How's It Sounding?

Robert Alexander is a “Data Sonification Specialist”.  That is an awfully fancy term right?  Well it simply means that he takes any type of data and turns it into sound.  A basic example of this would be a heart rate monitor.  That “beep, beep, beep” sound that you hear is essentially the sonification of someone’s pulse.  This is very basic though.  Alexander takes this to the extreme.

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine named Darrell Seale, the Director of International Programs for Fixed Wing Sensor Programs at the private defense contractor Lockheed Martin.  Now what does this have to do with audio?  Well actually, absolutely nothing.  However, this man negotiates multimillion dollar deals for breakfast, and it got me to think, how does deal making like this compare to deal making and negotiation to someone in the entertainment industry?

After Seale received his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Aerospace Engineering from Oregon State University, he did a lot of satellite imagery work, and was a program manager as an officer in the US Air Force.  After that, he was negotiating national and international deals for Lockheed Martin.

So what makes these negotiations different from that of someone in the audio field?  Well, Seale deals with defense products (high tech military weaponry) and someone in the audio field will be talking about who gets to record what.  Price is also different.  An extreme case in the audio world would be Jay-Z’s $150 million dollar record deal back in 2008, but it is not uncommon for Lockheed Martin to close a deal worth over three billion dollars.  Seale also informed me that these negotiations could go on for months at a time.

 Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod: Some of what Seale Negotiates.  Courtesy of Lockheed Martin

It seems that if you don’t have a Turtle Beach headset, you are a loser and cannot call yourself a modern day console gamer.  Call me a loser then, because I don’t have any.  I have the alternative: a game chair.

When I first heard the name “Turtle Beach”, I thought it was an Xbox Live Arcade game or something.  After all: who would think that something with a name like that would go on your head?  Well I started using sound localization before it was cool.  Anyone remember the old X-Rocker game chair (about $145)?  I had one of the original ones from back in the day.  It’s so old, I only found one picture of it after searching for an hour.

No one likes the sound of nails on a chalkboard right?  It makes you cringe, cover your ears, and ask why someone did that.  Now what if you feel even worse than that every day, but to an extensive amount of day to day sounds?  What if you become angry, get headaches, cry, or slam your head into the wall saying “make these sounds go away”?  While this may sound like a crazy person, it’s actually a disorder called misophonia.

Now, I am not a medical professional, so take this only as information and not medical advice.  Misophonia is literally, “the hatred of sound”.  And no, I did not make this up.  People with misophonia can become enraged by a simple auditory trigger.  These “triggers” are things we all hear in our day to day lives: texting, chewing, pen tapping, laughing, and the like.  When people with misophonia hear these triggers, they cannot help the feelings of anger, emotional distress, and/or anxiety they feel.

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

If you guys have been reading this blog before, then you may have discovered my “Where Have I Heard That Before?” post.  If not, you can click here to read it.  Anyway, I am no stranger to a good movie or video game, and as mentioned, the first Halo is one of my favorite games.  However, we now have another instance where audio has shown up again from Halo somewhere else.

Last time it seems Halo was at fault for using the pistol slide sound from Lethal Weapon 3, but now Zombieland has found the audio of Halo to be useful.  If you have ever played the first Halo’s multiplayer, then you know about the breathing sound ambience on the level Chiron TL34 with all of the teleportation devices.  Well, take a look/listen at the video below!

Yup!  That same sound found its way into the haunted house scene in the 2009 movie Zombieland.  Again as I have said, there is nothing wrong with this, and I am not hating on anyone who was responsible for the audio.  I am just showing what a careful ear can pick out.  It doesn't always work using what worked in the past, directly. 

What sound will we hear next?  We shall see…