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EA finished the 4-part series on Need for Speed: The Run:

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Fun and sound effects with the second season of the Detroit Chop Shop Diary:

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Aircraft recording with Frank Bry (more here)

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Sound and music of Deus Ex: Human Revolution

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More at DesigningSoundTV

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.

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

The following article is an excerpt from “The future of sound design” lectures done during GDC, VFS and DFF between the periods of 2006-2007 by Charles Deenen. Rewritten for “DesigningSound.org”.

The Future of Sound Design in Video Games, Part 2

Every day in our life, sounds occur. Our brain thinks about virtually every sound we hear, and depending on how we’re connected with that sound, either (unknowing) react, translate, notice or feel something. On each sound we hear, we connect a space, event or happening to it, thereby learning how or when these sounds occur. Each human experiences sound every day, and learn about them, just like we learn a language. Some sounds are artificial, yet we connect a certain “moment” to them (i.e. computer graphic beeps in movies)

Now, you probably think “blah blah, yeah, yeah, where the heck are you going with this”. As a sound designer our job is to learn that language, transcribe it, understand it, and enhance it. You can easily make use of the human learned language of “experienced” sound. Fundamentals in sounds can be used together to form a combined emotion.

As an example, I’m sure you sometimes hear a distant fighter jet come by. By hearing it’s fantastic air-distorted rippling effect you instantly know it’s going incredibly fast without seeing it. When you hear a wasp buzzing, your instinct probably says “holy crap, swat it!”, all due to your brain associating a previous reaction/learning to that sound.

So, lets put this in practice by listening to some examples. The following is an example of standalone sweetners which would be used to add to parts of a car-by sound. It’s various ways of adding a “scream”, “howl”, “pain” or other sense of emotion to a car-by sound. Something probably that most of you have done, but why you did this is really the question:

As sound designers, we often try to emulate a certain sensation we’ve heard in real-life. Instead of using the real thing, we can reproduce the same effect by mimicking the feeling we want to chase. In this case we’re after alternate ways to add a sensation of speed to a car by. First sound is a regular Jet-by, followed by the pictured sounds, finished off by the car-by with the added ‘speed’ layers (example contains sounds from various sources)

To quickly grab a sound “feeling” in the future, one of the things I did a long time ago is make a list of various sounds which moved me somehow. Then I wrote down the feeling they impressed on me, and some ideas on how to use them.
Every time when I was in a rush, with little time to think about sound design and feelings, I pull up the list and scan it for my previous thoughts. Usually I find some ideas in it, especially in relationship to expressing a certain (combo) emotion.

• Make a list of “experienced” sounds and the emotion you feel when you hear them, with possible ideas on how to use them

“Fighter Jet fast By” – Speed sensation – Car by Sweetners

“Jail Cell Door close” – “Closed off feeling” – Logo slam

• Create some new sounds by using the character of what defines the “experienced” sound, in combo with some “plain” sounds.

S(t)imulating Learned Ear Deficiencies


The ear is an odd looking piece of human isn’t it? On some, it sticks out like a TV dish, shaped like a weird alien disformed growth, freezes when you’re in Montreal during the winter and oh yeah, does this awesome thing with sound. The ear behaves in weird ways sometimes. Now, this is not scientific in any way, so please don’t rant to me about it. It’s purely my own speculation on what happens.

Have you ever noticed that your ear seems to “compress” or partially shut-down the high-frequencies when it hears an instant loud sound? Or how it seems to “warble” when there’s a lot of low frequency build-up in the real world?

