.

• -Create 2-3 submix busses, and route similar sounds to each bus
• Apply realtime processing on each submix bus using a plethora of movement creators like:

– Dopplers (GRM, Waves)
– Low-end enhancers like Rbass, Recti-fi or Lo-air (Waves)
– Flangers/Phasers (Soundtoys, Waves)
– Envelope filters (Soundtoys) etc….
– Anything else that creates movement or distorts the way in fun new ways

• Setup busses with side-chain ducking. i.e. if Submix 1 has the more “agressive” sounds, then Submix 1 should duck down submix 2 etc.
• Other fun ways are to use envelope filters and create side-chaining on these to low-pass filter a submix bus by another
• If a sound is not “steady” enough, add a few long delays (2000ms etc.) on that track to fill in the gaps etc.
• If you need to beef up the mid-points, use something like waves C4 and/or McDSP ML4000 to expand the low-end at the loudest point of the submix.
• Setup the “hit” sounds as you peak point on the whoosh. This is a bit tricky, but you’ll get the hang of it;

– Send the main submix signal to a aux gate, so it only opens up at the loudest point. This will act as the trigger for the hits.
– Gate the “hits”, and open up the gate using the signal from the above aux-gate. The signal output will become the trigger for the peak points on the submix busses
– Now, duck down the submix busses, using the output of this chain.

• Be careful not to setup a feedback ducking chain, otherwise it’ll end up “mute”

The following video shows one track solo’d, with the processing on it, which is only Waves Doppler and Digidesign’s Recti-fi (for low-end enhancement)

So you got that far, that’s cool ! Now the fun really begins.

• While you’re playing the protools session, start interactively move the faders, controlling what each in and out of the whoosh will sound like.
• Make lots of mistakes, and simply go nuts at times. Don’t try to over-control it.
• Keep recording. In every take you’ll end up with probably 2-5 new whooshes that are usable.
• Random automate other stuff (doppler speed etc.)
• Once you get sick of the sounds you’re currently using, delete some of the sounds, and put new ones on the tracks.
• Turn some plugs on/off, anything goes. Mondo-mod is awesome to automate tracks by itself by simply LFO’ing the volume. make sure to offset the speed for each track. Sit back and enjoy your protools session auto-creating whooshes.

The following video shows all the tracks being used, and me moving the faders in random a bit to make the sounds in realtime.

…. enjoy…..

Written by Charles Deenen for Designing Sound

The following article contains small excerpts of the 65 page “Need for Speed” Car Recording Guidebook, published internally at Electronic Arts, written by Charles Deenen.

Car sounds are some of the most inspiring and entertaining sounds to record. Like a human voice, each car has a signature sound, with the driver being the actor.
Recording these machines should be simple right? You call a buddy with a cool car, grab a microphone and recorder, go find a spot somewhere and hit record. Many folks have had great luck doing it this way, but when deadlines, ownership and budgets are at stake, you can’t risk shooting from the hip. The following pages are a random sampling of some the book and mainly cover the setup phase. Thanks to the many folks who originally contributed their thoughts, pictures and feedback to the full book. The recording setup procedure is mostly for gaming, but will help any person setting up car (or any vehicle) recordings.

The following is a list of steps to ensure a successful recording session.
We’ve sometimes skipped items on this list, but in many cases wish we hadn’t!

Set your Budget

Before you start any searching and recording, set your budget. It’ll give you a playground to work off and put a concrete limit to the choices you have. These items should be considered for budgetary purposes:

Be careful of setting your budget too low as it will have an immediate impact on the following aspects:

• Safety. Your budget might not enable you to record on a track, or allow for proper insurance.
• Time and Detail. The time you might have with the car might be severely restricted, thereby not allowing you the time required to address details like wind-problems.
• Quantity of cars.
• Ability to obtain “hard to get” cars.

Before booking the car, make sure you like the “Tone” and character of the car, especially if the fee involved is high.

• Hire a local recordist to test-record the car. Make sure they use the recorder and microphones you have specified and know.
• Since this recordist is the first interaction with your car owner and your company, make sure he/she behaves very professional. Hiring a local recordist blindly is therefor not preferred.
• Instruct the test recordist to not get into conversations about money, safety, insurance or anything else not sound related.
• Make sure he politely thanks the driver/owner, and that they have your contact-number.

