Hello all, I need to decide on a audio program for creating game sound effects and music and figured this would be a good place to ask.
I plan on having both a PC and a Mac so platform isn’t important. I’m looking for the best one stop studio for doing this thing.
Also, I presume I will need a midi board and a mic, so recommendations there would be helpful as well.
CEH
If you want an advanded software synth (or a number of them) in a neat package I’d fully recommend Reason from Propellerheads: www.propellerheads.se.
I’ve been using it for years and it’s really excellent.
Me too, great piece of software which is also a crossplatform release.
I do like the way you can hit tab on reason and patch the cables.
Ive used fruityloops for years, And now have an app called Ableton Live, which is great but I havent had enough time to really get stuck in.
There used to be a company called sek’d and they released a program called Samplitude 2496. That seemed like a pretty good multitrack recorder but then magix brought it and stuffed it.
Adobe audition looks pretty functional too.
Theres demos of most of these.
AC
I’d vote for Reason as well, best cross platform synth/sequencer out there. Plus, flipping the rack is cool. The Rewire tool lets you reconstruct an audio loop into a midi loop that you can import into Reason and apply other sounds to, very useful. Ableton is amazingly powerful, but harder to master.
But Reason doesn’t do multitrack audio recording, for that on Windows I got great results with NTrack (super cheap and functional, easy to use) although Cubase, Nuendo, Audition are all good apps.
But if you’ve got the choice, you’ll save lots of headaches by doing audio recording on the mac. MUCH better stability than I ever got on a winbox. I think the busses are just managed better, usb/firewire/network activity doesn’t cause sample drop outs and stuff. No endless tweaking of the buffer settings. On the mac, it Just Works. Garageband is a great little tool, can record midi sequences while playing built-in synth, and record multitrack audio all at once. Logic Audio 8 has just been released by Apple; it’ll be my next upgrade (after Unity 2). Also motu’s Digital Performer is a great app, especially if you get a motu interface. And of course, the industry standard is Pro Tools on the mac.
Awww…I haven’t heard the term “Music Synth” since Berklee. I thought maybe we had another student or alum around. (Music Synthesis is a major offered at the Berklee College of Music. The guys from Harmonix (Guitar Hero) and I graduated from it.)
SOFTWARE:
Anyway, I’ve used a ton of digital audio workstations and plug-ins. What, I think, is most important for what you’re looking to do, is to find a collection of instruments and samples. If you have a good set of those, you can use whatever digital audio workstation you want, and get stuff done. Reason has been mentioned already, and is a fantastic choice. I actually started off in the synth world with Reason (and a few other things), and even if you don’t stick with it, I think it is a great learning tool, because of the way it visually emulates real hardware. The only problem with Reason is that its sequencing is all MIDI-based. You can’t record audio into it, and you can’t manipulate audio within the program, other than by running it through effects processors. Reason is, however, a uniqe environment, and I haven’t seen anything else quite like it.
If you want to work more heavily with audio, there are numerous choices. I will be blunt with my personal opinion: Get Logic Studio. I am in the process of going through the thousands of pages of manual (it’s easy to pick up but very deep), and I am constantly being wowed with how awesome it is now, as I learn more new features. I used to be big into Digital Performer, which would be my second recommendation to you, but the last version of Logic swayed me over because it was such a great deal. Now, it’s half the price that it was (and you can “try it out” now, because it’s not tied to a seemingly uncrackable dongle like before), and so much more polished that I really see no competitor to it at this point.
Logic is a totally integrated suite, not unlike Reason in that respect. It has a wealth of great instruments, effects, samples/sound effects, you name it. If, for whatever (insane! :smile:) reason, Logic or Reason aren’t your thing, I can recommend some other stuff to you. First thing that comes to mind for plug-ins is the Native Instruments Komplete bundle. In terms of DAWs, my list of favorites is:
If you don’t need the power of these, go with Garageband. Until Logic Studio came out a couple weeks ago, it definitely had the nicest interface of any DAW. Garageband is basically Logic - Lite Version. If you have it around, I’d recommend using it until you find yourself wanting a bit more. With how good it is, it might never happen.
Oh, and making music on a PC is a pain in your least favorite essential body part. The reason I’m a Mac user is because of Core Audio, Core MIDI, Logic, and Unity.
