The Audio Resource & Sound Design Clinic

[Ms Littlefish]

It’s my goal that developers here talk about audio resources and sound design with the same ferocity they do the visual design and gameplay design. No element of the game’s design should be squandered away to the realm of “gets the job done.”

I envision this thread will serve two major purposes.

1. Feedback on the creation of said individual audio resources.
2. Feedback on the assembly of created audio resources in conjunction with the visual and gameplay elements. Kind of like the Game & Map Screenshots thread but with the sound elements incorporated.

If you only want to show off your audio, use the “post your music” thread or your dedicated art, music, and literature thread.

Not required, but probably useful—

• It might be helpful to note what software and tools are available to you.
• If your sound design relies on the usage of any scripts/plugins, this will probably be helpful to note.

1. Background music, background sounds, musical effects, sound effects, and overall soundscape and design - are all allowed as long as it has to do with RPG Maker or Indie Game Maker games.

2. When posting for soundscape and design specifically, you will most likely need to share this as some sort of video capture due to sound design being contextual on the game area, scene, and/or battle sequence. A series of screenshots with the audio provided might work, but the full ambience will definitely be better captured when viewing and hearing everything as a whole simultaneously.

3. Any original work posted here is not up for grabs and it solely belongs to the original creator. If the creator eventually posts in the resource forums, then go ahead. Until then, what gets posted here, stays here.

4. When posting a work or sound design for feedback that is not 100% your creation, please note which parts aren't made by you so people can give you more accurate feedback.

5. Please be civil and constructive when handing out criticism. This is a space for creators and learners of all skill levels. Do not post things such as “this sucks!” or even “it's awesome!” Point out why something doesn’t work and what they can do to improve it. If you want to compliment someone, point out what you think they did well specifically.

6. Please refrain from re-posting your work unless you've made some edits on it since the last time you posted it. If no one has commented on your work and it has fallen behind by at least 2 pages, feel free to repost it then.

7. If you have a lot of work to show, please put them in spoiler tags! If you want to quote someone's work, simply refer to them by name @Username or put the quoted work in spoiler tags. This prevents the thread from cluttering up too much. Preferably, don't quote images at all.

Remember, you don’t need to be an expert to give feedback. It’s rather likely your game uses audio.The listener is the consumer. Statements like, “it’s too loud and crackly” or “something is really muffled,” are highly valuable to creators.

Have fun! Make Games!

 

[FoxInHiding]

Hi Ms Littlefish,
I do not know how to upload it. Do you put it on a different site first?

I theoretically have cubase. Cubase makes no sounds anymore, though.
What works is audacity and online pages that let you create short music or small sound effects.

I do not use scripts/plugins to create music and I usually work with mp3.

Can I attach it by editing my post?

It is more of a bgm (strings) and there is no picture/map connected to it.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Hi there! @FoxInHiding Depends on what exactly you’re trying to attach. To my knowledge, I don’t think we can directly upload audio files? I think you’d have to use an uploading platform like SoundCloud or YouTube and use the insert media link tab on the text editor. And, yes. This can be edited in!

 

[FoxInHiding]

Ah, I cannot make a SoundCloud account. The hate my email or something.
Maybe I find something else. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Maybe you could do Google Drive or some other file share service? I'm sure most of us wouldn't mind downloading it. @FoxInHiding

 

[TheAM-Dol]

So to actually make this topic about what the topic is about, I'd like to share this one:


I recently "fixed" a positional audio plugin (more on that later) and have been having a lot of fun with positional audio in my game some more.
I really love the calls of some of the local birds in the area around me- I find them really beautiful. I'm not much of a bird watcher, but I can't help but love these birds, so naturally I wanted to include these sounds in my game.
I went to the mountain near my house and away from all the city noises and spent some time recording some of nature. The wind through the trees, the sound of the distant birds.
I put all this together to create some of the natural ambient sound in the video.
While the bird calls also exist in the bgs layer that plays map-wide, the bird events have positional audio on them and play specific bird calls assigned to them.

You'll also hear some of the UI sound design I did, feedback on picking up an item called "Red Juice" which is a main resource for this particular level of the game. I wanted something cartoony and bubbly, so what better than blowing bubbles into milk?

Finally, you'll hear some additional sound work with the extractor/factory.
This is a juice extractor and I wanted something very heavy machinery sounding. So I used a variety of different conveyor belt and hydraulic samples I found and layered them together to create a cacophony of machine noises which will play once enabling the extractor. This also has positional audio on it.
The laser gun UI sound effect was synthesized by myself using Massive.

