Jake Atkinson's blog

sound design and production

Audio limitations

    There are many limitations to audio some of which were apparent some 20 years ago and are still limiting our current audio now. One of the main limitations back on older generations of consoles was the bit rate as it was much lower than today’s consoles, this meant that the amount of data for audio was incredibly lower and couldn’t keep up with the amount of data that was in a full song, so it was limited to just having simple bleeps and other notes in a certain tune. Another limitation in old generation consoles is that they didn’t have enough space on the storage format to hold a long song so it would just have a small sample of different sound effects and repeated tunes that went along with the game such as Mario and other classics. On newer generations of consoles there is a much larger amount of data that comes with audio; with many different sound effects and full music tracks that take up a large capacity but this is only possible because of the increased capacity on the storage device. This was because of the audio format which was such a small file that it could fit onto the storage device these files were midi files and would only take up a about 3-5kb this was ideal for the time as it there was only a few Mb on a storage device.  Speakers were not that advanced as they are now this could also have limited the sounds in games as the quality and projection of the sound was not to such a high quality as most houses would just use the speakers from their TV which mainly consisted of 1 or 2 small speakers with low watt this means that the speakers didn’t have as much power in then to produce as such a high range of sound, speakers today have 5.1 surround sound that gives the impression of 3D sound that allows you to here what is behind you on games this makes the game more immersive because of the extra sense.

Sega mega drive spec:

Processor:	Motorola 68000 16/32-bit processor running at 7.67 MHz
Memory:	64K work RAM (68000), 64K video RAM, 8K work RAM (Z80)
Sound:	Yamaha YM2612 5 channel FM and 1 channel FM/PCM, Texas Instruments SN76489 4 channel PSG (Programmable Sound Generator)

Sony Playstation 3 spec:

Processor:	PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz 1 VMX vector unit per core 512KB L2 cache
Memory:	256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
Sound:	Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell-base processing)

 

Sound file formats

                  Lossless compression files

    A lossless format allows you to store data in a smaller space by removing unneeded data. It requires more processing power to compress and uncompress the file.

Uncompressed audio files encode both sound and silence with the same number of bits per unit of time. And uncompressed minute of silence produces a file of the same size as a minute of a symphonic orchestra. In a lossless format the music occupies a smaller portion of the file and makes silence take up nearly no space whatsoever.

Lossless formats enable the original uncompressed data to be recreated exactly. They include the common FLAC, WavPack, ALAC and their files take up half the space of the originals.

 

                  Uncompressed audio files

    An uncompressed file format is usually stored in a .wav file or a .aiff file depending on the OS (operating system) of the computer.

The primary format ised by many professional audio workstations in TV and film is the BWF (Broadcast Wave Format) which was created to be the successor of the .wav file. BWF files include a standardized Timestamp reference, which allows for easy synchronisation.

 

                  Lossy Compressed files

    Lossy compression allows far greater file size reduction by removing some of the data. The main technique in doing this is to remove data with minimal reduction in the quality of the sound. The most popular format for lossy compression is the MP3 format which is the most popular and common file type used in audio.

 

 Audio environment

 

                  3D Audio environment

    Audio has been important in games since near the beginning in which it was compromised of a few 8-bit bleeps and computerised sounds over the course of the years audio in games has increased from these bleeps to form full-length music files with high quality songs this is mainly to do with the capability of the consoles and disks/cartridges they are stored/played on, but over the years people have been working from the stereo format that allows the human ear to differentiate left from right to adapt it so that the person hearing the sound can almost pin point the exact location the sound is coming from, this is done via special speaker, unlike your normal surround sound these speakers cone project audio across the room instead of making it seam as its coming from a speaker.

 

Audio sampling

    Because of the compatibility of 8-bit consoles and the size of the storage format there was very little space to fit the audio track on so they were generally only a short audio clip that was repeated on a loop, it was only in about the 16-bit era that consoles had the capability to include a variety of sound effects and audio tracks this revolutionised sound in games and began the incline of sound effects and audio in games, as consoles/computers increased their capability the audio was much more accessible to use on games, take the current generation of consoles and listen carefully to what sounds you can hear and listen to the clarity of the sound effects and audio tracks here are 2 of the same tracks one developed for a 8-bit console and one developed for a 64-bit console.

 

Street Fighter II - Guile Stage theme in 8-bit

Street fighter 2 size of mp3: 556KB actual audio would be smaller and most likely in a PCM file format

 

Street Fighter IV - Guile s Stage Theme *HQ*

Street fighter 4 – size of mp3: 4.1MB actual audio would be larger and most likely in a WAV file format

 

 

The use of sound in vidoe games.

Psychology of music in games:

Sound can be very important in many ways as music is a powerful median in games that can create such a variety of moods and atmospheres in games. In the past games had music that was recognisable as a theme that allowed you to allocate that sound to a game as sound back then was limited to such a small size, but in games today sound is much more diverse and acute as there can be 3 -6 different sounds in 1 sound such as a footstep which varies on the speed the character is moving the terrain the character is on and the weather in the game.

There are different types of game music the, up beat cheerful type, the dark horror, the fantasy, the sci-fi and the retro. Each of these music themes can be easily depicted from one another and they each fit in with the style of game that there are with because you wouldn’t have a horror game with up beat happy music you would want it to set the mood and cause the player to feel insecure frightened and cautious.

 

The sources of sound:

There are many ways to create the sounds for games you could get the actual item you want to record or you can imitate it these imitations are made by using foley artists foley artists get everyday objects and make them sound like other things such as you can make the sound of a horse trotting with two halves of a coconut. With foley art there is an infinite variety of sounds as you can make sounds that imitate the actual action or object

 

Game music:

Music has a large effect on games even back when there were only a few different notes in a loop you could still define what the game was and what style of game it is, but even now when there is music on games that have such a variety of different sound effects and music you can still depict what the genre of game is this enhances the gameplay as it immerses the player into the game more buy taking up more senses if there was a game that involved all 5 senses the player would be living another life