Shot List for the test-recordist

• All specs, upgrades, modifications of the car 
verbally spoken. Include name of driver, phone # etc.
• Revs from both the engine and rear of the cars. For the engine side, get both regular perspective (see picture) and one with the hood open, mic’ng it close-up.
• Car taking off rapidly away from the recordist. Ensure the driver (almost) hits the rev-limiter. It’s critical to hear the car through the full range of RPM
• Car by with a shift-up past the recordist.
• Note down any problems with the car; rattles, potential mechanical
problems and driver/owner. Politely ask the owner/driver about the 
found problems, and if they are fixable.

You’ve established the needs and budget for your exterior recordings. Now it’s time to start actually finding the perfect location. Locations are as critical to the success of your recording as the source itself, so being picky about it is not a bad thing;

• Obtaining Contacts; You can call the car-teams to find out about contacts for tracks and airports. If not, googling is your best bet. You often will have to do quite a bit of diggin’ before you find the right person.
• Inspection; If you can’t visit the location before recording, hire somebody in the area to take pictures, inspect the environment and surface. If possible, have this person also do a “noise-test” recording. Rev up a car 50 feet away and check if the environment’s noise-level is acceptable.
• Dirt/Rocks; if you like the location, but there’s loose material like Dirt/Rocks, it can be removed by a street-sweeper. Find out if there’s one 
available for rent around the location.
• The deal; When dealing with the owner/representative of the location, they hear “money” the moment you say “video-game” or “Movie”. Try to establish the price before you mention it. The opposite is true as well. Sometimes these folks will actually cut you a deal when they hear it’s for their favorite game. Feel it out carefully.
• Other users; Some locations are shared with others (like race-tracks). Before committing, ensure that the location is quiet enough, or the possibility for enough sound isolation exists.
• Forest roads; If there’s no wind and birds, closed forest roads are amazing. They act as a large enclosed “tunnel”, and the sound will travel very far.
• Walled Areas; Sometimes you need an enclosed sounding area for a particular “sound”. Make sure the road is closed off to other traffic in case you’re going going to break any speed laws. Privately owned roads are the easiest to obtain.
• Weather; check with the location owner how long it usually takes for the road to dry after rainfall. This will give you an indication how longer of a break is needed in case it would rain
• Time of Day / Time of Year; Birds and crickets are the most active during early & late parts of the days in hot times of the year. Try to avoid “subtle” recordings like distant car-bys & ins during these periods.

Recordists

Recordists for cars are specialists in this area. You want to hire people who’ve done this dozens of times before. Saving money on lesser experienced people is not worth the hassle in the long run.

The requirements are:

• Equipment; Operates and knows the equipment they’ll be using. Find out what the recordist will be bringing, and if you feel it is enough coverage. If not, negotiate the extra rental equipment and figure out who’ll be bringing it, and who’s paying for it.
• Time; be very straight-up with the recordist in regards to time they’ll have available to setup, mount mics on the car, calibration etc. They have to be comfortable with this time for the session to succeed.
• Technically savvy. The recordists needs to know the mechanical parts and workings of a car well. This will allow them to operate quickly and safely. Mounting microphones in extremely hot & dangerous areas would not be good.
• Professional behavior. Car owners want to know that the person mounting all the mechanical gear and tape on their car knows how to do so without hurting the car, its paint-job and the interior
• Reliable behavior. Shows up on time, does what he says. Works alone when needed.
• Pleasure to work with. You’ll be spending a lot of time with the recordist. 
Ensuring he’s a pleasure to work with, will make for some enjoyable productive days.
• Insurance; It should be very clear, and stated in a contract how the recordist is insured, whose responsible for the equipment he’s using etc. It usually falls on your shoulder to pay for any damages done to equipment.
• The deal; The deal should include milage-cost, day-rate (up to X hours), equipment (incl. rentals). It should also provide you the cancellation agreements.

Hopefully these (short excerpt) pages were helpful for setting up your next vehicle recording. The full book can be read if you’re employed at Electronic Arts. In case of doubt, just hire John Fasal or Bryan Watkins, or any other qualified car recordist. They’ll get you the desired result. They’re their worth in gold sometimes.
cheers !

