Sound Design MU2411 - Week 14 (12/12/17)

Assignment 1 Submission

““...and there I was, in the final hour.””

— Abe (Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty)

So, the big day finally arrived. I submitted my assignment by 10:21pm, making use of the online submission process to buy myself a few more precious hours to mix in the D-Control 5.1 studio.

Objective complete!

Those final few hours in the D-Control made all the difference...I hope!

Stemming Down

I used a Pro Tools HD iLok to make my final stems without having to delete tracks from my already maxed-out track count.

Final Export and Delivery

To complete my cinematic audio redesign, I bounced out the audio from my master mix session as a stereo audio file, and then added it into a new Pro Tools session containing the video file. This way, I was able to massively reduce the strain on my computer's CPU during the audio and video bounce process as all the main audio processing had been taken care of in the first audio-only bounce. Then, I bounced the audio and video to a QuickTime file, which I subsequently loaded up in MPEG Streamclip to convert the video codec from Avid DNxHD to H.264.

Limiting Issues

As I had to do the final audio bounce on my laptop (in order to make use of the some specific Kilohearts plug-ins), I couldn't use of Avid's Pro Limiter to do my final audio bounce. As an alternative, I used the Maxim plug-in on the Master output with the ceiling value set to -2.0dB.

On previous projects, I've usually set the Maxim ceiling value much higher (e.g. -0.3dB/-0.4dB), but after learning about inter-sample peaks, I decided to give myself more room for error and set it to -2.0dB as Maxim is not a true-peak limiter. 

Listening back however (and looking at the final waveform) the sound in he really loud sections of the trailer gets chopped off when it hits the limiter. Ideally, I would have set the ceiling higher to prevent the 'squashing' effect, but I thought it would be a lesser evil than having big transient spikes going through a higher ceiling that could potentially clip the digital 0dB ceiling.

LUFS Issues

Final LUFS reading I took in the D-Control 5.1 studio. I subsequently dropped global clip gain by aprox 3-4dB after taking this reading, so hopefully my submitted video falls within the EB -23dB acceptable range.

DEM Stem Problems

It was my intention to include separate DEM stems alongside the main bounce as part and parcel of a professional delivery package. However, despite setting up and assigning the necessary buses and routing in Pro Tools, I ran out of time to get this done to a satisfactory level that I was happy with submitting. The main problem was simply an issue of volume - the stems were being routed properly, but they were far too loud and massively clipping during the printing process. In hindsight, I probably should have just stuck a hard limiter on each individual stem to stop them going into the red, but as this was just before the deadline I was in a bit of a panic, so I decided to focus on just getting the essentials done for the submission.

For future projects however, I'll definitely start thinking about stemming earlier on the process, as it would have streamlined my overall mixing process a great deal, and would possibly have bought me more time to mix to a higher standard in the final few weeks of the project.

During the final mix, I set up dedicated individual stems for DEM and VO stems, but I ran out of time to get these done to a standard I was happy submitting before the looking deadline. Next time!

Outdoor Gun Recording, Cumbria (14/10/17)

Well this is a bit different; I've just returned from a fun (but loud) time recording guns and rifles in the Lake District with my Futureworks game audio buddies Aaron Turner and Alex Larumbe.

Thanks to Aaron being a member of a shooting club, we got the opportunity to record a gun club going trigger happy on an outdoor military shooting range. As gun and shooting sounds are prevalent in so many different types of video games, I was thrilled to get the chance to collect some genuine gun sounds for my personal sample library. It was a great experience, as it was a really good opportunity to both capture some hard to acquire sounds and put in a good chunk of time to learn the ins and outs of operating the ZOOM F8 field recorder.

Not that you can tell from this picture, but these folorn blimps are picking up some tasty ricochets and reverberations from the neighbouring hills.

As we were there as guests on the range, we of course had to abide by the house rules so to speak. We couldn't take photos of our recording setups on the range as we were the shooting was taking place on military base (and I didn't want to piss off a bunch of dudes with guns) so forgive the lack of pictures on this one. Also, we had to record the gun sounds in and amongst the normal itinerary of the shooting club; in other words, we could only record the guns going off en masse, and not individually catalogue each particular rifle in our recording process. However, as the various shooters began to disperse and head home as the day progressed, we were able to collect some more isolated recordings of gunshots towards the end of the session.

For the majority of the recordings, we used a pair of Line Audio CM3 cardioid mics with a Rode NTG1 shotgun mic going into the ZOOM F8. We set up the mics behind the line of shooters (we couldn't the impact sounds of the bullets hitting the metal targets for safety reasons) and experimented with various combinations of XY, ORTF and spaced mic pairings. On occasion, we also used a ZOOM H6 recorder with the proprietary shotgun mic attachment on occasion to capture the sounds of the blasts at a further distance from the main recording rig.

One problem we encountered during the recording session was that we didn't have the ability to consistently monitor what we pointing the mics at. Due to the ridiculously loud volume of the various rifles going off around us, I didn't want to risk removing my ear protection and damaging my hearing to listen to the incoming mic signals. While this decision helped preserve the structural integrity of my eardrums, it also meant that some of the recordings aren't amazing; listening back to a few of the audio files in Pro Tools today, some of the quieter gun shots sound muted and off-axis; problems which could have been easily avoided in a quieter recording environment.

A secondary problem is that there's also a lot of background chatter on the early recordings as the shooters are nattering away to each other in-between bullet barrages. Clever editing will no doubt help remove the bulk of the gabber, but as it's pretty consistent during the early hours of the session, a lot of this material might just be simply unusable...unless I ever need to do ambient sound design for a game/film scene set in a moderately busy outdoor gun range that is. 

