By: Karen Collins *note: some excerpts from this section are taken from my book, Playing with Sound (MIT Press, 2013). Music and sound design are often treated as separate disciplines. We describe ourselves as composers or sound designers, get hired to do one or the other (usually) and awards are given to these jobs as separate categories. It’s rare that sound design gets … [Read more...]
Different Loudness Ranges for Console and Mobile Games
This article is a guest post, written by Bernard Rodrigue of middleware vendors Audiokinetic, discusses loudness measurement over a range of game audio specific scenarios, such as mobile platforms versus home consoles, and family friendly versus AAA war titles. Overview The EBU R-128 loudness recommendations and ITU-R BS.1770-3 specifications include three different kinds … [Read more...]
Loudness and Metering (Part 2)
Guest contribution by Owen Green [This is the second of a two part series on loudness, mixing, metering and the new ITU loudness spec] The New Loudness Standards, and What They Might Mean for Us Depending on the field in which one worked, standard production practices have tended to be orientated around peak normalisation of material. That is, lining up recordings by their … [Read more...]
The Tonebenders Share Plugin Secrets
To round out Plugin Use/Abuse Month here on Designing Sound here are some neat tips and tricks from the 3 hosts of the Tonebenders Podcast. Timothy Muirhead: Convolution Reverbs are amazing tools to have in your arsenal of plugins. Unlike conventional digital reverbs which simulate theoretical spaces with arbitrary parameters, convolution reverbs use signal processing to … [Read more...]
I Love Plug-ins!
Guest Contribution by Tom Todia I love Plug-Ins! There, I feel much better now. Since January is the month of the plug-in here at Designing Sound, I thought this was a great opportunity to share one of my new favorites with you. This plug-in does exactly what its name states but it has a twist that I absolutely love. If you have not yet used it then allow me to introduce … [Read more...]
Transient Enhancement With Explosions
Article By: Frank Bry Transient enhancement plug-ins are wonderful tools to have in a sound designer’s arsenal. They can be used to soften a sound or to make it balls to the wall, hard hitting intense. Explosion sounds really benefit from this type of process. If you have recorded explosions, you may already have discovered that live is much better than tape, or should I … [Read more...]
A Plug-in Vector Matrix
Guest Contribution by Charles Maynes The best things in life are sort of free... Peter Gabriel once described his creative process as being an “X” and ”Y” sort of thinking- Basically trying to segregate his “artistic” thinking from his “technical” thinking. In this DAW universe we live in, we seem to be constantly flipping modes...and often times we want to be able to … [Read more...]