Written by Charles Deenen for Designing Sound

For years, Charles Deenen has been the audio director of the Need for Speed Franchise. I had a nice talk with him commenting about some aspects of the audio of the award winning franchise. Let’s read:

Designing Sound: First of all, tell us something about your passion for cars, and what you enjoy most about working on Need For Speed Games?

Charles Deenen: As a kid I played a lot with toy cars, build lego race-tracks and liked anything associated with speed. In the netherlands you can’t start your education for a drivers license until you’re 18. Before I started that, I got my speed-kick out of BMX biking, competing and doing jumps too high for my own health (the hole in my tongue is witness of that :) Oddly enough I’d always told my family I wasn’t ever going to drive a car. I’d seen one burn down during younger years, and was afraid I’d get burned alive in a crash. But hey, that fear didn’t last long, and I obtained my drivers license quickly and have always driven with a lead-foot.

Before “Need for Speed”, I’d never worked on a “big” racing game. Previously I’d worked on some C64 and SNES racing titles, but in those days sound was a low priority in a racing game. Heck, we were happy enough it made some tolerable sound.

On the Need for Speed franchise I’ve always enjoyed the people I work with the most. Without a team driving each other to excel, you don’t get industry leading results. We’re blessed to have that team in place. The execs at EA understand what great audio brings to a title and support the development of it. The other aspect I enjoy is the constant drive to find new and better ways to give the user a true car racing experience. This includes the plethora of cars we have to record (and sometimes get to drive :) which is always a really fun but exhausting time during the dev-cycle of a title. Having worked for many years on slower RPG style games, the racing genre changes up the pace nicely by introducing constant action.

DS: How has the evolution of the franchise been? What are the main improvements on the game since the first version?

CD: Need for Speed has been around for over 16 years(!!), and the very first version was 1994’s “need for speed” on the 3DO, with audio by Allistair Hirst. A lot has changed since then, but the platforms are so different, it’s hard to compare what the main improvements are. The previous games always have sounded great for the platform limits. The new consoles have allowed expansion of the realism of the sound, and provide a more engaging and believable soundscape. New playback techniques got introduced during 2004 on NFS Underground 2. Air distortion, split engines and environment integration were introduced in 2007. We’re now working on something that will bring it to another level by making the car come alive, which I’m very exciting about. No other game has done this yet. When this gets released it’ll be another few years hopefully before the competition will catch up.

(Sound by EA Media Works)

DS: How is the relationship of the sound team with the rest of the developers of NFS? How is the importance given to the sound of the games?

CD: The development team and NFS management realizes that Audio is a critical part of a racing game, and supports it. The audio artists and audio programmers are among the development team, and interact daily with the rest of the team. In other words, there’s no real separation between “sound team” and “dev team”. Everybody is part of the whole team.

DS: What techniques or methods you use on the game to enhance the player experience and provide realism/emotion with sound?

CD: Over the years we’ve tried several methods. Some that worked well, some that didn’t. Through all this we noticed a few interesting points. First off, the consumer thinks they know what a great race-car sounds like after listening to youtube clips. 2nd, the consumer still listens to racing games mostly on TV’s at low volume. As much as us developers want to believe they listen to games at higher volumes in 5.1, it simply isn’t the norm. Over the years we’ve changed our ways and style of mixing (using our advanced fully automated mixer), and tried out new techniques of sound reproduction. Some methods tried to make the experience go towards a movie by focusing on the most predominant sound requirement (i.e. focused mixing), while other methods involved a more defined car experience or putting you in the world. Music and dialog treatments have gone through several phases as well, with cop dialog being some of most believable you’ll hear in games (as mentioned by other people). All in all, we tried out a bunch, focus-tested, and then awaited the consumer’s response. Not all stuck :) What did stick are the elements which made the consumer less aware of audio as part of the game. The more audio works together with the experience, the better the result. The moment the consumer notices audio, it starts to work against the game experience. This all ties back to one of the articles we touched upon before; the believability gap. Audio can be a major offender in that area. How often have you heard a song stop/start on a racing game with “radio station” music treatment? It takes away from the smooth gameplay experience since you notice the audio being a layer on top of the game.

So instead of focusing on the latest cool audio techniques, we’ve gone back to the basics for future titles. The goal is that users won’t notice audio, but the moment they play the game silent, they notice their experience diminishing greatly, or even impossible.