---

The Plugin I use for Positional Audio, and the "fix"

Spoiler: Plugin Info

I use Masked's MBS_SoundEmittance plugin

There is technically a bug with this plugin. The plugin will load all the sound effects into a "standard BGS" audio track, and for a brief like...10 frames or less all those audio tracks will play like a standard BGS layer (as in non-positional, map wide). So whenever entering a new map, you'd hear a very brief snap of sound as the BGS is loaded into the game before finally being set as positional audio.

For a while I thought it would require reprogramming how the plugin generates new BGS layers for the positional audio - such as buffering new audio tracks at 0db (0 volume), however, the solution is a little bit simpler than that...BGS can have loop points. That's the answer to this problem.
Just making the first half second to 1 second partially silence with a fade in, then setting the loop point to be after the fade in, this eliminates the audio pop bug I was talking about.

I am so happy because one of the first things I wanted to implement into my game was positional audio. Since it's inception I've tested a number of plugins and Masked's was my favorite for it's easy implementation but was so disheartened by the bug. I am so surprised it took me literally more than a year to realize "just set a loop point after the fade in" to fix the bug

I want to post some music too, but not right now. Maybe later.

I hope to see more folks post sound stuff here too!

 

[alice_gristle]

I went to the mountain near my house and away from all the city noises and spent some time recording some of nature. The wind through the trees, the sound of the distant birds.

I meant to do this too a while ago, I borrowed equipment from a friend, and then... never got around to it. Also, where I live, it's very hard to find a place without man-made sounds in the background. (And I'm not knowledgeable at all in editing unwanted noise out!)

Anyway, yo bird sounds are really peaceful-soundin' and I like how they contrast with the bloody big extractor thingy with its boom and whoosh!

 

[Ms Littlefish]

@TheAM-Dol Really love how the bird calls are using different areas of the stereo field, or at least I’m pretty sure thats what I’m hearing. Really gives the feeling that they’re calling out from many different areas of the forest. There is something about the bird at :28 and :38 that has a harder quality that really pokes out from the otherwise very delicate soundscape. Not sure if that’s the bird itself but I imagine you’d know a lot more about what that could be attributed to? The juxtaposition with the machine noises works really, really well and I love the bubbles-in-milk sound!!!

 

[TheAM-Dol]

@alice_gristle Fun fact, all of this was recorded with my phone. Is it nice to have a proper field recorder? Absolutely! They make capturing specific sounds a lot easier. But our phones have surprisingly good microphones on them.
It's funny how difficult it is to get away from human sounds. Sound pollution is a thing not talked about as much as other types of pollution, but it's very much a thing. Ben Jordan has talked about how it's becoming increasingly more difficult to capture nature as God intended, because even in the most remote areas you are still dealing with planes flying over head.
In those recordings I definitely had to do some clean up work. On occasions you could hear a distant ambulance or the train passing by, or even the occasional hiker. It's funny, I am so far away, on top of a mountain, without a road or railroad in sight, yet the sound can travel so far.

What I did was set my phone to record, then I went off the path a little bit. I nestled my phone between some blades of grass so the grass can act like a wind-shield, and then I stepped away so hopefully any accidental shuffling I did was not captured by my phone.
Oh, and actually all this sound capturing was just a bonus. I didn't deliberately go out to capture this audio. I was actually just doing a hike through the mountain and was like, "this is peaceful...I want to save this sound."

@Ms Littlefish I'm not 100% sure what you are hearing and I can't watch my video right now to confirm those timestamps. I have either 2 different guesses.
1) It could be Nvidia ShadowPlay. I captured my desktop using it, but it's sound-capturing has aliased artifacts in it that make some of the higher frequencies really ugly.
2) It's a different bird. There are 2 types of birds in the positional audio. I had to look up their names because I needed a few more (cleaner) bird call samples from what I had recorded with my phone, so I found some samples. I don't remember their full name off the top of my head, but their (I don't know proper bird terminology) broad "classification" I remember!
My favorite bird (which to me has the most soothing call) is a warbler. Can you believe the website I got this information on classified this bird as "one of the top 10 ugliest birds"!?! I don't get bird watchers.
The second is a tit (Alice, the joke is too easy, you're better than that). This bird has a harsher "tzzt tzzt" call. I also think this bird is really cute, and I like it's energetic "tzzt" call.

Edit:
I looked it up again. My favorite is the Japanese Bush Warbler:

https://birdfinding.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/JapaneseBushWarbler6.jpg

And the Japanese Tit

https://static.thainationalparks.com/img/species/2020/08/24/396830/japanese-tit-w-1500.jpg

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Ah, could definitely be something like the capture! I don’t always hear it when that bird calls so it could easily just be the capture having a ~time~ at a particular level. @TheAM-Dol

 

[TheAM-Dol]

Yeah, sorry about that. I really hate ShadowPlay, but it's just so convenient for quickly capturing my desktop for a video. Just press the hotkey and you're off to the races, no need to launch an additional program.

