Sound Presentation
To start off this Unit, we were tasked to get into groups and create a presentation giving basic information about sounds. Here are the slides of the presentation I created:
Here, I created my song for my epik video game. These pics are proof!
Editing recordings:
I then had also made some sound effects with a microphone and some random house-hold objects. This one picture shows how one of my edited audio sound effects has been applied to my game. It only plays on cue, unlike the game song which is constant in the background.
Sound
Essay
To
begin this sound document, it only makes sense to begin with explaining what
sound actually is. Sound is in the form of waves, otherwise known as sound
waves. Sound waves consist of continuous variations in air pressure.
Representations of these signals can be recorded using either digital or analog
techniques.
I
think the best way to illustrate sound waves would be through images than just
trying to explain them through text. This is the, let’s say, scientific part of
the essay. There are some rather confusing looking graphs out there for those
who are just learning about sound, but here are a few simple ones I found that
show us how different sounds waves look:
This
graph shows amplitude over time. “Amplitude is
directly related to the acoustic energy or intensity of a sound. Both
amplitude and intensity are related to sound's power. All three of these characteristics have their own related
standardized measurements… Amplitude is measured in
the amount of force applied over an area. The most common unit of
measurement of force applied to an area for acoustic study is the Newtons per
square meter (N/m2).” - http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/acoustics/amplitude.htm
- 05/03/14
All
well and good, but how is sound used in interactive media? It provides many
attributes to the media, but most importantly (I think) it’s to simulate
reality.
“The
simulation of reality can be something as small but distinctive as the sound of
a door opening and closing on the Starship Enterprise, to the extremely complex
creation of a language for the Star Wars series' Ewoks.” - http://www.infoplease.com/cig/movies-flicks-film/sound-effects-functions.html - 05/03/14
Sometimes
the reality that sound creates is so compelling that even though it contradicts
what we know to be scientifically true, we believe it anyway. Though we know,
for example, that because space is a vacuum sound cannot travel in it, we are
still utterly compelled by the sounds of intergalactic battle or just
spaceships traveling at warp speed in nearly every space opera produced since
the creation of Buck Rogers in the 1930s. And gunshots never sound as
satisfyingly long or loud in real life as they do in Dolby with the bass
cranked way up (not dropped).
“Up
to 40% of a film’s emotional impact is being caused by its music.” I have
forgotten when I first heard/read this quote so I’m not sure who originally
said it, but as 40% is such a significant statistic I felt it best be mentioned
here.
As
sound editor Marvin M. Kerner says in The Art of the Sound Effects Editor,
"the function of sound effects is three-fold:
•
To simulate reality.
•
To add or create something off scene that is not really
there.
•
To help the director create a mood.
-
At
the start of this essay I mentioned there were different types of recording
sound so, what is the difference between analogue audio and digital? “It all has to do with
how you record a sound. An analog recording copies sound as a continuous
electronic signal. A graph of an analog signal might look like this.”
Today,
advances in analog-to-digital conversion methods have improved the quality of
digital recordings. Some people say that high sampling rates and increased
precision have erased any distinction between digital and analog. Others
disagree, sometimes passionately. There's a sizeable population of
‘audiophiles’ - people who want the highest quality in sound systems possible.
They tend to insist that analog systems provide a better sound.
“Generally,
the air pressure variations are first converted (by a transducer such as a
microphone) into an electrical analog signal in which either the instantaneous
voltage or current is directly proportional to the instantaneous air pressure
(or is a function of the pressure). The variations of the electrical signal in
turn are converted to variations in the recording medium by a recording machine
such as a tape recorder or record cutter—the variable property of the medium is
modulated by the signal.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_analog_and_digital_recording - 05/03/14
Two
prominent differences in functionality are the bandwidth and the
signal-to-noise ratio (S/N); however, both digital and analog systems have
inherent strengths and weaknesses. The bandwidth of an analog system is
dependent by the physical capabilities of the analog circuits. The bit depth of
the digitization process first limits the S/N of a digital system, but the
electronic implementation of the digital audio circuit introduces additional
noise. In an analog system, other natural analog noise sources exist, such as
flicker noise and imperfections in the recording medium.
A
digital recording is produced by converting the physical properties of the
original sound into a sequence of numbers. This sequence of numbers can then be
stored on devices such as a computer hard drive, which can then be read back to
create this sound once again.
To
finish off this document, I leave you with one last quote, one that again, I
cannot recall where first I read it but that doesn’t take away from its
importance. “There is no substitute for live music and the difference real
orchestral music can make can never be underestimated.”
