Dear Garage Door: A Love Letter

February 18th, 2010 by zquarles

So, I started going through more field recordings from my parents’ place and came across several that are based around their garage door.

2_10_Garagedoor01

Sure, it’s not much to look at…but the thing has personality.   The first round of recording was during a really windy winter day, so I just set up the recorder, sat down in a corner and let it record for a bit.  After awhile, I started wandering around and opening some of the small windows to get more air movement in the space.  You’ll hear some traffic noise, a bit of me moving about, and maybe some wind-chimes way off in the distance…I didn’t clean it up nearly as much as I should, but you can hear some great metal/wood motion along with some secondary (and sometimes quite violent) movement.

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Now the next round is a bit more exciting (and a lot shorter of an audio file).  I opened and closed the garage door!

Lookin' good, Quarles
Lookin’ good.

Yes.  Please.  Contain your excitement.

Seriously though.  I have recorded this door many, many times (I think I even have some surround recordings of it).  Anytime I need some really big metal stress sounds, these are the things I reach for first.   Take a listen:

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I’d still like to get some DPAs in there to get a better stereo image…plus, I just need to use a recorder that’s a bit more rugged and has a cleaner signal in general.  I’m having to do quite a bit of cleanup on some of these older recordings.

Creaky Wooden Bed

January 9th, 2010 by zquarles

I went back to visit with my folks this last December (2009).   They always have cool stuff around their house and land that inspire some interesting recording projects, so I grabbed some of my gear and hit the road.

For this entry, I’ll focus on one of their louder noisemakers.  Their guest room bed.

12_09_Bed01

They’ve had this bed since before I was born and from what I understand, it’s over a hundred years old.  When they originally brought it home it was painted purple, so they stripped it down and restored it to its natural state.  It’s a beautiful bed that I have always loved…it’s also ridiculously comfortable.  Any time I sleep on it, I go into a coma and sleep for hours.

12_09_Bed02

The thing about this bed is that it is pretty much entirely made out of wood.  The only metal that is in this thing are the brackets and nails that hold some of the basic frame together, but it’s primarily held together with wood slot/key and its own weight.  Since it’s also so old, it is NOISY.  You move slightly and the whole thing shudders and groans.  It has a great sonic personality and I can *always* use wooden stress sounds, so I lodged my little Zoom H2 between a couple of the wooden planks underneath the bed (Shotgun mic wouldn’t really fit all that well…I’ll need to get some M/S recordings from behind the bed next time I’m up there) and just started pushing on top of the mattress.

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You can hear the wooden creaks and groans with secondary weight displacements of the wooden frame bearing stress and then releasing.

I’d be interested in using some contact mics on the underframe as well, but I didn’t bring any with me on this trip.  I’d also like to record it again with a wider stereo spectrum (maybe with some DPA 4061s or something), but for this particular clip, I’ll ultimately bounce it down to mono and create positional point loops out of it.

Acoustic Panel Construction

January 2nd, 2010 by zquarles

For anyone that is in the audio profession (or even hobbyist realm), you know that audio treatment for a mix/recording space can get pricey incredibly quickly.  I recently decided that I needed to treat my home studio but was keenly aware of just how expensive retail products can be (I’ve outfitted several studios with retail acoustic materials over the past decade).  I decided to do some research and came to a terrifying conclusion:  I Would Build My Own Acoustic Panels (or die trying)!

I looked around at multiple sites online and came across various methods and philosophies regarding acoustic panel construction.  After snooping around on the ATS Acoustics webpage for an evening (among several others), I decided that I’d construct six 2′x4′ panels using a 2″ rigid fiberglass material (http://www.atsacoustics.com/item–Owens-Corning-703-Case-of-6–1004.html).  I knew that I wanted to construct wooden frames to provide additional support and backing for the panels, because I have a tendency to move quite a bit and wanted to make sure that they were somewhat sturdy (or at least survive a move or three)…so a trip to Home Depot was also in order.

I ordered the fiberglass panels and wandered over to my local Home Depot to pick up some lumber and tools.  I settled on a fairly cheap 1×3 pine.  12 pieces at approx. 18 inches and 12 pieces at approx.  48 inches.  I decided I wanted to secure them with a mixture of wood glue and heavy duty staples, so I got them all glued up, clamped, and then used an electric staple gun to anchor them together.

I spent an evening constructing the frames, clamping them up, then letting them set and dry.  After letting them sit overnight, it was time to get the rigid fiberglass prepped.