 

[FoxInHiding]

I have dropbox. That is what I am using. So I can use that?

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Yeah! Of course! We’d just need to download the items, which I’m certain most people won’t mind. @FoxInHiding

Yeah, there are a lotta things out there that really alter the audio because of how it gets compressed and whatnot for streaming. It can be pretty frustrating because occasionally what I upload has a noticeable difference due to it…tho I imagine some of that is my inexperience with mixing and mastering as a whole. @TheAM-Dol

 

[FoxInHiding]

As far as I know the following link should grant you the needed rights:

dropbox
("musiclab_strings_slow.mp3")

That was created by me. It is kind of short. The idea was to create some kind of bgm that loops. I was considering using a piece like that for a dense jungle area.

As mentioned by Ms Littlefish any feedback is highly valuable to creators.
Do you think it is a misfit? Is it harassing your ears? Do you have advice/experience?

I theoretically have Cubase. In practice it is not making a single sound.
I know that it was working once because I tested my vocaloid and it worked.

Thanks for helping and have a nice day.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

@FoxInHiding So I’m assuming you’re probably working with MIDI data here. By both the sounds of the cello itself and the waveform, I have a feeling some of the velocity values right at the beginning differ quite a bit from the average of the selection shared here.

I’d say they either need to be brought in a bit closer to the rest of the notes or that the accented pattern needs to be carried throughout (or some combo of both since those three notes at the beginning really jump out).

 

[FoxInHiding]

@Ms Littlefish I am sorry but I do not understand very much of that.

Is it too loud? Do I need a limiter software or something?

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Velocity is a part of the MIDI data (values between 0-127) that instructs how hard the virtual note is being played. Other elements of the MIDI can instruct the overall loudness and expression of each note, but velocity is a major one.

Only those three notes are significantly louder than the others. They’re not “too loud” more so then they’re very different than the others. Before any processing effects like compression I would first check to make sure none of the velocity values associated with those notes are significantly deviant from the others.

I don’t know what you used to create this but nearly every music creation software has some sort of window to view and edit MIDI data. @FoxInHiding

 

[FoxInHiding]

That was a good explanation.
I think I cannot edit it where I made it, as it was a page. But I might be able to modify it in some way that takes what you call the three notes into consideration.

That said speed does not seem to be the issue but just lowering the three will not change the expression. My take on it.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Yeah, their timing is perfectly fine, it’s just dynamic and timbre of the notes. Is there a reason you didn’t create the MIDI directly in Cubase using the piano roll? It certainly can take a lot of getting used to everything a program like Cubase can do, but since you said you have it looking up some tutorials for which ever version you have on the piano roll should really help streamline the whole creation process for you. @FoxInHiding

OKies…figured I’ll finally jump in. This one I’ve tossed around a couple times but it’s kind of floating somewhere between mostly mixed and ready to master? I wanted some ears on it before I do a spit shine and some very light mastering.

 

[TheAM-Dol]

That said speed

I'm unsure if this is due to a translation error between German and English or if you are just misunderstanding. Velocity, in terms of MIDI, is not necessarily the speed of the notes, but more the speed of the instrument. For example, if you slow press down on the piano keys you get a soft note, but if you slam your fingers down on the piano you get a loud note. Velocity is the MIDI data that controls the speed the instrument is played, and it is a fundamental building block of digital music production and writing. I highly suggest you get familiar with MIDI and these fundamentals.

OKies…figured I’ll finally jump in.

I only gave it a single listen on my earbuds while I was waiting for the train. Not the most ideal listening conditions, but at least I had some in ears to listen closely.
The mix sounds pretty...well...how to put it...dry? But not dry in the sense of "Not enough effects." More as in, "Those instruments could use some lotion"
They are missing a little bit of their body, I think a little bump in the low-mid range might warm them up a little bit.
I was more distracted by the violin performance. I assume that is you playing since you're a violinist. Something about the performance feels artificial. At first, I thought it was a kontakt library because how how artificial it felt. It really seems like the performance is not very expressive and is very...hmm...single velocity.
The gliss notes really give this feeling to me the most. Like I feel like those notes should just be gently licked (maybe literally) instead of bowed at full velocity.
Finally, it sounded like the violin has been panned right a little bit - which is good! But my left ear feels a little lonely. I sort of wish the stereofield was a little bit wider. Don't pan things hard right/hard left, but maybe do provide some extra separation between the instruments to make things a little wider feeling.
With your current panning set up, I would pan the Celtics flute thing left, and leave the harp center.
Alternatively, you can pan the flute and harp to the side and put the violin center since it's sort of the "vocalist" of the song anyways.