However, despite these flaws, I think that overall the recording session went pretty well, especially considering it was our first time operating the mighty ZOOM F8. I still need to go through and edit the recordings, but from a quick listen I think we've managed to grab some pretty useable stuff. Here's a short clip of a meaty .50 calibre rifle for posterity:

Engines and Middleware 1 - Assignment 1: Audio Implementation

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One of the big pieces of work I submitted back in April this year was the audio implementation assignment of my Engines and Middleware 1 module. Working in a group with my friends and fellow game audio students Adam White (@AdamRWhitehead) and Aaron Turner, the objective for this module was to take an existing Unreal Engine 4 game with all the original audio assets removed, and substitute them with our own (hopefully suitable) replacements.

The specific game we were given for this task with was the tower defence strategy game from the UE4 example game projects collection.

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Manchester Field Recording with Martyn Ellis

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to go field recording with audio engineer, Foley artist and all-round audio wizard Martyn Ellis (@Ellis_Audio). It was an incredibly fun and rewarding experience, so I thought I'd throw a few sentences together about it on here!

Over a two-day period, we scouted out several locations around Manchester to record interesting ambiences and capture a variety of city soundscapes; all the while experimenting with different configurations of mic types, polar patterns and mic positions, including mid-side & binaural recording setups.

Along with fellow game audio students Adam Whitehead (@AdamRWhitehead), James Balshaw and Josh Hindle (@BassFaceBindle), we set up our recording gear (including our very own disembodied polystyrene head for the binaural sounds, which definitely drew some funny glances from onlookers) and got to work. Whilst we were out and about, we also had a fortuitous encounter with NJ Apostol - the audio designer from White Paper Games - and got to briefly chat about game audio with him. Very cool indeed!

Fancy a listen? Here's a few samples of what we recorded :

New Bailey Street/Chapel Street Crossroads

Binaural Head Recording - Sennheiser Lav MKE2 Gold Mic Pair

First up is a binaural recording we sourced from the junction of New Bailey Street and Chapel Street, right next to Salford Central station. The mics were taped to either side of the head, and covered with Rycote Ristretto Lav mic windshields to attenuate wind sounds. I like this recording a lot as it's really cool being able to hear a busy detailed audio picture in your head of cars passing by on the left and right. We were even lucky enough to snag the sound of a rattling overhead train as it makes its way into the station.

Deansgate

ORTF Pair - Superlux CM H8Ks with Omnidirectional Capsules

Another roadside recording, this time we were situated on Deansgate, the busy main street of Manchester. As you might have guessed, we were to capture some really beefy passing car sounds from the traffic from this position! The omnidirectional capsules on the Superlux mics really helped to capture the detail of the scene without also picking up extraneous wind noise.

Trinity Bridge Construction Site

Mid-side Pair - Sennheiser MKH 8060 (Mid) and AKG C414 (Side)

For this recording, we set up just outside a loud construction site close to Trinity Bridge. What was good about this location was that the tall buildings and walls surrounding the construction site provided a lot of hard surfaces for all the bangs and engine rumbling to reverberate against, which created a nice sense of distance and depth in the recording.

Big thanks to Martyn for showing us game audio greenhorns the field recording ropes, it was really useful! 

Simran Whitham - Sound Design for 'The Stages'

Alongside my core Game and Interactive Audio studies, I had the opportunity to provide sound design help to my friend Simran Whitham with his Unreal 4 game 'The Stages' during my first year studying at Futureworks. The Stages is a first-person platforming game in which the player has to pause the flow of time (using a fancy-schmancy time glove) to navigate otherwise impassable obstacles.

When thinking about how to create interesting sound assets for the time stop mechanic for The Stages, I was heavily inspired by the excellent sound design found in Remedy Entertainment's Quantum Break; a game centred around the concept of time travel. I wanted to come up with something similar to the tinkly, crystalline glass sounds used in Quantum Break to signify the distortion and manipulation of the flow of time. 

Below is the collection of sound effects and variations I put together for The Stages:

I created these audio assets through a combination of recording my own original sounds and editing together and manipulating a couple of pre-existing audio samples. Here's some more detail on each specific sound:

Time Stop

To achieve the core time stop effect, I reversed a glass breaking sample to get a nice glassy 'woosh' effect, and combined it with a reversed lightbulb pop sound to give it a percussive finish.

Glass breaking sample: GN2013, 'Breaking Glass Stereo' freesound.org/people/GN2013/sounds/199906/

Lightbulb pop sample: jorickhoofd, 'Exploding Lightbulb 2' freesound.org/people/jorickhoofd/sounds/179264/

Time Stop (Delay)

For this variant, I added a low rumble to the crescendo of the glass sample to give the effect a bit more of a dramatic, unsettling feel. I also added a tape delay to the glass and pop sounds to give the treble elements an eerie decay.

Wood Footsteps

I recorded these footstep sounds on the wooden floor of Futureworks' Custom Pre studio live room. I enjoy the percussive trebly clack to the these footsteps, but the mic also picked up a lot of trouser rustling noises from my jeans. Need to wear quieter trousers next time!

Carpet Footsteps

These sounds were recorded on the carpeted floor of the Custom Pre studio control room. Struggled to eliminate the background hum from this one; managed to get most of it out with some surgical EQ-ing, but lost some of the detail and top-end in the process.