There’s a few tricks you can use (and maybe use already), which mimmic this ear behaviour, thereby tricking the listener into believing they are really hearing something much “bigger”

• ‘Low frequency Distortion’ is read as “loud” by the ear. It mimics the high frequency compression that’s happening when you’re listening to very loud sounds, and at the same time adds to the air distortion that happens between the source and your ear. The first sound in the below example is an indication of this (that sound btw was simply made by boosting the low-end by an incredible amount, running it through a crappy (behringer) compressor which freaked out about this low end, and then reducing the low-end back down.
• I believe your ear and brain have learned to translate spiked high-frequency sounds going into mid-range/low-end as “loud”. It’s a similar scenario that happens on guns & explosions. You can easily mimic these sounds by simulating an ear “shutdown” where it rejects higher frequencies after a brief moment. Lets call this the “Hi/Lo offset technique”; offsetting high frequency sounds, followed by a mid/low frequency sound. Try it out, and realize why does this sound “loud” to you?

Example: ear_def.mp3

Build-ups… ok, no rocket science here :) Any sound rises can be used to create a build-up of tension. There is a large variety of ways to do “rises”. Many of these techniques are used in Film Trailers daily. Not all are commonly used in gaming though;

• Music rises (the most obvious one)
• Building Rhythmic sound effect (i.e. pulse growing in size over time). Very effective to draw attention.
• Pitch / Frequency increase, effective in denser layers as you’ll certainly notice these through a dense layer of “noise”.
• Volume increasing over time
• Repetition frequency increase (i.e. pulse speeding up). The most overused sound attached to this is probably the heartbeat (yikes ! :)

In gaming I’m usually only hearing music used as a way to build intensity over time, yet the combo of delayed animation spawning combined with the above can create such a nice build-up of tension.
Now the cool thing is that the opposite (the descend), creates the opposite feeling. The feeling of calming down, loosing, “letting go” etc. can all be enhanced or created in that way.

Example of some “pitch” and “Volume” rises back to back. Some of these have been used in games. Starting with the most known “rise”.

rise.mp3

Hopefully some of this was useful or interesting to you. My hopes for this article are that you consciously use these “experienced sounds” in your daily sound design, and hopefully better understand why we actually use them, or shape certain sounds to begin with. Shoot me any comments you might have.

All movies and sound contained in this article are (c) Charles Deenen and cannot be distributed or used in any way without prior written consent.

Designing Sound: Hi Charles, first of all, would be great to have an introduction about your career. How did you start, how you grow up in the sound world, and so on…

Charles Deenen: Thanks for the invite! We’ll have a fun month together with (hopefully) lots of usable info.

I’ve been called an old fella by some young folks in the industry, so am getting up there in age. I grew up in the netherlands and around 1983, attempted to start doing audio on a computer. That was the era of Commodore PET, so I tried to get tolerable sound out of a single-beep CBM-PET, and oh my, that didn’t go so well, LOL. Soon after acquiring a C64, I started to make music/graphic demos, through which I met Jeroen Tel. We wanted to make our own music, and wrote a music-driver for the Commodore 64. Well, this led to us having the “odd” idea that maybe we could make money doing this. You know, maybe just enough to pay for some gum and floppy-disks. There we travelled as young teenagers, all dressed up, to the european computer show in London where Hewson gave us our first paid gig. Apparently they liked what we did, and this led to many more jobs from a wide range of companies. Initially, I mainly provided the sound-effects for the titles which we did, but soon had to delve into doing music. Well, I knew nothing about music. I knew that a C major sounded OK after a D minor, that’s about it, LOL. However, funny enough the first music pieced I did wasn’t bad, and started doing more and more.

Early appreciation of cars

In the late 80‘s our company “Maniacs of Noise” had to begin sub-contracting, and at its peak had 5 people making musical noise at once. Considering those early computer-game years, that was huge. During those time, computer games were not nearly as main-stream as now. Zzap 64 was about the only magazine dedicated to gaming, and a game development team was 3-4 people. We provided music and/or sfx for over a hundred games on Commodore 64, 128, Amiga, Atari ST and Spectrum.

