Discover the latest industry news and audio post production.
Mindful Audio's new library WW2 Aircraft takes flight, with recordings of rare and wonderful aerial vehicles.
November 23, 2021
Company: Mindful Audio
Product: WW2 Aircraft
Price: $80
Our Rating: 4.7/5
This library was recorded at 96kHz 24Bit WAV with high end equipment: Sennheiser MKH8040 and MKH416 microphones, Sony PCM D100 and Sound Devices 633 recorders.
Upon opening our review copy, we were happy to find a clean and clear file structure. Folders for photos, sounds, demos and documents are featured, including a thank you document with contact details for support - a nod to Mindful Audio's great customer service. We started to use the library on a project to put it though it's paces.
10+ vehicles are featured, which must have been difficult and time consuming to setup and capture to this extent. More than 96 minutes of content in 59 files - impressive. Metadata is also included, although the nature of this library lends itself more to users navigating the sometimes lengthy files to find sweet spots for tracklaying. Mindful Audio have also informed us that they offer free lifetime upgrades for this product, with new recordings already captured ready for releease in the future.
The artwork is nice, but it would have been better to have a darker themed background and warlike font to match the vibe of the library.
The first thing to say about this library is that the selection of planes is wonderful. They each have a character of their own and are named according to model, allowing users to pick a German or American plane for instance, in their battle designs.
The movements and textures the planes create are really soothing to the ear, and they feel natural within a warzone. They don't have an over designed aesthetic, which allows each plane's engine to tell a story that viewers will recall throughout the length of your projects.
The fly-bys are exquisite, and could definitely be useful for Sci-Fi sound design as well as their intended use with the high sample rate on offer. The natural phasing and flanging that is occurring here is so addictive to listen to, you'll find yourself wanting to overuse the library!
The overall tonality of the sounds is quite midrange focused, which lends itself well to the film and game genres you will require them for. Mindful Audio clearly focused on accuracy here rather than Hollywood, over-hyped war planes, leaving more options for the end user.
We have already started implementing some of the distant planes into a WW2 Drama film we are working on with great results, which correlate with the project's harsh reality and coldness.
There isn't much criticism to be given for this product, it serves it's purpose well and is a historically accurate representation of multiple vehicles that many Sound Designers will need and use.
It is worth mentioning that some vehicles have less files and content than others. Thankfully, the good ol' Spitfires are covered extensively, perhaps a sign of great British engineering? It would also have made sense to put each vehicle into it's own folder, for the sake of file navigation, but this cane be arranged rather quickly.
The price of $80 really is a steal for your clients working on war movies, considering a recording session for one day alone with these beauties would set them back much, much more than that. You can even get some free sounds from the links provided below to hear for yourself how you can transport viewers to wartimes of the past with WW2 Aircraft!
Are you working on a WW2 film, or looking for spaceship design and movement layers? This product is for you and is a bargain.
Get a FREE WW2 Aircraft Sound 1
For this week’s post we decided to explore and create the retro-futuristic aesthetic of Synthwave.
November 23, 2021
The photo above shows a city in the late evening, glowing with thousands of small light sources increasing in density towards the horizon. The highlight of this image is the red and white trails of light twisting and turning off into the distance, almost like streams of energy running through the landscape. It gives off a somewhat futuristic vibe as these ominous yet vibrant energy streams flow, untethered to the physical world. We wanted to represent this feeling in the form of a music track, that’s why for this week’s post we decided to explore and create the retro-futuristic aesthetic of Synthwave.
Synthwave is a genre that draws heavy inspiration from music and soundtracks from the 1980’s, it’s aesthetically infused with vibrant neon colours and night life culture, and perfect for listening to while driving in a car at night. Its attempts to sonically represent the concept of ‘cool’ and ‘nostalgic’ calls back to those movies in the 80’s where synthesizers and drum machines featured heavily in the creation of their soundtracks. In this post, we’re going to break down how we created a track inspired by this aesthetic.
First, we began with the most important element of this track, the bass. The sound consists of a saw wave being passed through a low pass filter with a fast envelope applied to give the sound its attack. Effects were added such as a flanger, a chorus, a small amount of distortion, a short reverb and a dimension expander to give the sound some subtle width. The purpose of the flanger and chorus was to add slow textural movement to the bass to keep it interesting. A multiband compressor was used to balance the bass and high end of the sound and a subtle EQ was used to control the frequency content more surgically. The result sounded close to bass commonly heard in the Synthwave genre.