HARDWARE:
For MIDI:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Oxygen49/
or
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Oxygen61/
If all you need is a mic and simplicity:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/C01UCW/
If you want a nice-sounding setup:
Audio Interface:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FirewireSolo/ (lets you control its volume with the buttons on your keyboard. a must-have feature for me.)
or
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/LinkFW4x6 (more inputs)
or
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/LinkUSB/ (cheaper. uses USB instead of FireWire)
Speakers:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/M1Active520/
Microphone:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RTAM (Very clean sound. It’s a bit unconventional, because it doesn’t have a particular “sound”. I love it.)
or
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/C03/ (more versatile in terms of pickup patterns)
Thanks everyone :>
Sorry Jesse, I’m still in school and… at UTA 
I cant really try out Logic since I don’t have a mac and probably wont til years end, but logic studio has my interest. I suppose Ill have to check out Reason as well. And it looks like the fight will be between those two.
Im not sure how much audio importing Ill be doing with a mic but it would be great to have the option.
A friend of mine is in film so Ill be asking him when hes back in town, but say I wanted some sound bites of anything from a lion rawr to a steak sizzle, where would you get them? From what Ive gathered talking to him, sound collections are expensive…
Ive heard good things about recording with a USB mic and had nearly bought one in the past.
I’m curious about those speakers you posted… I was planning to go for surround sound logitech
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/speakers_audio/home_pc_speakers/devices/224&cl=us,en
I used to have the Z680s. So, what makes the speakers you posted a link to special?
CEH
SPEAKERS:
What I showed you is the least expensive set of active monitors I can find that I would deem worthy of their price and your time. That is of course an opinion, but you will have a hard time finding any cheaper than that. The speaker set you showed me could possibly work out, depending on the sound card you have in your pc. If you want to mix in surround, which frankly, I just don’t find to be feasible for a reasonable price tag, you need to have a sound card or interface with more than two output channels. If you have that, I could see this as a potential option, but, to be frank, it’s not going to sound good.
The difference in the speakers I showed you is that they are not of the “bookshelf” variety. When you use teeny tiny speakers like with that Logitech system, all the bass gets routed to the single subwoofer. So, let’s say you want sound to come from behind you and to the left…with a full-range monitor there, it can happen. With the bookshelf system, it’s only going to happen if you sub is back there, and then, of course, you won’t be able to have any bass frequencies coming from in front of you. Yes, SOME of the frequencies you want can be routed to each of your bookshelf speakers, but the body of the sound is always going to be wherever the sub is.
If you feel that you NEED surround capability, and you have either a ton of cash to spend or can live with mediocre sound quality, I will do what I can to help you make some decisions. Otherwise, I’d definitely recommend getting a single pair of active studio monitors and a decent audio interface. What will this do for you?
Active monitors, by definition, have internal amplifiers. You have to plug each one in, and they will be bigger and heavier than cheap consumer speakers. What you will gain in exchange for these downsides is that each monitor will probably have at least two speakers (a woofer and a tweeter), and will include an active crossover that routes frequencies very cleanly to the appropriate speaker. It can still be nice to have a subwoofer with “full-range” monitors, but it’s nowhere near as necessary. Believe me, the first time you listen to music on even a cheap pair of this kind of monitor, you won’t go back to consumer bookshelf crap.
Another nice thing is that most active monitors will have balanced input jacks, which will allow you to use very long audio cables without inducing any noise. This kind of functionality is not found in any current consumer technology of which I know.
SOUND EFFECTS:
I am always trying to build up my personal sound effects collection on my hard drives, but the best source of free material I have found so far was my local library system. Go to your library’s website and search for “sound effect” or “sound fx”. With any luck, you’ll be overwhelmed by what you find. In most cases, when you need a certain effect, it is pretty easy to Google it and find something free. Due to the time and money it can take to build up collections, I would recommend just making sure that whatever you find is well-named and cataloged, however you store it.
It’s always best to be able to create your own stuff, but sometimes, you just don’t have a whale / crocodile / imploding building nearby. The cool thing is, with something like Reason or most anything else that has been mentioned so far, you can manipulate your audio in creative ways. I mean, look at Jurassic Park. Those dinosaurs sounded awesome. The sfx team certainly didn’t have any dino foley on-hand, but fortunately, there are a ton of other creatures still around today that they could genetically splice in the digital audio realm.
Can someone let us know if Reason comes with a sound effects collection? I don’t think it used to, but I haven’t really used it for a couple versions. Logic Studio has a decent collection to start you off, but no one collection is going to have EVERYTHING you’ll ever neer. As such, I recommend this thing to supplement what you get from other people. I had the larger model of this, but now, it is simultaneously smaller and capable of making surround recordings!
