Surround necessary for game audio creation?

[narcoman]

I have two answers really:

1. What you say makes some sense, a consumer grade system will certainly let you know how it will sound on that particular system. Not particularly useful for seeing how it'll work on other systems though. That is the aim of monitors.

2. Consumer systems aren't so good at helping you isolate problems in the audio. For example it won't help you with the LFE since consumer grade systems use bass management into a general sub.


I mix surround for all formats including games. I have a CMS40 based system at home for checking on smaller speakers and in a different environment; you could bring in one of these sort of setups for less than £2k. I also have a consumer system for a final check... Still do most of the work on the same SP1 system I mix movies score.

[SmokeandShadow]

Thankyou Narcoman, I was not familiar with the focal CMS as used for a surround setup, and from the looks of it I could swing that. I'm at a point where I need to make budget concessions and narrow down to critical pieces and make this happen.

[wakestyle]

I imagine (just from user experience), that surround in games is handled entirely different than in the audio world. IE. The surround is likely part of the engine itself in the game and is constantly being updated to 1) user location and 2) sound source location, all moving around in the 3D environment. I suppose there is some sort of mixer or data that is controlled by the code itself to produce a realtime experience.

I think the only time 'audio' surround would be used is in movie sequences and/or short clip scenes.

So I suppose there would be a need to understand the basics of the game engine mixer as well as typical surround production.

[narcoman]

That's true for in game stuff, but there is still score to mix.

Events are handled in bespoke middleware or FMOD,wWise or other products. very useful if it is one of those as we can test and work the mix here.