After the bass sound was completed we moved on to the drums, the kick and snare were samples taken from a LinnDrum, a drum machine that was manufactured in the 1980’s. The kick sounded good without any processing, however a small amount of EQ was applied to accentuate the thump and transient of the sample. The snare required much more work to fit it to the track, the LinnDrum sample was lacking in presence and had a soft transient, therefore a separate snare was high passed and layered over the top to add what the initial sample was missing, post processing began with a compressor to add more of a snap to the sound, as well as a transient shaper to increase the attack and decrease the sustain by a very small amount. A combination of algorithmic and convolution reverbs were used, then gated to cut the tail just before each kick. The gated reverb technique was very commonly used in the 80’s for snare sounds, they are an excellent way of filling empty space within a track without letting the reverb bleed into other elements, such as the kick drum. For transitions, we used a simple sweeping white noise riser with a high passed EQ, convolution reverb and a delay.
For the pad sound, pulsewidth modulation (PWM) was used to create a supersaw-like sound with two square (pulse) waves detuned slightly. The PWM utilised two LFOs looping at different speeds to control the width of the square waves independently of one another, this gave the sound some timbral movement to prevent it from becoming too repetitive to the ear. A low pass filter was used with an envelope applied to give the sound more of a stab quality, this also prevented the high end of the sound from ringing out for too long, as well as adding dynamics to the sound.
The final musical element for this piece was the lead, this was made with two detuned saw waves with a low pass filter, the filter was modulated by an envelope in the same way as the pad, however the resonance was dialled to a higher value to give the sound a sort of brassy texture, like a synthesised trumpet. The effects used for this synth were a flanger, a dimension expander, a chorus, delay and reverb, with a multiband compressor and EQ for processing. A technique was used to achieve a pumping delay effect with the use of sidechaining. The synth was routed to two different mixer channels, one of the channels contained the final sound, while another contained the same sound but with a delay effect added with 100% wetness. The signal from the former channel was used as a sidechain trigger for a compressor on the latter channel, which meant that whenever the original synth was playing, the level of the delay is reduced to near silence, however when the synth stops, the sidechain releases and the delayed signal increases in level, so the delay is only present whenever the original sound is not being triggered.
Check back next week for part 2, where we explain how the introductory soundscape for the track came together, how it was inspired by the image above, and some thoughts on the composition of the music track.
Part 2 of Audio In Pictures – Sounds of the 80’s
November 23, 2021
If you haven’t read part 1 of this post, please check it out here.
For the introduction, we made a soundscape to establish a visual mood. It starts with repeating footsteps on a hard surface, this was to recreate a person walking on solid concrete. Furthermore, this sound was sent to a convolution reverb, making it appear as though it was recorded in a car park. As the footsteps progress towards their destination, the convolution reverb gets drier, as if the listener were stood beside the person walking to their vehicle.
The main track was processed with subtle distortion and EQ to sound as though it was playing in a card radio, additionally, the convolution reverb used for the footsteps was also used on other elements, becoming dryer as the scene focuses in more. We really felt like this kind of soundscape worked well to introduce the track, Synthwave is commonly associated with nightlife and cars, so we wanted to depict the audio equivalent of a silent night with a person's short journey, ready to take a ride through the empty streets.
In terms of composition, we felt that the bass held the most importance within this track, it is the driving force behind the rhythm. Playing at consistent 1/16 notes, the bass keeps a simple steady pulse throughout the entire track. Even though sometimes it deviates in terms of notes used, the rhythm remains the same. This simplicity allows the rhythm to be felt more by the listener, it’s easier for them to understand the flow of the track. Furthermore, the bass accentuates the kick and snare, letting you know exactly when each drum is about to hit. We also felt that the use of steady notes implies movement, which fits perfectly with the scene of a car driving at night.
We worked hard to create sounds that reflect the visual aesthetic of Synthwave and 80’s culture. Matching soundtracks to specific stylised moods is a fun challenge which we always enjoy!
A collaboration of efforts from both Soundbits and Monte Sound, Artificial Intelligence contains 2800 synthetically processed vocalisations of Sci-Fi inspired dialogue that can be used to piece together voices for robots and computers.
November 23, 2021
Company: Soundbits and Monte Sound
Product: Artificial intelligence
Price: $60
Our Rating: 4.6/5
On opening our copy of Artificial Intelligence, we were presented with the promotional images, as well as a PDF list of all the sounds within the pack, each sound metadata tagged and categorised appropriately. Furthermore, the product contains a “Sounds” folder which holds six subfolders, each containing a unique voice with the recordings split into 6 categories, these are: Numbers and Letters, Phrases, Single-Words-Adverbs-Adjectives, Single-Words-Nouns, Single-Words-Prepositions and finally Single-Words-Verbs. When downloading the pack from the Soundbits website, they offer the choice of having 24bit 96kHz WAV or 16bit 44.1kHz WAV audio files for greater flexibility, the license agreement also being available in the downloads section.