It should be noted that if you are not accustomed to handling fiberglass, then make sure you wear some gloves.  Fiberglass has a tendency to shed and will embed itself into your fingers and hands.  It can be incredibly annoying to deal with.  Just look how much it sheds…

Next step was to lay out the rigid fiberglass panels and anchor the frames to their backs.

To secure the frames to the fiberglass, we used an adhesive spray.  It bonds incredibly quickly and can tear up the fiberglass if you let the frame adhere to the panel and then try to move them around.  Just plot out how you are going to secure the frames on there beforehand and move fast!

Make sure the adhesive is spread out evenly.  I basically set the frame right next to the panel, sprayed the frame, sprayed the edges of the panel, and with my brother’s help, centered the frame to the back of the panel and made sure it adhered evenly.

After repeating these steps, we stacked the panels on top of each other to lightly compress each frame to each panel.

Next up: Fabric.  Now there are a multitude of options you can explore when it comes to covering your panels.  You can even leave them like they are, if you so desire…but they can have a tendency to shed, can be uncomfortable when mounting them to your studio walls, and they just look pretty grody.  If you want to cover them with fabric, you can go online and spend quite a bit on the actual material and then a considerable fee for shipping, or you can just hit your local fabric store.

I picked up about six yards of a fairly premium black cotton material that is 57 inches wide for about four bucks a yard.  For my panels, the amount of fabric evens out to be roughly a yard of material per panel (with some buffer zone to work with).  I had it all measured out, cut into individual yards, and set to work.

It should be stated that this step in the process will benefit greatly if you have an extra set of hands to help you out.  Luckily, my brother was in town for a visit!  It’s not incredibly difficult to get the fabric on the panels itself, it’s just a bit of a pain in the ass to make sure it’s even and doesn’t fold on top of itself.  It’s very much like wrapping a large and unwieldy holiday gift…that will leave burrs in your skin.

Unfortunately, my brother and I are both terrible at wrapping gifts, so it was a bit of a comedy of errors.

After a few hours of grumbling, swearing, stapling, twisting, turning, beer drinking, and weeping…we got them all together.  I’ll probably investigate some sort of fabric tightening spray (maybe for artist canvases or something) to pull the folds out a bit more, but here are the pics of the panels before mounting them to the walls.

I put my banjo in the picture for a sense of scale

I put my banjo in for scale

I will more than likely build six more of these guys, along with a couple of bass traps.  The fabric stage was, without a doubt, the most time consuming process in this whole thing, but there are other options out there for those of you that don’t want to deal with that particular step. You can pick up acoustic bags and basically cram your panels in there, zip them up, and you’re done.  Just be aware that one bag can cost the same amount as the six yards of fabric that I purchased for these panels.

Actually as a break down, here are approximate costs for this project (I don’t have the receipts handy):

Six Rigid Fiberglass Panels + Shipping: ~$90.00
Lumber, Supplies, and Tools: ~$70.00
6 yards of fabric: ~$25.00

So you’re looking at six 2′x4′ acoustic panels for under $200.00.  That’s essentially the price tag of one or two panels at retail.

Moved!

December 7th, 2009 by zquarles

I have moved all my entries from the blogger.com account over to this one.  I’ve nuked a few of the older entries and might just clean the slate entirely at some point.  At any rate, this is where my blog now lives.

Happy Birthday, Quake ]|[

December 3rd, 2009 by zquarles

So yesterday was Quake ]|['s official 10 year anniversary...thought I'd put up a little note about it, because it holds quite a bit of significance for me.

Quake ]|[ will always make me think of when my brother and I shared a house together and we converted the dining room into a massive LAN and server area. We’d have friends come over to plug into our server and have Q3 tourneys. Besides that we were both on multiple Q3 mod teams, played Q1-3, Diablo, Interstate ‘76, and Mechwarrior2 obsessively.

This was the same house that I was living in when I got my first official job offer to work in the games industry (at Raven) with the Q3 engine. I think I still have the picture of the caller ID that says, “RAVEN SOFTWARE” somewhere on a hard-drive at home.

<3

Gamasutra article

January 29th, 2009 by zquarles

Gamasutra has published an article that I wrote which was based off of the Ducking entry from this blog.  Check it out!

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3917/game_audio_theory_ducking.php

Game Audio Theory: Ducking

September 7th, 2008 by zquarles

The following post was inspired by several conversations and practices that I’ve had over the years regarding the subject of “ducking” in video games. Sometimes people feel like this is an unnecessary feature in an audio engine, but given the unpredictable nature of player behavior, I feel it’s a bit foolish to dismiss it out of hand.

