How's It Sounding?

If you’re like me, you find yourself doing many tedious tasks that often take a bit of time.  This could be creating some document on a computer, or soldering some cables together.  Either way, there comes a time where you find yourself looking at the clock and wondering why time has slowed down.  You’re losing interesting, and productivity has slowed down.

For me personally, I have found listening to specific music doesn’t exactly help me focused, but it helps the time pass faster, and I whine less about the work I have to do.  However, not just any music did it (nothing new to anyone, but just hear me out).  If there were lyrics, I would get distracted and sing.  So I found movie or videogame soundtracks worked the best.  Then I started playing a group of soundtracks, and my productivity increased, and my mental fatigue decreased.  I present to you, my soundtracks of choice: Back to the Future, Part I, II, and III.

I was recently reading a forum thread in Gear Slutz about which movies have the best sound effects.  There were a few shared responses, and one of those was The Matrix (1999).  First off, let me say that this is one of my top favorite movies.  The concept, the graphics, the settings, and the sound were just stellar for the time, and even now.  Reading that people believed The Matrix had great audio gave me an excuse to watch it for about the hundredth time to do “research” for this blog.  Before I get into the audio, let me inform you readers that I DO NOT have surround sound.  The judgment of this audio is based off of my 2.1 system.

If you have seen the movie, you know everything action in the movie is digitally and electronically based (I don’t mean the way it was made, I mean the fact that the Matrix itself is a computer world.)  Also, everything action of the characters is based off of speed.  The audio reflects this very well!  There are TONS of whooshes and electrical sounds throughout the movie.  As you no doubt have guessed, I think Dane A. Davis did an amazing job as the sound designer for this movie.

Let me start off by saying that I have been a die-hard Medal of Honor fan since the first game hit the shelves for the PlayStation in 1999.  Then Rising Sun came along and things changed.  Let’s not get into that because I have still played and loved every game in some way.  There is no difference for Warfighter.  This is one of the most visually stunning and auditory pleasing games I have played in some time.

Courtesy of Just Push Start

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.