In 1990, one of the projects we did was “Dragon’s War” by Interplay which I’d taken on. They liked what I did, and asked me to move to the USA. Only 20 years old, I said “sure, why not”. After all Visa related items were completed I moved to Irvine, CA in the middle of 1991 where I started as Audio Director for Virgin Games and Interplay Productions. After doing McKids for Virgin on the NES, I moved solely to Interplay where I stayed for the next 10 years. Startrek, Baldur’s Gate, Ice-Wind Dale, Descent and others were some of the franchises I worked on while employed there. After a short stint at Shiny where I worked on the Matrix game, I went freelance to work on feature films. Thanks for Soundstorm, who gave me a chance on “Superman”, “Fast and Furious” and “2 Fast 2 Furious” were some of the first ones I worked on. This is were I fell in love with cars and emotionally engaging sound design.

Electronic Arts was in the process to re-boot their Need for Speed franchise a bit with NFS Underground.  During this, I received a call from a very nice gentlemen at EA who asked if I’d be interested to move to canada to work on this. My first reaction was “canada… oh man… that’s too cold… thanks, but no”. Through the generosity of EA, my wife and I visited Vancouver, BC and actually really liked it, so we ended up moving there.   We had the fortunate luck to find a house which allowed me to build a nice studio from which I do a fair bit of (non game) projects as well.

Since 2001, doing sound for Feature film trailers has been a side-job on weekends. Daredevil was my first one, and since then have worked on more than 60 of them including some recent ones like “Clash of the Titans” and “Salt”.

They are my learning cases. How to do great sound-design under an extreme tight deadline has you reaching for the most odd solutions, which in turn help with the production of video-game sound design.

DS: You’re creating sounds since the era of the Commodore and Atari ST… What do you think about the evolution of the game audio industry? What could be the next step?

CD: We’ve now reached a level of sound reproduction similar to film sound. The next era will not be about “more voices” and “more dsp”, it’ll be about creating emotionally engaging and believable soundscapes. 95% of games still break the believability barrier within the first few minutes, wether it’s through actor performances, character placement or odd pauses and gaps. There are many ways to take a player out of the experience, and that’s still our biggest issue today. Added technology will help, and make it easier again, but until we overcome this believability gap, all the technology in the world is not going to do it for us.

DS: You have worked as freelance and in-house… What would better for you? What you learn of each “status” and what do you recommend for all the sound designers out there?

CD: I was always freaking out a bit when I was freelance. Always looking for the next gig. It drove me insane at times. The insecurity of having a mortgage and family to sustain and the need for a constant stream of income worried me greatly. Oddly enough I never had to really look for jobs when I was doing freelance work, it was merely the “what if” factor that did it.

What I’d recommend freelance sound designers to do is become good and fast. Easier said than done I know, and it might be a simple statement. There are so many sound designers out there who haven’t been exposed to musical pacing, musical editing styles, or haven’t been exposed enough to highly demanding directors who crave for a emotionally stimulating and fitting soundbed. These experiences are needed to sustain in a demanding, volatile market-place to be able to rely on your experiences to deliver. Also, specializing in something really helps getting some sound design jobs. For example right now I’m hired a fair bit for car chases and any other vehicles. That seems to have become my “thing”.

The amount of games with large budgets is rapidly decreasing. The request for “cheaper and faster” not only is hitting the film industry, but also the game industry. In this situation though, cheaper and faster doesn’t mean “worse”. Industry peers are still expecting high quality work. The trick is how to gain the experience of doing something fast and good. This is only something you can learn mostly on your own, learning your own strengths and boundaries. Its critical you acquire honest feedback. If everybody keeps on telling you your work is awesome, there’s something amiss, unless your name is Randy maybe. You simply haven’t met the producer or director yet who has found some flaws in your work which requires improvement or adaptation. Now, make sure you continue to work for that person. He’s the one who’ll drive you further (or nuts in some cases :)

DS: I can see a couple of series of video games and films, such as NFS series, Star Trek and Fast and the Furious. What are the sound challenges on each sequel? The game/film is always different, but the essence is the same, so how you make to have a sequel of sound too?

