It's been a great month here on Designing Sound! We took a gamble in November with the new monthly features format, and it's been paying off in spectacular fashion. This site would not be so special without the support and contributions of the community it serves. A hearty round of thanks goes out to this month's guests: Ian Palmer, for his examination of just a few of the … [Read more...]
Analog Worldization
Guest contribution by Cormac Donnelly I am, at heart, a techno-nostalgiast and I’ve worked with tape machines of one kind or other for most of my career. When I sold my 2” multi-track, in 2010, I resolved almost immediately to get myself another tape machine (albeit something a little smaller than the 250kg Otari I had just parted with). A few weeks later, I found myself … [Read more...]
Creating the Spaces of Ambience
Guest contribution by Michael Theiler (Kpow Audio) Situating an Ambience When creating ambiences for games (this applies equally to film), I am striving to make them blend into the background and not mask any important in game sounds. For most ambiences, these are the most important qualities that I am attempting to resolve. In order to achieve this, I need to firstly focus on … [Read more...]
Recording Impulse Responses
With growing computing power over the last decade, convolution plugins have become commonplace. Some of the most common ones include Audio Ease Altiverb, Logic’s Space Designer, Avid TL Space, Waves IR-1 and McDsp Revolver. They are usually packaged with large and useful libraries of impulse responses (more on what all this means below), but what makes them really powerful is … [Read more...]
Panning Reverb Returns
Guest contribution by By Douglas Murray OK, here is the ugly truth for film post, or really any surround sound work… Most reverb plug-ins do not sound natural for applications using greater than 1 or 2 speakers. What you don’t want: a reverb that jumps to completely different speakers from the source. What you do want: a reverb that spreads out from the sound and helps localize … [Read more...]
Nicolas Becker – Behind the Art
We’re getting very close to the end of 2012 and there’s been lots of brilliant sonic experiences in the cinema throughout the year. One that really stood out, though, was the latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights by the English director Andrea Arnold with wonderfully textured soundscapes created by the French sound designer Nicolas Becker. Nicolas has worked as a foley artist … [Read more...]
Audiofile Engineering Giveaway: WINNERS!
And....it is time to announce the winners of the Audiofile Engineering giveaway (all selected fairly through a random number generator!): *drum roll* Jordan Fehr Hector Lee Tom (http://perrolulu.com/) Congratulations! You should recieve emails soon. Thank you all for taking part, it was a long list of entrants. … [Read more...]