In-game audio recording?

[Anonymous]

Hi, I couldnt see a search option on the forums so I thought I’d just post my question instead.

In broad terms, where do the majority of major games developers (Irish or otherwise) record/programme the audio for the games?

By audio I mean music, voiceovers, sound effects, everything!

Do most do it in house, i.e. have their own studio(s) and recording setups?

Or do they use outside studios? And if so can anyone tell me which studios are popular/get the majority of the work?

Thanks, barry.

[Anonymous]

Hi Barry,

Sorry cant answer your question but just wanted to let you know that there is a search function for the forum. It can be found on the bottom right-hand corner of the home page.

[Anonymous]

Hard to answer…depends on the studio.
Majority will code their own system.
As for the actual audio, some will be in-house, some will be out-sourced, it will depend on the studio and the resources that they have.

[Anonymous]

Most audio coding is done in house.

Most sound effect\music\voiceover is outsourced to a prodution company.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the responses lads.

I work in a post production/mastering studio, and this is an area we’re looking at getting into. There doesnt seem to be much info on it around though.

I presume most of the sfx/vocals/music are done ‘wild’, as in not synced up to graphics/animation?

So the finished lines or sfx are then returned to the developer as wav’s or whatever format they need?

Is there a main studio in Ireland that handles the bulk of this work?

[Anonymous]

Is there a main studio in Ireland that handles the bulk of this work?[/quote:2c2ac1a8b2]
Probably not seeing as theres few games companies in Ireland publishing, talk to Claire F. on the forums she didnt some audio engineering for Instincts AMD demo “dreadnought”.

[Anonymous]

Hey Barry,

It varies, but there is a constant in that most dev houses will have some inhouse audio designers because of the major task that is integration.

Integration is quite a skill in itself, i’ve played many a game with great sounds, good music and decent dialogue but how it was implemented and mixed left a lot to be desired! Alot could possibly be down to technology-decent tools for audio integration are thin on the ground, and while its slowly changing, programmers are invariably found somewhere in the audio integration pipeline!! uh-oh!!

Creation of game audio does have its own set of ‘rules’ compared to post-prod. Game audio, in terms of fidelity, is pretty high in these days of next-gen – 48KHz, 16bit for the 360 for example, so its all neumanns, nice preamps and clean signals, but knowing how the audio will be implemented will drive how its recorded and edited. Foley recording for games is a tad different from PP stuff for example, and animations can be very specific because your dealing with looping, and triggering from key frames and multiple files triggered from 3D points from scripts etc etc.

Devs do tend to use a lot of outsourcing, especially music and dialogue and more and more sound design, simply because there are more PP houses who know and understand the specifics of creating sound for games, with inhouse audio designers, like me, creating audio and becoming an aggregator and integrator of outsourced audio.

jeese my eyes are all blurry so i’ll yield.

DRMY

[Anonymous]

Barry,

check out the Game Audio Network Guild (GANG) @ http://www.audiogang.org/

Also, have a trawl through the Audio forums on the IGDA site: http://www.igda.org/Forums/forumdisplay.php?s=98dc5e6252af177779d4f084e6efc173&forumid=31

[Author]

Posts