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/H2/
If you did pick up a portable recorder such as this (and this is the nicest AND cheapest I’ve seen), you could most likely use it as a USB mic as well when you’re in the studio. Not all of them do this (the ZOOM ones do), so make sure to check. You could also walk around with your laptop and a USB mic, but that’s cumbersome, and only gives you a mono recording anyway. A portable recorder makes life more fun, because wherever you go, you have something to keep you occupied and productive. It’s like a creative version of an iPod.
I thought bass from a sub was non-directional? Unless I misunderstood something you said…
I’m already looking at having to spend around 15k to get my hardware and software (for more than just me) and it would be a little depressing to have all that nice equipment and not be able to watch a dvd or play a game in surround sound lol… I don’t exactly have crap loads of cash laying around but next semester is my last at school and I will have no debt when I graduate so I have no issues with getting into some to follow my dreams.
I’m not sure how much use I would get out of recorder like that… I don’t think zookeepers would take kindly to you smacking a monkey with it to get a good yelping sound.
Id forgotten about the sound cards… I’m guessing a top of the line Audigy would do the job?
CEH
I’ll just add my 0.02 swedish kronor. Depending on what you’re aiming for, you don’t have to have “real” monitors. I’ve been doing sound semi-professionally for years, and I don’t have real monitor. Instead, I listen through many different sources (including some expensive headphones), and I get away with it. Granted, for my professional work (I do animation/commercials) it always goes through professional mixing (and/or professional musicians as well 
).
My point is, for anything but triple-A projects, it’s much more important that you have interesting sounds and music pieces than professional equipment.
If you think you’ll get more use out of a surround system and want to use that for Unity-related music/sfx production - by all means do just that. Just make sure you check your work through other sources as well to ensure that your mixing is somewhat balanced.
Good luck!
Instead of paying big bucks for a library only to get a handful of sounds you actually need, you might want to check out sounddogs.com. We used them all the time at the last company I worked for.
dfvdan
having real monitors will depend on the price 
though I do believe I would get much more use from surround. (wow… I really don’t like the winking smiley… just looks like a smugg little bastard lol)
I totally agree about having interesting sounds, its like that with anything, expensive equipment doest make stinky crap stink any less.
defmech
thanks for the link, id much rather go about it that way :>
CEH
You can make great music and sound effects using a tin can and a rubber band (true story!). You definitely should listen to your mixes on as many good, terrible, and in-between systems as possible. The problem is that cheap (or expensive!) consumer equipment won’t reveal as much of the potential problems that exist in your audio as “pro” monitors do. It also won’t be nearly as much fun to listen to them.
As far as “it would be a little depressing to have all that nice equipment and not be able to watch a dvd or play a game in surround sound” goes, I would go so far as to say that you are NOT listening to surround sound with something like that Logitech system. I would also go so far as to say that the surround formats available on DVD are NOT true surround formats. HDMI is the only consumer format that allows for “real” surround, and I have no idea if anyone is even using it well yet.
Bass being non-directional is a myth that makers of consumer equipment like to promote so that you buy more bookshelf + subwoofer speaker systems. This prevents the systems from being too expensive (even though they are marked up severely), which means that they get more money. When you have a gigantic rumbling sound, it is possible that its source can be obscured due to compicated reflections in the environment, but that’s WAY down there, below the range of any standard musical instrument. There is a HUGE range of “directional” frequencies that should be routed to non-sub channels which gets lumped into one speaker in a bookshelf + sub system. And to top it all off, the “subwoofer” probably can’t reproduce the true sound of that rumble anyway.
You always need to keep in mind what your listeners are going to be using to hear your audio, and at this point in time, it’s probably going to be garbage. The current state of the industry is that a lot of people have a really great-looking giant TV with rubbish speakers to go with it. And they probably paid a lot for the speakers, too. I would go so far as to say that most people have NEVER heard a good set of speakers. It just hasn’t been marketed a consumer product yet.
An even more horrible problem is this: you can get yourself set up to make great surround mixes for about $1,000 in hardware, but you won’t be able to listen to Dolby or DTS encoded surround sound with it. There isn’t a realistic solution available right now, that I have found, which will allow you to both create your own surround sound mixes AND listen to those that are available through standard consumer products. It’s a mess. Great surround sound is a treat, but like good speakers, I’d venture that almost everyone you know has never heard it.
Well I definitely know I have the “crap” speaker system variety that most people use covered, so seeing what things sound like on them isn’t an issue.
Can you link me to some decent surround monitors Jesse? So I can do some mulling.
CEH
Surround speakers are not different than “regular” speakers. Surround systems just tend not to include 5-7 “large” sized monitors because that would be expensive and consumers wouldn’t continue to pump money into the evil system that exists. All of the surround formats I know of specify that each satellite should be a full range monitor. The subwoofer channel(s) could theoretically use a full-range monitor as well, but that’s not the current standard.
