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Improving Communication With Your Sound Designer Part 1
by Kane Minkus
Tools of the Trade
is so good these days, that you only need 2 computers (at most, some guys can just get away with one), a bunch of software and maybe a great microphone. From this setup one can compose a full orchestra or make a movie sound like a movie (including the score and sfx). Usually you will see a Mac & a PC (or just one or the other), a small keyboard controller, a nice desk, a set of good pro speakers (one of the most important parts of the studio – don’t forget the sub woofer!), some sort of acoustical treatment to make the room “mix” ready (maybe a little tracking room to record live instruments/VO), and a refrigerator to keep the audio specialist up all night for your projects, which has crazy deadlines. Yes, there are some guys who love to have more – a real piano, a nice tracking room, a cushy client coach, etc., but those are really unnecessary frills to get the job done in games. These studios/work stations are commonly referred to as DAW’s – Digital Audio Work Stations.
One main tool your sound designer and composer will use is a sequencer or audio design software. The industry standard is ProTools and Logic. Logic only runs on a Mac and after years of using ProTools, it is a general consensus that you want to be running that on a Mac as well. This means your audio specialist is likely to be a Mac user! Be sensitive to that as we Mac users realize that everyone else in the business world uses a PC! (Especially since we create audio for games that are mostly PC based). Obviously your audio specialist must know a PC well also. Some audio professionals chose to work solely on a PC (especially when they specialize in game audio) because games are mainly created on and for PC users or PC platforms. If they are mainly PC users, they may use a program called Cubase (this seems to be the PC software of choice – although some use Sonar or other programs). You don’t need to know the details of the programs, but this way you are familiar with their tools. There are some additional specialty programs - like we use Peak (on the Mac) to master all our audio at SomaTone (some use Sound Forge on the PC – we will discuss mastering later), Ableton Live for loops and Virtual Instrument hosting (or Acid on the PC – we will discuss virtual instruments later) and Reason is a popular program for some audio professionals. Amedeus is a great editing tool and can convert to OGG files efficiently. All these extra tools are just for your knowledge to understand that the audio professional needs several tools to get the job done.
Creating Audio: Sound Design
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ION Game Conference