Oftentimes in movies, television shows, radio broadcasts, etc, etc…when important dialogue starts to play the rest of the audioscape (including sound effects and music) will be lowered in volume. This is called “ducking” and allows more headroom in the mix to provide important information to the listener that they may otherwise miss due to the complexity of what else is going on within the soundtrack at that particular time.

This is fine and dandy in a linear/time-locked medium like film, but when you’re in an interactive environment where “anything goes”, this becomes much more of a complicated issue. One thing that can be a common problem in today’s action games is “player fatigue”. Player fatigue can simply be described as “not giving the player a break”. This is basic game design philosophy that comes down to pacing, but audio can play a very significant role with this issue, primarily because if anything moves in the game world that has been created, then it will more than likely make a sound as well. If the action is relentless for too long, you can wear the player’s ears (and brain) out. If that happens then the following can easily occur:

1) Player turns down the volume (ew!)
2) Player stops playing the game (holy God no!)

So how does a development team avoid this? There are a myriad of elements that go into approaching this problem. In an ideal scenerio, the audio team would be involved with all level layout meetings (and continued status update meetings throughout the rest of the project) to help with audio “pace” throughout the game. Much like a great piece of music, a game has a “rhythm”. It has establishing motifs and themes, it has gradual builds and rising action, it has massive climaxes, it has denouements, and it has resolves. If it’s a constant climax, the player will be get exhausted and probably pretty frustrated after awhile.

In addition, as a project gets closer and closer to final “lock-down”, the more important it becomes that the audio department is aware of any changes that occur at the design level. For example, if a new battle encounter is added to a section of the game where there wasn’t one before, the “rhythm” of the level has now changed. The audio department needs to be able to go through the levels and do a “final mix” of the entire game from top to bottom after design has completed any major reworks to make sure that the “aural integrity” remains intact throughout the shipping process.

Besides having the audio team “in the know” of what’s going on from a game design standpoint, there are some basic system elements that need to be addressed. At the very top of the list would be “priorities”. There are certain sounds that are more important than others. A voice-over line that tell the player what they should be doing is far more insightful that a looping cricket call, for example. This is where a priority system comes into play. The human ear cannot distinguish hundreds of independent channels of audio at any given time. It becomes a wall of sound that player cannot discern, so there needs to be a limit put in place. Generally a set number of allowed simultaneous channels that can be played at any given time will be set at the beginning of the project by the programming staff. From there, different “sets” of sounds will be given different priorities. Meaning, the higher priority sounds will trump anything else that is playing through the mixer at that time. After the high priority sounds have finished playing, the lower pris will pick up where they left off. If the priority system is set up properly and the sound sets themselves are organized in an intelligent manner, the player will never know that certain sounds have stopped playing and started again.

The next subject that I’ll go over is the idea of bus hierarchy. Busses have multiple names: Sound Groups, Channel Groups, Volume Groups, SoundClasses, Event Categories, etc, etc, etc…for the purposes of this blog, I will refer to all of these as “busses”. Busses and sub-busses are essentially groups and sub-groups of certain types of sounds. We lump things together for two major reasons. One of them is purely for organizational purposes. The other and more practical reason is to be able to affect similar types of sounds all in one fell swoop. So if all of the player’s footsteps on all different types of substances (concrete, marble, grass, mud, snow, gravel, broken glass, etc, etc, etc…) have to be lowered in volume and pitch, we wouldn’t change the values on each individual sound, we’d do it on the Bus that the footsteps live in. This simplifies the process significantly and allows to a lesser margin of error when trying to trouble-shoot audio settings/volume tweaks.

Now we obviously need to make sure that the bus hierarchy is split up and grouped in a sensible way. We don’t want things to get messy, because it’ll circumvent what we’re trying to do; which is keeping things nice and tidy and ready for ducking!

Now here is a very basic but common bus hierarchy breakdown:

So, at the top of the chain you have the Master Bus. Think of this as your volume control on your TV. If you adjust this, you adjust everything in the mix. Then you just follow the chain down from sub-bus to sub-bus. You’d want to categorized similar types of sounds within the sub-busses…for example, you might want to put all physics based sounds in a sub bus under SFX and then all bullet impacts on a seperate sub bus under “weapons” which is also under SFX.

Now in terms of ducking (specifically ducking when voice over is occurring), you’d want to put all sounds that you do NOT want ducked in the same bus. For this example, we’ll put them all under the Story VO sub-bus under the Voice main.

So now, in theory, you’re all setup for ducking. The system would have to call whenever a file is triggered from the Story VO bus that all other busses would dip in a specified volume level. There are multiple additional tweaks to take into account…do you delay the playback of the actual file itself to allow the rest of the audio mixer to do a gradual fade down so you don’t get a drastic pop in the mix? Do you run a sidechain compressor on the Story VO bus? Do you have all of the sounds fade back up after the file is done or a quick pop?

A lot of these kinds of ideas are, of course, all dependent on the limitations of your technology and how robust you want the system to be. The provided bus hierarchy is extremely basic and has room to grow…but keep in mind if your system allows for growth, that you need to keep tabs on every sound in the game and which bus they all live in. This can get confusing if you break busses up at the micro level. So you’ll need to find a balance.

Anyway…there’s a quick intro into ducking and some common practices in approaching a solution.

This post got huge.

Special thanks to Dave, Paul, Ed, Chris and Adam for looking over everything and providing feedback!

Zoom H2: The Review

July 30th, 2008 by zquarles


A few weeks ago, I did a quick review of the Zoom H4; an affordable field recorder with XLR connections and on-board X/Y stereo spectrum mics.

This time around, I am reviewing the H4’s cousin, the H2!

Keep in mind that all reviews are based from a sound designer’s point of view unless otherwise noted.

The Zoom H2 is the next effort by Samson in the field recorder market. It’s a very small portable field recorder that has four (!) on-board microphones that can record up to four channel surround (2 stereo files) with a myriad of different options available to it. There are ports for headphones, line-in, and mini-plug external microphone ins. It comes with a few different accessories including: a foam wind guard, a table-top stand, a microphone adapter to use with a standard microphone stand, cables, etc, etc…

Initial impressions:
This thing is small!! I was very pleasantly surprise to discover that I can slip this easily in and out of my pants pocket without having to worry about what I’m going to bash in the process (whether on my person or in my pocket). It also feels satisfying in the hand. Sure it’s made out of plastic and by very nature, not remarkably rugged, but it feels compact and tight. It also just looks damn cool. This thing was made for stealth recording.

Navigation:
If you recall my review of the H4, you’ll remember that one of my peeves with the product was the menu navigation. It was a host of flimsy button/knob twists and turns on a UI that left something to be desired. I can definitely say that they have rectified this issue with the H2. The menus are easy to ready and you use the buttons on the primary face of the H2 to navigate through. Granted, you only use the left and right buttons of the crossbar, when it seems as though it would make more sense to use the Up and Down in conjunction with the Left and Right, but that’s a pretty minor nitpick. Setting your meter levels are cake now. You set the initial level (L/M/H) on the side of the gadget and then fine tune the levels with the |<< and >>| buttons after arming your track. Doesn’t get much easier, folks.

Sound:
Again, here’s the most important category and once again, the Zoom product line doesn’t fail to impress. The signal coming out of this thing is slick. The primary use for the H2 is ambient audio acquistion…meaning “atmospheric sounds”…the wind of a spring afternoon, the gentle rain showers in the city, etc, etc…It does all of this stuff pretty well, but it also has some surprising power with recording practical sound effects as well. I have recording my dog growling into the thing, I’ve recording breaking ceramic mugs, dropping items into a pot, and even hooked up contact mics and hydrophones to get a bit more involved. All of it sounded good. Here’s the thing with the H2: You have a wealth of options available to you when deciding on how you want to record something. You can only use the front microphones which give about a 90 degree field of audio, you can use only the rears which give about 180, or you can use both to get a 4.0 surround spectrum (some sites claim that you can use it to get 5.1, but that’s not true. It doesn’t record in 6 channel). This really opens up the brain to come creative source recording…couple that with some pretty damn good sounding mics and you have a great recorder in your hand.


Overall Pros:
+ Very convenient to carry and operate
+ Great sound
+ Plenty of options when deciding on how you want to record something

Overall Cons:
- No XLR/phantom availability. This greatly limits the sort of external microphone you can use
- Plastic design
- Can be a little sensitive to wind. You can either use the included foam windscreen or pick up a mini windjammer from Rycote. The model that fits the H4 will fit the H2 just fine
- Far too addicting

Final Thoughts:
This still will not replace your primary recorder, but it has two huge things going for it:
1) It’s quick and easy to start recording
2) It sounds great
Honestly, I haven’t had this much fun in years when recording in the field. I find myself taking the H2 with me wherever I go and have no qualms about running out the door when I hear something outside my window. I’ve also discovered that I have become pretty brave when trying to record something that might put the little guy in jeopardy. The price is so low, if something happened to it, I wouldn’t break the bank when replacing it. If you’ve been looking for something to record ambiences and maybe a little more, I highly recommend giving the H2 a hard look.

I’ll soon be adding some example sounds from both the H2 and the H4 (along with some sounds from some specialized microphones).

Zoom H4: The Review

July 1st, 2008 by zquarles

Apologies for not updating more frequently (I don’t even think anyone knows about this site, so it doesn’t really matter if I apologize or not. Mhuahahaa).

So next up is a review of Samson’s Zoom H4 (pictured left…obviously)!

Keep in mind that all reviews are based from a sound designer’s point of view unless otherwise noted.

The H4 is a little larger than a handheld device (I have small hands) with two internal mics in an X/Y stereo spectrum configuration. It runs on a couple of double-A batteries and writes to Secure Digital media (SD cards). It generally goes for about $299.00 depending on where you shop. You can find some pretty slick deals with bigger SD cards included with the price, so I’d definitely recommend shopping around.

There were two pretty big draws for me on this little guy. The number one draw was it’s external XLR connections…the second being the price tag on having this option. Generally in this price range you’ll find portable recorders with a mini plug input or if you’re lucky, a 1/4″ plug. It was pretty cool to find something that had XLR plugs where you could setup your own mic configuration if you so desired.

Initial impressions:
Now when I first took this thing out of the box, I thought to myself, “well, you get what you pay for”…This is not the sturdiest of field recorders. The body is plastic, the primary nav button feels like it will crush the innards of this thing if you press it too hard, the battery compartment is a pain to open and removing the SD card is an even bigger pain. Like I said earlier, I have small hands and it was very difficult to even squeeze my fingers in to get a firm hold on the SD card. Other people may want to just use a small set of pliers to pull the guy out of there.

That being said…this is a field recorder with a price tag of under $300.00. I can totally understand that it doesn’t have a steel casing with rotary knobs or something. So chalk it up to minor annoyance.

Navigation:
I should state right off the bat that getting in and starting to record is actually a pretty fast process. However, when you start diving into the more complex (using external mics, for example) features of the H4, I felt that the UI design left something to be desired. Again, I understand that the cost comes into play but the menus buried inside of menus and using a combition of the nav button and smallish wheel on the side of the unit was somewhat clumsy. However, when you do have your settings all ready, it is a matter of a couple of button presses and you’re off and recording. So if you’re not changing your configuration much in one session, it’s not that big of a deal.

It would probably be beneficial to take a look through the manual as you’re initially playing with the H4.

Sound:
Well, obviously this is the most important category! The Zoom H4’s internal mics have a surprising sensitivity to them and very nice stereo spread. The sound of the mics were actually quite good and definitely of a higher quality than I was expecting, especially at the price range. On the unit itself you have three gain presets: L/M/H (Low/Medium/High). This will give you a baseline setting of how you initially set your recording levels. You can fine-tune these by diving back into the menus and making adjustments from there. If you’re in a room with computers and dial it up to “H”, your headphones will be filled with the sounds of hard-drives, fans, and room tone. If you’re in a sound room with little noise, you’ll get a pretty clean signal. The mics don’t have much self-noise to them at all. Not too bad.

Now, with the sensitivity comes a bit of an issue, especially if you’re recording outside. The internal mics on the H4 pick up wind like no tomorrow. I’m talking a slight breeze will start to blow the mics out. The included foam wind screen is fairly worthless, so you might have to fashion something for yourself or get a third party option like Rycote’s mini windjammer:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/528848-REG/Rycote_055355

Believe me…you’ll definitely want something. It’s a bit of a pain otherwise.


Overall Pros:
+ XLR connections to use pretty much any external microphone
+ Surprisingly good internal mics
+ Great price

Overall Cons:
- Feels pretty flimsy and cheap
- Klunky interface and menu design
- Very sensitive to wind

Final Thoughts:
While I probably wouldn’t make this a primary field recorder for the sound designer, it is a very handy tool to have within reach. You can get things up and running quickly (especially if you’re using the internals), the sound quality is pretty damn good (I’m always of the opinion of getting the source before the opportunity disappears as opposed to having the cleanest signal ever…you can always do some surgery in post) and if something happens to it, you won’t break the bank having to replace it.

Next up…the Zoom H4’s cousin; the Zoom H2!