CD: Sequels have indeed their dilemma’s. You’re asked to better the work you did which was last year was just considered “your best”. Now “your best”=old, and you’re faced with re-inventing the sound-design you did. In some cases you’re lucky and the movie or game has a new feel which will inspire this. For each project I always look for the single “it-factor”. Sometimes this doesn’t come to fruition until the last second, and sometimes it ignites the project. For example on NFS Shift we did these “in your head” driver experience sound-beds. This resulted out of an early teaser where I played around with non typical sounds, trying to emulate what a driver would hear in a race. This came partially due to the “driver experience” slogan the game just got. This stimulated the signatory sound for the NFS Shift FMV’s and menu-beds.

Charles at Interplay

DS: What kind of software you use to work with sound at EA Black Box? What are the technology to work with the implementation process?

CD: Some industry folks say that we’re spoiled at EA. I hear this often at GDC and such. Know though that the technology we use is build by a very small team, and often on the game-teams themselves. Technology is not the end all be all.  For me, it’s less important how the tools work, as long as the result can be obtained. For the past years we’ve worked with a MAX/MSP style tool where we can manipulate sounds in almost any way in real-time. This has been the work-horse for many EA games for over 8 years.

Then there are game specific tools. For Blackbox’s Skate, we build tools which were able to emulate the skate-boarding sound much more realistic than ever before. For our driving games, we build a car-engine technology which (until recent) hadn’t been done in any other game. Now, with Dice’s Frostbite technology it makes it even easier for Artists at EA to integrate flawlessly with the game itself. So, yes in one way, we’re spoiled, but these tools are driven by folks who know what they want to hear, and through team-work, get great results.

I recall when I started at EA in 2003 we were mixing in text-files, and had to restart the game everytime we made a single change. Now, it’s all real-time, thanks to a talented group of programmers and the artists who steered them  In hearing the many storeis from other companies, I do believe EA has some of the most advanced tools right now, and we’re making them even better every day.

DS: What you consider as the most important skill of any sound designer must have?

CD: Will-power. Never give up. Sometimes directors will ask the impossible of a sound-designer, and I’ve seen many give up. The ones that didn’t,  became the leaders in this industry. One story I’ve told many is one that happened to me during Descent; I wanted to make a very cool ship fly-by, and whatever I did sucked. Determined not to give up, I locked myself up in my sound-design room, not to leave it until I arrived at a result. I started off by mimicking some other ship fly-by’s from movies in order to learn. This was the hardest part; I had to create each element from scratch with a very limited library. Frustration set in rapidly, but got to know my effects processors (DSP4000, PCM80, DSP4, BBE, SPL’s etc. etc. at that time) very very well. After 3 days and nights I ended up with a set which I really liked, but that wasn’t the payoff. The real payoff was that I had just learned 100+ ways on how to make by’s, air-distortion, clean tonal whooshes etc. Those 3 days have brought me partially where I’m at today.

Another big part is real-world inspiration. Sound Designers who don’t get to hear the world and its wonderful plethora of sounds, and/or don’t expose themselves to other people inspirational work, will inhibit themselves of growing to their full potential.

Sound Designers also must find a mentor to learn from, people who inspire them to greatness. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. You’ll be amazed how many people are very willing to help others, especially in the sound community.

Few more things I value in sound-designers; musical understanding, musical sensability, and rhythmic sense, as well as the ability to know every owned plug-in’s potential very well.

DS: You’ve worked in film and video games. If you had to choose just one, what would it be? and why?

CD: That’s like making me choose between Candy and Chips. Come on !! :) Each have their best parts; Game development has a real sense of team-work. You become part of the development from day 1, and get to adapt the game to make it work better with audio to enable a richer player’s experience. You get to play with a lot of technical tools, which is really fun, but the amount of emotional fulfillment isn’t nearly as high as film. With film or other cinematic experiences you’re usually working to make a director or sound supervisor happy. You work purely on sound and its emotions, with no worries on how to play it back. The amount of emotional connection to picture is a dozen times higher. I edit sound on picture based on feel, not on # of channels available or trigger mechanism. It’s a whole different paradigm, but I wouldn’t want to miss either one. Sound design for film speaks to my emotional side. Sound design for games covers a lot of my technical outlets.

