The thing about wisdom is that you can't really ever receive it. You can read and watch everything there is to find about sound and come away with little more than good conversation. Lessons have to be learned personally, and experience only ever happens to you when you're ready. So it is that I feel myself finally ready to think seriously about some of the things I've seen … [Read more...]
Finding Your Way With High Dynamic Range Audio In Wwise
Guest Contribution by: Louis-Xavier Buffoni – Software engineer at Audiokinetic HDR in a Nutshell HDR (“High Dynamic Range”) audio is a technique which draws its inspiration from the local adaptation method used in HDR imaging, which “attempts to maintain local contrast, while decreasing global contrast.” [1] In audio, this local/global dichotomy applies to time, and contrast … [Read more...]
Video Games and Loudness Standards: Interview with Sony’s Garry Taylor
The issues of loudness and dynamic range are common across all audio/visual media, but recently this conversation has been gaining traction within the game audio community. Following his presentation 'Fighting the Loudness War' at the Develop conference in early July, I contacted Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's Audio Director Garry Taylor to discuss the subject … [Read more...]
Game Audio Podcast #10 – Reference & Mix Level Standards
Reference & Mix Levels across different media can vary wildly. Even within a subset of media such as film or television it can be hard to get consensus amongst professionals regarding standardization, not to mention the education of such standards. If you celebrated Dynamic Range Day this past march, you know that there are many ways to think about and approach mixing … [Read more...]
Greg Russell and Mark Stoeckinger on the Art and Craft of Sound
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZZylpvlySs[/youtube] David Poland has made two great interviews at DP/30. In one he talks with Greg P Russell about the sound of "SALT". The other one is with Mark Stoeckinger, talking about the sound of "Unstoppable". Both are relatively "long" (33 and 45 min respectively) but fascinating. And even better: they not only talk about … [Read more...]
More "Singularity" Sound: Dynamic Range Treatment
The guys at Raven Software published another great post on the Dev Diary of Singularity. This time the turn is for audio lead Mark Kilborn, who talks about the mix approach and the dynamic range on the game. Check: When you play Singularity for the first time, you may notice that parts of the game are much quieter than others. You’re hearing this because we’re working with what … [Read more...]