DS: You also worked on Fast And Furious films… Any influence of NFS there? Did you learned something on the films that you implemented on NFS later?

CD: The fast and furious films were all about hot (tuner) cars, flashy body-kits, neon etc. It was a car culture considered very hip during the early 2000’s. Naturally NFS follows, and sometimes trend-sets this culture. During “underground” and “most wanted” NFS’s, there was quite a bit of audible cross pollination between NFS and the furious films. Even if I hadn’t worked on both, this would have most likely happened, simply due to the culture cross-overs.

What I learned during the Fast/Furious films was how to create the emotion of car sounds projected by other sounds. We used a plethora of bears, pigs, tigers, leopards etc. to enhance cars in a layered, or sometimes standalone way. Each character in the film got their own “treatment” and style. On the NFS side, we always started with the car recordings as a base, but on cinematic moments we’d enhance them with various other layers. During the early 2000‘s we used to go for animals and metal. Now we’re more into the distortion/synth sweeteners as you might have heard in the cinematics of NFS Shift.

Also when working with some great sound designers/editors in the world, you always pickup new ways and techniques of creating sound, which naturally get used in future titles.

DS I think you’ve had a lot of fun recording all the cars stuff (engine, inside car, skid noises, impacts, etc) for the game?…Could you share some experiences on that?

CD: We’ve had a lot of fun on all these recordings. They are some of the best times we have on a project. Over the years we’ve changed our recording techniques in search of methods which made the cars come alive. We used to record cars by placing them on on a dynamometer, but this gave us a pretty “stale” lifeless sound (perfect for programatic, scientific cars though :) Now most of our recordings are done on a track, with dyno recordings filling in some gaps. We employ some of the best car recordist to ensure we get the result we need as there’s only 1 opportunity at times. As always it’s a team effort.

For NFS we’ve recorded 150+ cars, anything from regular to high end 1 million dollar race-cars. Each of those is a new experience as you always have to find the optimum recording spots. Besides that we’ve done car crash recordings in multiple ways, several sessions of skid recordings, road surfaces, bumps, turbos, rattles etc. You name it on a car, and we probably recorded it.

There are a few sessions that always stick out as really fun or interesting. One of them being the “Touge” research. For one of the NFS, we added a mode which was a craze in japan called Touge. It involved going through mountain roads incredibly fast, drifting the cars. We hooked up with a crazy touge driver in L.A and recorded a lot of reference material, both onboards as well as exterior. Lets say that a human is not meant to go so fast on those mountain roads. It was absolutely insane. The dozens of skid-marks on the road, trailing into the deep valley are proof of that. Too many got into accidents there.

Another fun trip was a few days of recording at Sebring. Jesse Lyon connected with a few racing teams running in the GT1 class like the Corvette Racing team and we ended up having full access to their cars for a day each. We were initially not prepared for 130+db cars. These were the loudest cars I’d ever heard. However, John Fasal pulled a few tricks out of his sleeve and we ended up recording 3 magnificent cars those days with a team of 4 people.

Everybody loves crashes. We’ve done several crash recordings, but the most elaborate one has been the hiring of a construction crane, dropping cars 100 foot down. We went through about 15 cars that day, and dropped anything from cars, vans, huge cement blocks to metal beams onto various items. Every time we did this, we stuck an SM57 in the middle of the crash, at impact point, thinking it would die after 1 time. After 40+ drops the SM57 had a minor scratch on it. Go figure. It simply didn’t want to get killed.

DS: And what about the ambiences?

CD: We do ambience recordings when needed as NFS isn’t an ambience heavy game. We’ve been to many race-tracks, city races, drag-races, drifts, bridges, tunnels and other locations that we’re set for some time to come.

DS: I love the cinematics of every NFS. You directed some of them, so how is the sound design approach on that animations?

CD: The cinematics are always done by a team of people, and on most NFS since 2003 I acted as one of the principal sound designers and/or sound supervisors and/or mixer for the cinematics. The cinematics are usually hard to do as they come in at the last moment, have to integrate well with the game, and have to flow smoothly in and out of the game. On average, each NFS has between 20-45 minutes of movies. Over the years several groups and post houses (Danetracks, Warner Brothers, Sourcesound, Soundelux etc.) have worked on these cinematics and each have given it their own flavor.

The approach we use with editing is not really any different from a feature film. We usually start off with a design concept to establish what the general feel should be. Often this has been preset by the game already, so the movies follow that path.

We then find a post house, or group of individuals who can take that concept and make it their own. The sequences get spotted, sound edited, designed etc. The team usually has a principal sound designer, several sound editors, a musical editor/designer, FX recoridst(s), foley artist and re-recording mixer(s). When editing is about to finish, the premixes start, and after some design tweaks, followed by the final mix. These sequences are usually some of the hardest to mix, as so much is happening. 2 years ago we started to work with Tom Ozanich who really understands this, and does a fantastic job mixing the majority of the ingame cinematics.

NFS Carbon

NFS Undercover Trailer

NFS Shift In-game Cinematics

NFS Shift Teaser

NFS Pro Street First Look

NFS Pro Street Teaser (one of my favorite)

DS: Another great feature on the Need for Speed series is the implementation. How is that process done? And what about the audio engine used on the game?

CD: On NFS we use the majority of EA’s tool-set; AEMS, Pathfinder, Renderware Audio etc. Beyond that the NFS team wrote their own mixing tool starting in 2004 which also has been used in numerous other titles (Skate, FiIFA, NBA street etc.). This tool can modulate over 2000+ parameters each frame without eating up much CPU and acts as an interactive dub-stage equivalent. It was developed by John Twigg and Cliff Kondratiuk. It is still in use today, but in the next few months will be replaced with a more refined version. Splicer is another tool written by the NFS crew. It basically can read Protools sessions and allows very quick multilayer sounds to be created.

Splicer

Aems is our MAX/MSP equivalent runtime. Originally developed during the SSX years by EA Tech. NFS audio programmers recently wrote a new interactive music tool, taking full advantage of beat-matching, overlays, multi-tracks, animation-matching etc. This will be used in a future NFS. We also have a proprietary way of playing back car audio. This was developed by Patrick Ratto. It’s been our work-horse since 2004 when the first review on NFS Underground 2 (official U.S playstation magazine) read “The sound effects are without any shadow of a doubt the most amazing I’ve ever heard in a videogame. The rasp of the engine is so unbelievably believable that you can actually feel the reverberation of the exhaust as the ower surges through it. It will change your expectations of what a game can sound like”. Now this engine is in it’s 3rd version, and we’re doing a re-invention on it. Most games are still working on refining car audio sound reproduction, we’ve moved into making the cars’ audio come alive, be real, be as expected. We’re using a whole new tool-set for this, and some magnificent audio artists.

NFS Mixing Tool

DS: And what you can tell us about the dialogue? There is a particular way to deal with this on NFS?

CD: The majority of our dialog has been Cop Dialog. During NFS Most Wanted we came up with a new way of recording dialog which was the breakthrough for that game. It added a whole new layer of realism which carried on through Carbon and Undercover. During GDC and other events, people still ask me how we’ve done this, and I smile :) Last year, Audio Artist Phil Hunter did a lecture during GDC about this and explained the simple, but very effective method behind it. That said, to us this method is now a bit of a has-been. We’re looking for the next solution; how to get great, instantly believable performances out of actors without making them sound gamey. So far we’ve had some good results, but also found a hundred ways on what not to do. As previously mentioned I think this is where gaming will get to their next incarnation; believability. That’s our main focus now. Gaming in general needs to move on, and leave the saturday morning cartoon performances behind.

DS: What would be the next step for Need for Speed? Would you like to have something special in the next-gen consoles to improve
the game?

CD: For next gen consoles we’re not going to say “no” to more ram, and more DSP. Our awesome NFS audio programmers always find a way to make use of every little bit of CPU or ram left over. That said, graphics in general on games have to catch up to audio to overcome the uncanny valley effect, so a better graphics processor is in dire need.

Need for Speed is continuing strong. We’ve listened to the consumers and EA has put in great effort to turn the franchise around. The next few releases should really show this. I’m very excited about it. It feels like the re-invention that happened during NFS Underground. Everybody was stoked about that game. That same feeling is coming back, in a big way.

As for sound, we’re doing the same; giving multiple spins to audio and car reproduction. Each game will feel very different. Even though we might share the sound recordings, each game has a totally different way of processing and implementing this. Hopefully consumers and sound peers will enjoy the next generation of NFS as much as we enjoy making it.

Need for Speed main website