DS: How you survive to “the crunch”?

CD: When you get older, surviving a crunch becomes harder and harder, and I can’t honestly say I survive it well anymore. I simply can’t do the 80-100 hour weeks I used to do. At this point its more important to me to get stuff done earlier vs. later. This makes the crunch at the end is a lot shorter. My job over the last 3 years  (through my own doing) has been close to a constant “crunch”, helping out several games during their final stages. It also had me travel quite a lot which, combined with late hours, can get a bit straining. But that said I’m not complaining about it. Will-power makes me overcome the crunch, and the end-result always is the pay-off. Lets say I like coffee and “beaver buzz” energy drinks :) But my real goal is to limit crunches by setting deadlines much sooner, and by distributing more of the work. The crew at EA is awesome. They all help out during needy times.

However I’ve had my downs too; during my first year at EA I was doing some late nights since I wanted to learn every tool quickly, and was drinking a lot of Mountain Dew. Now, nobody in canada had told me that you can artificially put caffeine in a drink, so the mountain dew I was drinking didn’t have the usual buzz I was used to. After 7 cans I was wondering why the hell I was falling asleep.. The next morning, there was quite a bit of chuckling going on when they explained the canadian non-caffeine rule… damn :)

DS: How many time you spend playing games?

CD: Honestly, fairly little since I have little spare time. I check out the competition of games we work on, and any games my friends work on, and/or highly praised sound-jobs on games. Usually I spend enough time with them to get the jist, but hardly find myself continuing to play for “fun”. Luckily through some peer judging panels I’m part of, every year I get to play 20+ games during december and march, and usually those are the best of the best that year, so it’s fun to check them out and talk among peers about what’s great etc.

DS: Someone you admire? Any special influence in the world of sound?

CD: There’s many folks I admire, either for their talent, their perseverance, their contributions to the industry or other. Whenever people ask me this question, the first person that comes to mind is Harry Cohen. For the last 15 years he’s been my inspiration for sound-design, and he’s always open to share some advice and/or techniques.
The other that comes to mind I John Fasal. Everytime we work together he remains calm, even under the greatest stress, and always delivers quality work. There aren’t many people who can do this on a consistent basis. I want to learn his “zen mode”, LOL.

Having known Tommy T for 19 years, ever since we worked together at Virgin, I admire everything he’s done to promote the game industry towards the outside world. We’ve had our differences for sure, but that doesn’t take away from everything he’s accomplished in those 19 years.

I also admire people who speak their mind, and don’t bullshit. Some execs in my past talked a good talk, but don’t always walk the walk. This in turn made them loose respect from the crew. A great visionary (exec) producer who knows what he wants is his weight worth in gold.

DS: Finally, could you tell us something about your current projects? And for the future?

CD: In January, I went back to work mainly on Need for Speed games, to help shape its bright future. At home I’m still helping out on an occasional ad, trailer or movie, but have tried to take more time off to enjoy life with my lovely wife. My hobby of photography (http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdeenen/sets/) is also moving a bit to the foreground. A few years back I noticed that a lot of fellow sound designers are also photographers, and have enjoyed sharing techniques with them on both sound and photography.   One of my biggest pleasures will remain helping folks excel at what they do, and succeed.

Seeing the plethora of young, very talented sound designers arise through the masses makes me realize our industry has a bright, but very different future.  Each person brings their own element to the table.  Too bad we don’t have a sound design museum. We should. There is so much great work out there done by all these folks to be enjoyed and inspire a whole new generation.

The future will also hold more relaxing time, I hope :)

Thanks for listening