Good audio/sound effect guides/documentation?

[destron]

Hey -

I'm currently looking for some beginning guides to audio and sound effect production - just little stuff like:

1. General guides
2. Fabricating sounds (From scratch maybe?)
3. Setting up a workstation
4. Editing and synth information

Stuff like that.
I tried using google but I don't know what to search for.
If you guys know of any articles/websites that might help, please post them.

Thanks in advance

//destron

[PoV]

I'm not really sure such a guide for sound effects exists. After all, the "Audio Guy" job is incredibly competative. I think the closest you'll get is by simply hunting down music software, and more or less reading it's documentation, and playing. There are communities out there on audio (music) production, that delve in to details about mixing and mastering. For general sound tips, I suppose there's DVD special features of movies. I recall a Jurassic Park one from way back in the day that talked about combining several animals sqeals to produce the T-Rex roar.

There are many places you could start. If you need suggestions for software, I'm sure they're be several people with them.

[Diragor]

You can probably pick up some good advice on setting up a workstation and editing/synth info here: http://homerecording.org/bbs/ . Look in the "computer recording" part of the forum and in the various software-specific forums (although there are several great apps that are not represented by their own forum). Personally, I like Cubase SX for multi-track recording and mixing and I prefer Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro) for editing.

I think PoV is right about creating sound effects. The best thing you could do is get some good software and play around with it. Get a mic or two and record various things, throw it into the software and mess with it, combine it with other sounds. If you want to search for advice on the topic of creating sound effects from scratch, the Wikipedia article on "foley artist" looks like a pretty good first step: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_artist .

[Bad Sector]

Making sound is like drawing: you have to combine primitive sounds/shapes to form complex ones. To learn how to do that, you must learn to do the opposite: decompose complex sounds/shapes to primitives.

A simple (possibly crude) example that comes from my mind: a shotgun can be "emulated" using a drum "bang" (which can be achieved by banging a big pot and applying a lowpass filter), plus some noise. The 'click-clack' sound can be achieved by sticking two big switches like this one (http://www.electronicproducts.com/images2/C69CLHRE0205.gif) (must be two to simulate the slight echo) and toggling them twice (once for each "clack").

And keep in mind that if something alone doesn't sound quite right (i doubt the above "shotgun" sounds like a real one), it will be blended with other sounds in your game, so you won't notice it. Besides, very few people notice that most of DOOM's monster sounds are low-pitched dog barks :-P.

[destron]

First, I would like to thank you three for your help.

Anyway, onwards...
You can probably pick up some good advice on setting up a workstation and editing/synth info here: http://homerecording.org/bbs/ .
Wow, thanks - that site has some good stuff.
For general sound tips, I suppose there's DVD special features of movies. I recall a Jurassic Park one from way back in the day that talked about combining several animals sqeals to produce the T-Rex roar.
Yes! I love the special features on the Lord of the Rings Extended DvD's - some very nice stuff there. I'm also downloading a couple more of the King Kong production diaries on sound design which I had missed, although for the movie they are out-of-date.
There are many places you could start. If you need suggestions for software, I'm sure they're be several people with them.
Very yes! I just found out about a great site - http://www.filmsound.org/ - which has some Game Audio articles. And I imagine that the articles for sound in films are just as useful.
As for tools - there's no question about it. I use Audacity, the best free audio editor out there. That is, until I can afford a better program like Sound Forge or something.

Bad Sector - some good ideas there, that's what I'm trying to work on currently - misc. game sounds - guns, monsters, powerups, etc.
I've found that instead of using sounds of animals for monsters, it's better to record yourself doing funny growls and stuff and then "muck around" with them in an audio editor.
As for the doom sounds - you can tell that iD Software used a few un-edited stock sound effects - I few months ago I found out that one of the soldier dying sounds was actually a camel sound, which I have seen used in other games. xD

[Bad Sector]

Well, ok i didn't knew that about the Camel, but i bet that back in 1993 nobody could know it - today with Google and friends, its much easier to find that stuff :-).

[destron]

Yeah, I only know it now because I heard the same sound used in Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, so I probably wouldn't have noticed in 1993, not only because we didn't have Google or whatever, but because I was only one year old. :eek: