Plan for Brian Wells
by Brian Wells · 03/14/2005 (5:38 pm) · 5 comments
I am not an audiophile. Not that there is anything wrong with being an audiophile. I can think of many other types of *phile I would not want to be. So if you are audiophile, take that as an indirect compliment. What I can directly say is that I have great respect for those who edit and create audio content. Especially since I have been doing some voiceover work for a project in progress.
I have been creating character voices by in part using my own voice, and in part altering with pitch/amplitude changes. This seems to work pretty good to make the voices sound different from how I usually sound. It is actually extremely intimidating to think that your voice will be most of the voices used. If you are embarrassed to speak in public, imagine that amplified by the fact that you are intentionally making a stupid voice.
If anyone reading this has any industry or personal experience editing audio, I have a few questions:
1) I have a pretty good quality digital mic, but I seem to always get a background "white noise" sound. Are there filters available for Audacity or Audition to remove these? I did the "noise cancel" thing but it seems to affect the voice as well as the noise.
2) The audio files all seem to have different volumes. Can I normalize a set of audio clips so that they are all roughly the same volume? How?
Overall I think the recordings came out pretty well for being done on a computer mic by an amateur, but I am always looking to improve things. I don't really want to do audio work as a hobby or anything, but I think Indies should be at least somewhat "jacks of all trades". I am sure that not purchasing studio time will save us huge chunks of change.
I also like the idea of having a lot of original voice content in an Indie game. It seems to add an extra dimension that most games lack when they leave out voice work. Well, we will see at least.
P.S. I wet myself when I saw the TSE water/terrain screenshots the other day. I know I can not be the only one that had to change my jockeys early that afternoon...
I have been creating character voices by in part using my own voice, and in part altering with pitch/amplitude changes. This seems to work pretty good to make the voices sound different from how I usually sound. It is actually extremely intimidating to think that your voice will be most of the voices used. If you are embarrassed to speak in public, imagine that amplified by the fact that you are intentionally making a stupid voice.
If anyone reading this has any industry or personal experience editing audio, I have a few questions:
1) I have a pretty good quality digital mic, but I seem to always get a background "white noise" sound. Are there filters available for Audacity or Audition to remove these? I did the "noise cancel" thing but it seems to affect the voice as well as the noise.
2) The audio files all seem to have different volumes. Can I normalize a set of audio clips so that they are all roughly the same volume? How?
Overall I think the recordings came out pretty well for being done on a computer mic by an amateur, but I am always looking to improve things. I don't really want to do audio work as a hobby or anything, but I think Indies should be at least somewhat "jacks of all trades". I am sure that not purchasing studio time will save us huge chunks of change.
I also like the idea of having a lot of original voice content in an Indie game. It seems to add an extra dimension that most games lack when they leave out voice work. Well, we will see at least.
P.S. I wet myself when I saw the TSE water/terrain screenshots the other day. I know I can not be the only one that had to change my jockeys early that afternoon...
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#2
No I didn't know that...that makes sense why it is messing up the whole file. I will try it, thanks! I am pretty new to sound recording in general. I have done a lot of computer generating, but actual recording has so many quirks!
03/14/2005 (11:13 pm)
@ VernonNo I didn't know that...that makes sense why it is messing up the whole file. I will try it, thanks! I am pretty new to sound recording in general. I have done a lot of computer generating, but actual recording has so many quirks!
#3
1 - When recording, make sure that evreything is set to "mute" on your mixer, except the mic. You maybe have a line in or something that is making the noise.
2 - They're is a lot of programs that can normalize your sound. Wavelab is an example, but there is others.
03/15/2005 (5:30 am)
Bryan,1 - When recording, make sure that evreything is set to "mute" on your mixer, except the mic. You maybe have a line in or something that is making the noise.
2 - They're is a lot of programs that can normalize your sound. Wavelab is an example, but there is others.
#4
03/15/2005 (7:50 am)
Sounds like you're having fun! Just keep an eye on audio file sizes if you want the game to be downloadable.
#5
03/15/2005 (10:39 am)
We plan to have a separate audio download for those that buy the game. That way people decide themselves. Maybe even a low quality/high quality download.
Torque Owner Vernon Finch
You may have already known that, but I worked with a guy editing audio and he was doing it wrong by just running the noise removal over the entire file without first creating a sample.
That was the only noise removal process we used and it worked fine for us. I'm no expert however.