2015-10-25 21:02:11

Hi

I have a some kind of silly question. Is it possible to create my very own sounds by controling every electrical signals one by one, like disassemble an object into lots of atoms, change their state or types, and finally reconstruct it as another object? Without any support of sound libraries. And if so, how to do it and where can I find the software, and what is the name of the software?
The reason for this question is, many audiogame developers make their own sounds, like danny, samtupy1, and the one who made the crazymod. How developers create their own realistic and unnatural sounds?
And I haven't ever used a sound editor, but even with a sound editor and sound libraries, I think we can't make a completely different sounds without controling every single electrical signals because sound libraries are limited. Can you please tell me the nice way of creating sounds?
Thanks

2015-10-25 21:10:49 (edited by CAE_Jones 2015-10-25 21:11:30)

Can it be done? Yes.
Can it be done easily in the detail you seem to be talking about? Oh, my, no.
I imagine that the visual tools out there--seeing the waveform, or the visualizations that made the predecessor to FL Studio so popular--would be helpful, but they're not enough to function as the equivalent of MSPaint or GIMP for sound.

You more or less need sound samples--either using a synthesizer, or recordings--and to apply series of effects and other such edits to them. There are changes you can make using the effects in Audacity / Gold Wave / Etc, then there are effects that require math and programming and lots of processing time.

A lot of sounds at Freesound.org include descriptions of how they were made, if that helps.

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2015-10-25 21:32:05 (edited by magurp244 2015-10-25 21:46:17)

Crafting sounds, at least sounds with nuance and finer qualities, seems to require more of an artistic touch than generation alone, at least for the moment anyway. There are Procedural Generation programs out there that can randomly generate a variety of sounds for you, even random music generators, accessibility may be an issue though.

If your interested, there's sfxr and bfxr for sound effects, I don't think their accessible but their source code is available. For music there's the fake music generator powered by cgMusic, open sourced Sound Helix, and another music generator over here.

For some reason the cgMusic domain seems to have lapsed, though it looks like you can find a java port of the source here, the wiki article on Algorithmic Composition could also prove useful.

Edit: You may also want to check out a post I made in the Article section titled "A Beginner's Guide to the Synth", which covers how synth samples and effects work, along with their history.

-BrushTone v1.3.3: Accessible Paint Tool
-AudiMesh3D v1.0.0: Accessible 3D Model Viewer

2015-10-26 01:45:17

I'm glad some people still ask this question rather than simply settling for stock sound effects and calling it sound design.  Honestly, I've had enough of the Hollywood Edge, the sound ideas libraries, the ripoffs Sony called their own, and so on.  Are there occasions where a stock sound library is warranted?  Absolutely!  Should it be your greatest resource?  No, no, a thousand times, NO!  If I'm going through a game where every sound I hear sounds like something I've already heard in at least 2 movies and 5 other games, video or audio, particularly if the game is paid for, you're not entirely gaining my respect as a sound designer, no matter how much you may think it's simply a matter of selecting the right sound effect for this or that situation.  If your content is at the very least, original enough that I can't tell where you got it from by editing it myself, congratulations!

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2015-11-06 07:20:46

these libraries are good but I've hurd them for far too much in games. it's time for a change in this. That's why I became a sound designer. I do music, sound, amung a bunch of other things.

2015-11-27 11:42:16

Ok guys, so: having a midi controller and beeing totally blind, what software or plugins do you suggest for a sound desinger? I came across Reaper.s vst Synth plugins but don't have any idea of how to use it. What are your suggestions?

Claudio

2015-11-27 21:42:34

Hi, my recommendation for you is buy a good stereo recorder, then record whatever you want, then edit it some way you think nice. That's the description of sound designing for me. I don't know any way of creating our own sounds.

I post sounds I record to freesound. Click here to visit my freesound page
I usually post game recordings to anyaudio. Click here to visit my anyaudio page

2015-11-29 03:33:14

Since I'm probably the foremost expert in the actual math of creating your own sounds from nothing in this community (but maybe not) and no one has actually answered the question:
If you want to work from scratch, you have to turn it sideways.  In the same way that standing outside listening to a bunch of stuff--a bird chirping, the leaves rustling, wind, cars, etc.--can be modeled by playing all the sound effects, you can theoretically make any sound in the world by simply adding enough sine waves.  We call this additive synthesis, it's mathematically complex if you want to do it for real, but it's also probably the easiest to understand intuitively.  Get something that can generate a few hundred sine waves, look up one of the recipes or just try random stuff, and out come cheep 8-bit analog sounds.  Libaudioverse can do this in real-time, and Pyo can do it in real-time for smaller quantities of sine waves.
Alternatively, you can start from a more complex basic waveform: a square or a triangle or whatnot.  And then you apply lowpass and highpass filters, as well as more exotic things.  This is called subtractive synthesis: you're starting with more than you need and pulling stuff out.  You can get higher quality results from subtractive synthesis and don't need to know as much math,  but the basic idea of it is certainly less intuitive than additive synthesis.  Both of the above packages can also do subtractive synthesis, though Libaudioverse is currently more limited; my goal is fast and for games, and so I don't have all of the really advanced stuff from Pyo coded yet.
Both of these techniques are in what is called the frequency domain: instead of viewing the sound as an electrical signal in time, you're viewing it as a sum of sine waves that just sort of theoretically run forever.  If you want to work in the time domain, you're either going to plot a mathematical formula (i.e. sine or square wave formulas) or you're going to do physical modelling of some sort.  Physical modelling will need you to know some pretty serious math and programming.  Think at least calculus.  You'll still be well below just recording the sound in the first place in terms of quality, so it's usually not worth it.  When it is used, it's not usually used alone; the synths that do it still often integrate recorded samples to make things work and cut down the really insane computing requirements to a marketable level.  But it is technically possible, though I'm not aware of any packages that are short of audio-specific programming languages which will let you explore it (and even then, if you have to ask this question you're probably far short of knowing the needed math to do it.  We're talking some seriously scary stuff).  The basic idea is to work out equations that can accurately model the thing making the sound, and then to use them to pull out samples.  The biggest place you'll see it is in the synth for your screen reader: the algorithms behind Eloquence are an application of physical modelling applied to the vocal tract.
What actual sound designers do is get some recordings of whatever.  Take a car engine for example, pitch it down, apply some distortion and stuff, and suddenly it's a giant jet engine or what have you.  You can do a lot just by getting recordings of animals and pitch bending them.  You can do a lot by just recording yourself making weird noises and applying crazy filters in your audio editor of choice.  But you can't work without pre-recorded sounds to start with and never really could.  Trying to control the signals in the way you describe would be like trying to paint by laying down every single individual paint molecule, one by one by one.  All of the alternatives lead to less realistic sounds or the type of stuff you'd find in electronic music, generally require a good deal of programming or fiddling with half-accessible software, and generally require a good deal of math or experience to get even that.  If you're really dead set on starting from scratch without getting even basic recordings from someone else, you need a really good microphone, preferably with a  flat frequency response; some imagination; and an audio editor.

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