oceanicnoiseworks

Hahaha for breaking bones and general "crunchiness", I usually resort to good old celery and bok choy (chinese cabbage). It's funny how many incredible sounds can be made with just vegetables.

1. I haven't used it, but I've heard very good things about Reaper. It's free, so you might as well give it a try if you're interested.

2. It all depends on your ram allocation. Most people use wavs only for music and dialogue and mp3's of some other supported lossy format for everything else.

3. The largest sound files are usually atmos, music and dialogue; shortest, sound effects and wild foley. It all depends, though. Audio for cutscenes tends to have much bigger files, though.

4. Sound on Sound (http://www.soundonsound.com/), Designing Sound (http://designingsound.org/) and Audio Tuts (http://audio.tutsplus.com/) have very good tutorials that cover everything from DAW's and recording techniques to sound design.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is, in my opinion, a brilliant example of adaptive sound that actually works and enhances the gameplay. Most stealth-based games are incredibly complex when it comes to implementation, due to the fact that the music is supposed to follow and represent the different "states of alert" of the enemies, and transition efficiently between them.

Would any sound designers be interested in an article regarding "exotic" (for lack of a better term, but it sounds pretentious, I know) microphones? I'm talking about contact mics, coil pickup mics, hydrophones, etc... They're incredible tools when it comes to creating unique sounds!

Reaper has been getting so much good press and praise that I'm tempted to at least download the demo and give it a try. I've talked to a few people who have started using it for game audio due to the ReaScript feature (an option that allows users to run python scripting within the DAW). Sounds interesting for sound designers who can also code and are looking for alternative ways to do implementation.

Personally, I use Logic Studio (for music composition and sound effects) and Pro Tools (for recording, editing, mixing and mastering).