How's It Sounding?

Have you heard of Watson Wu Studios?  Well, if you are interested in the art of field recording, then you should have.  Since this blog is about audio for film, TV, and video games, then why not talk about someone who does that for a living?

I recently watched a TED speech given by the self proclaimed “artist and geek” Evan Grant on what’s called cymatics.  Cymatics is the visualization of sound.  Here is an example bellow:

Evan Grant did a wonderful job about explaining this topic that I had seen, but didn’t see a purpose for.  If you are interested in audio, you have probably seen this example on YouTube with a metal plate, sand, and a driver, or at least videos like it.  I always thought it looked cool, and I knew what caused it, but what purpose could it serve?

The video game Assassin's Creed III by Ubisoft, which was released October 30, 2012, is the latest installment of the Assassin’s Creed series.  As a quick side note, this may contain spoiler alerts to anyone who wants to play the game.  Now I have not beaten this game yet, but I have been trying to take a close look at the audio while enjoying the game at the same time.

So much has progressed in the world of video game audio.  Leading games in the industry like Call of Duty, Halo, and Assassin’s Creed seem to take great care in making sure that the customers have a great auditory experience.  Evolving from the humble beginnings of 8-bit audio, we now live in a world where surround sound in video games is a standard.  Multiple microphones are common on just a small sound source, and even more are used on the big ones like the cannons used in Assassin’s Creed III.