Back again, This here is an e-zine essay, talking about what the term sounds are...
What You Need to Know – Sounds
In the Interactive Media industry, sound is an important attribute to media products such as computer games, films, animations, etc. In these categories of entertainment, sound is used to give atmosphere, such as in first-person shooter computer games; you would make loud bangs or noises to represent gunshots or explosions.
Screen-print from Audacity – Image 1
Sound theory
Sound is produced through vibrations in the air. When a sound is recorded on a piece of software, such as Audacity or Adobe Soundbooth, it creates a visual representation of what the sound sounds like in waveforms (Image 1). This waveform is used to register frequency and amplitude.
Frequency is used to measure how many waves that sound passes by through a vibration of particles in the air and/or on an object of some sort. The measurement of the wave is calculated by a unit called Hertz. (or Hz for short) Frequency also measures the pitch in the waveforms. The pitch is what's called the type of sound is being played in terms of low and high sounds. For example, a low pitch sound could be from a base guitar string and a high pitch sound could be from a dog whistle. Pitch is measured by how close together (high pitch) or how far apart (low pitch) the waves are in the frequency.
Amplitude is used to measure how big the sound waves are when it is being read through a sound capture device, such as Audacity, from the straight line directly in the middle of the sound waves. The height of the wave is what is used to measure how loud a sound is. For example, if a sound being played has sound wave that is partially small and close to the straight line, that means the sound is very quiet and if the waves are big, then the sounds are very loud.
Basics of Sound Recording
Clipping and Distortion is when a voice or sound clip is altered incorrectly, sometimes by making the clip go beyond the estimated amplitude.
Image 2
The red arrows in image 2 shows how far the clip can go before it starts to distort. If it exceeds that point, then some of the sounds within that clip will get cut out and will sound choppy when playing.
Mono and Stereo sounds have simple differences: Mono sound systems use only one audio signal, where all of the sounds are being played through all of the speakers at once. Stereo sound systems use two audio signals, where the sounds that are being played can verify which speakers to play out of depending on the sound and give a more spatial awareness one where the sound is coming from. For example, if a sound of footsteps going from left to right is played, you won't be able to tell it just by hearing it but with stereo sound, you can.
There are different file formats that sound can be found on:
A WAV file, short for Waveform Audio File, is the standard file for sounds, mainly used on Windows desktops. They are usually used for storing uncompressed sound files because sometimes WAV files tend to be quite big in memory space.
An MP3 file is the most common sound file around and is usually obtained through downloads. These files remove inaudible parts of the sound clip and are generally compressed to keep good quality for music storage.
An OGG file refers to as a container supporting a variety of codecs. A codec is a device that is used for encoding or decoding a signal or a data stream of some sort. This file to some degree is very similar to the MP3 file in terms of online stream downloads but are less supported.
An AIF file is exactly the same and an Apple software equivalent to a WAV file in terms of sound and storage.
A WMA file, short for Windows Media Audio, is a file that is owned by Microsoft. Unlike the previous formats, which are open sourced files, a WMA file is designed with Digital Rights Management, referring to the fact that these files have copy protection.
A FLAC file is a lossless sound file, that if you were to compress an uncompressed file, such as a WAV, to a FLAC and then back again, it won't loss any of its sound quality.
A majority of interactive applications, such as games or films use sound to give a feeling, often in a storyline. For example, one sound clip can be used to build tension and another could be used to present a sorrowful scene. These applications could also use sound effects to give a more atmosphere. Sound effects, such as gun shots to present gun fire are a good example because gun fire without sound effects won't look good.
Many games and films have different types of interactive audio:
Dynamic audio are soundtracks that change depending on how a game is played.
Constrained audio is where games or films use sound files that don't exceed a limit of file size.
Repetitive audio are basically loops of a track, where the keep playing the same sound over until a level is completed.
Event driven audio is the same as Dynamic audio but like the name says, the sound changes on different events.
Computer games, alongside with different types of basic audio, can also feature different types of interactive sounds:
Feedback sounds are used to depict events that have happened in a game, such as picking up an object or destroying an enemy. An example of this could be a Sonic game where a character picks up a ring and short jingle plays.
Alert sounds are similar to Feedback sounds, only that they are used to warn the player of an event. For example, the player may have low health.
Realism sounds are a general background sound effect for games, which can depict cars driving past in the background.
Added value sounds are identical to Event driven sounds, only that they added emotion to the game.
I have played a lot of games and most of them have had great sounds; music and sound effects. Gears of War has and always will definitely one of the greatest games I have ever played and the sound on the game are amazing. The music used for the games always play the right tune to whatever event it may be and generally suits that entire franchises' storyline. The sound effects are brilliant too and always fit each segment of the game (For example, the ground shakes and rumbling noises play)
Out of all of the games I have played, the only game that I have played with bad sounds would have to be Sonic Adventure. The game was great, each sound track and effect were brilliant but I wasn't overly keen on the voiceovers for the characters as some of them didn't always show much character, fit the scenario or just plainly didn't sound right in anyway what so ever.
The link above is the beginning cut-scene of Sonics story, where Sonic is enjoying a nice evening out then bumps into Chaos. (the water daemon) Within those scene, you could definitely tell what was wrong with that scene just by listening to the voices. Here are some of them:
1) 00:55 - "You are completely surrounded! Surrender yourself!" says one of the cops with an authoritative bark.
Now, I'd understand that if it were a person. But they are treating a "monstrous creature" as if it was robbing a bank. Most times in a scenario where a monster is blindly attacking everything, it's usually better to "shoot first."
2) 01:09 - Chaos jumps down from the building and is about to attack "lock on target men! Ready... Fire!" All the cops start shooting.
Okay, this time, the cop says this when everyone is already aiming their guns at Chaos. Within the time he begins attacking, I would've started firing.
3) 01:22 - "Oh no! Our weapons are useless! Retreat! All personnel, fall back!" The cop yells and continues to shoot while the rest run away.
Okay, the cop who yell this out just acknowledged the fact that their weapons don't work. Despite that he is slowly falling back, why is he still firing...?
This is the last one...
4) 01:52 - Just after Sonic defeats Chaos, Chaos turns into a blob of water retreats down a drain while Sonic attempts to pursue and says "Come on you big drip! Where're you going?". As Sonic stands over the drain, Eggman (aka Robotnik) is standing on a roof, yelling at the top of his lungs "You know nothing, fool! Its Chaos! The God of Destruction. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
Okay, there are a couple of things wrong with this line but I shall try to keep it short...:
- Sonic is completely oblivious to Eggman as he's yelling.
- The speech that Eggman made sounds as if it was meant to be a response to Sonics "bring it" statement, which has no relevance to it.
These aren't the only ones in the game either, all of the characters speeches sound as if the don't make sense. Thankfully though, Sonic Team has learnt by their mistakes and have improved on the speech. (I only wished that the game-play was as good now as it was then)
Anyway, that's it for me.