Just get three sets of the set I linked you to before. This is probably the cheapest decent sub available, if you want to have one:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Rubicon10s/
Alternatively, you could get this:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Resolv2.1/
and supplement it with a couple pairs of these:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Resolv50A/
M1Active = 499.00-60% = 199.97
Samson Resolv = 279.99-29% = 199.97
So you basically get the same price but the M1 is at double the discount. If the M1 is indeed a better monitor it would make little sense to get the Samson.
So… is that price difference as a result of branding or are the M1’s actually any better? Or are those two diff brands identical in quality?
I’m also curious if I got a sub, wouldn’t all the monitors have to plug into it (like my current sub)? or would they all plug into a sound card setup like a top line Audigy. Because I would need a sub that could take all the speakers and buying 3 pair of M1’s and a sub would give me a strange (in my mind) 6.1, also pretty much all movies and games Ive seen are in 5.1 so… I would either have to rearrange them to listen to 5.1 sound, or have an extra monitor laying around?
CEH
I don’t know why you’re looking at list prices. Those are just another evil lie for consumers that means nothing. The monitors are the same price and will give you similar performance. I like the Alesis ones better because the power switches are on the front instead of the back and because they look like penguins 
, and they are also on a special sale right now.
Right now, you are plugging all your monitors into the “sub” because that is where all of the amplifiers are for the speakers. If you get active monitors, each one has its own amplifier built-in, and you make connections with line-level cables, not speaker cables.
I don’t recommend actual “sound cards”. FireWire and USB are the way to go right now for nice price-to-performance/features ratios. You can run various amounts of speakers through various subs, but with surround sound, the subwoofer channel is supposed to be its own independent speaker. They call it the LFE (low frequency effects) channel. As I said before, they really don’t make it easy to get set up for surround mixing, especially 5.1 (because the cheaper speakers come in pairs). It’s a big hassle.
My personal stance is to avoid surround sound completely for the time being. I hope that things change in the near future, but right now, I see no realistic solutions. I am keeping my ears open at all times for new tech, though, because I am quite familiar with the whole process of surround sound creation and playback…I just hate the state of things regarding its implementation right now.
If you MUST have what goes by the false name “surround sound”, then get whatever integrated consumer system you want (sounds like you already have this). I haven’t seen any of those yet that are what I’d call suitable for mixing, but at least you can play DVD’s and game systems through them and hear something resembling positional audio. Keep in mind that Unity does not currently support surround audio files. You can have mono files play in 3D space, but you can’t import your own surround mix.
It is VERY easy these days to get into stereo audio creation, however. You don’t need anything more than headphones, or the speakers that came with your computers, to get something accomplished.
EDIT: I just re-checked the Sweetwater site. I had forgotten that they try to make everything look like it is “on sale”. More evil sales tactics. I wouldn’t be surprised if a salesman was the one who invented surround sound.
Well if you want to get right down to it, price means pretty much nothing as well, its just meant to mean something to consumers just like sales.
Im not planning on doing surround mixing, just having it for games and movies. I actually don’t have a good speaker solution atm, thats why I’m looking at upgrading and figure if I’m looking at spending 400 on some Z5500’s I may as well spend a little more to get something that sounds better.
“I don’t recommend actual “sound cards””
Could you link me to what you would recommend? :> which I guess would depend on the speakers since one is xlr and one is rca.
CEH
Edit: Conflicting Thoughts.
If the majority of consumers have the off the shelf variety of speakers, I would presume one could get away with simply using such speakers as what you would hear is what the majority of people would hear. But then I think it would be nice to have a pair of 2.1 monitors for mixing, and to then listen on the shelf variety, however for $ efficiency it seems like going for putting together a 5.1 with the nicer monitors would be best. Thoughts?
Seconded. The problem with a lot of the free sound effects you find is that the quality is sometimes not very good, and sometimes you just can’t find what you need at all. Also, I found that a lot of the non-free sound effect sites had annoying preview schemes, but Sounddogs uses no-nonsense MP3 versions (at low quality of course, but not so bad that you can’t tell what they sound like). Also you can choose the start and end points when you buy the sound, so if you find a long clip that has a small part that you like, you can buy just that part and it only costs a couple of bucks.
–Eric
I haven’t tried sounddogs, but I did find www.soundsnap.com which looks a bit too good to be true. Granted, I’ve only been searching for a narrow range of sounds this far, but the quality found within that niche was very good. Which is doubly impressive when it’s 100% free.