Our first impressions of this sample library were very positive, the recordings were of a very high quality, and the frequency content of each voice is balanced well. What is particularly impressive is that the sounds are all ready to be placed into a project without much need for post processing. The phrases category allows the user to instantly place dialogue into a scene without going through the effort of recording and processing their own synthetic voices for their characters. Furthermore, the sheer number of different words recorded would allow the user to create their own lines of dialogue just by piecing together individual nouns, adjectives, prepositions, numbers and verbs.
Regarding how successful the sounds are at achieving synthetic voices, we think SoundBits and Monte Sound have done very well in establishing that the dialogue is coming from an artificial source. Even though some of the nuances of human speech are still perceived in the recordings, the post processing has been successful in giving them a robotic feel, with the speech patterns adding somewhat of a personality to each voice. This also matches with the current trend in films, which is to have Sci-Fi sounds more grounded in reality.
The performances from each 'character' included sound great. We especially liked the Anne Droid character, a perfect blend of a neutral accent and 'at your service' attitude. With multiple male and female voices here, you certainly won't be stuck for choice when building your phrases and scenes.
Another way to get more use out of this library, is to use it as a word builder. Simply load the WAV files into your sampler of choice, and play up and down the keyboard to create sentences and form scripts for your Sci-Fi voice talent. We have also been informed that additional mini packs may soon be available with extra words, to further add to the flexibility.
While the library has a huge amount of dialogue options, the amount of flexibility given towards processing the voices could be better. Some of the voices are heavily processed and adding more to them could cause problems, unless it is just for worldizing purposes. However, we don’t think that this is that big of an issue, as all the voices sound good and perfectly usable as-is. To be fair to the creators, offering an unprocessed alternative would have likely created a plethora of files.
Overall, we think that Artificial Intelligence is a very solid voices library, the price of $60 is justified by the number of sounds given at your disposal and the sheer number of dialogue combinations you can make here. Check out the product in the link below and listen to the demo!
Sonic World’s latest sound library ‘Meow’ is a collection of 157 feline vocalisations recorded with a group of 8 cats, each with unique personalities. Yarron Katz (no pun intended) from Sonic Worlds has put together a collection of recordings taken from cats he has rescued or adopted. Be it a hiss, a purr or a screech, this pack includes all of those and more.
November 23, 2021
Company: Sonic Worlds
Product: Meow
Price: $59
Our Rating: 4.4/5
On opening our review copy of Meow, we were given a set of folders named after each cat, as well as a PDF of both the manual and license agreement. Each folder contains a different number of audio files, however most of the files contain more than one sound, these are denoted with a number to indicate how many sounds are in each file. All audio files within this pack are 24Bit 96kHz WAV. The artwork for this release is very nice, and gives you an impression of what's to come.
When listening to the samples, they are of a very high quality and for the most part, clean and isolated. The nuances of the cat’s vocalisations are captured very well and the softer, more intimate sounds like purring and mewling are captured with a great degree of detail. Yarron’s determination to obtain some of these sounds really shows as he’s managed to capture different moods of some of the cats, ranging from ferocious screeches to soft gentle cries and even playful yelps.
In terms of frequency balance, no sounds are too harsh in the higher frequencies, or too strong in the lower frequencies, this allows for more flexible EQ processing, leading to better localisation for film or games, many of the sounds could be placed into a soundtrack as is with very little post processing needed, if any at all.
So why a cat library you ask? Well, these pesky little creatures can often be difficult to capture, unlike dogs they are notoriously difficult to train. Most recordings are usually dependant on how well behaved (or not) the cat is, and even then you probably have to own the cat to accumulate enough content.
Cats can be a nice and often overlooked background/foreground effect in soundscapes, and we're happy that Sonic Worlds took the time to provide the sound of these Katz.
An issue we had with small parts of this library was with the presence of room reflections in some of the sounds, this really decreases the level of versatility and usability for those in particular, as they may seem out of place within a soundtrack, or sounding inaccurate to the room. This can easily remedied with some light transient shaping or De-reverb from Izotope RX.
Work can be done to clean up a lot of the reflections, however it would be ideal to have every sound in the library be as clean as possible, as this can greatly improve the versatility of the product. That being said, the cats can be placed in the background of the scene well with some of this distance perception.
This unusual but interesting pack is a welcome addition to anyone’s collection of libraries, many of the sounds are at a very high quality and are flexible to work with. The price isn't the best value for such a specific library, but the extent to which it is captured (and the painstaking process with the animals) makes it seem well justified. With our exclusive discount code below you can receive 10% off the current sale price until 10th August!
If you’d like to hear every sound within the library, please check out Yarron’s YouTube video below:
Get an extra 10% off the sale price, use discount code: 344audio
