audio

Bungie’s Marty O’Donnell Doesn’t Like You Messing With His Knobs

1:30PM David Wildgoose | In a huge and ongoing multi-part interview on Aussie blogger Ben Abraham’s Super Legacy Reading Club, Bungie’s Marty O’Donnell has been giving some fascinating insights into the art of audio design. “What I didn’t like was people, especially game players, have gotten into a habit that they should have control over all these things and basically I’m saying, you know what, no – you shouldn’t,” says O’Donnell, when asked why players can’t tweak Halo’s audio mix. More »

‘Next-Gen Audio Square-Off’: PS3 versus 360

4:30AM Maggie Greene | In the battle over technological dominance, audio is one area that’s usually ignored — Alexander Brandon set out to fix that, and interviewed Gene Semel (audio director of SCEA) and Brian Schmidt (head of the Xbox audio team). It’s a pretty interesting interview, and while it’s unclear who comes out on top (not sure it really matters), seeing what Semel and Schmidt have to say about their respective systems is pretty enlightening. On the question of the most interesting feature both systems have taken advantage of: More »

Download Eight Hours of Arcade Cacophony

10:00AM Owen Good | The classic sound of a room full of arcade games all going at once started to vanish before the coin-op arcade started its slide to extinction. Game audio and speech got more sophisticated and music evolved into soundtracks, creating a blend different from the early to middle 1980s. But the Arcade Ambience Project has created more than eight hours of mp3s, sorted by year that depict arcades at their height, buzzing, chirping and whirring like a field of crickets on a summer evening. More »

BioShock Audio, Juxtaposing The Real And Surreal

3:00AM Mark Wilson | Critics weren’t shy with praising Bioshock or putting it on countless top 10 lists. But if there was one element that enough could not be said about, it was the audio. The dark, eerie sound design pulled us into a game that could have been just another scary FPS. At GDC, Patrick Balthrop, Senior Sound Designer at 2K, explains what they did to make BioShock’s sound just so haunting. So would you kindly hit the jump to read more? More »

World’s First 7.1 Game Announced, You Are Not Affected

8:51PM Luke Plunkett | Got a 7.1 surround sound system at your place? No, didn’t think so. Let’s just imagine more than 0.3% of you do, though, and draw attention to the fact that Sierra’s upcoming title Prototype will be the first game to ever support the format at launch. What does this mean? As we already established, to 99.7% of you, squat. But for anyone who’s decided 8 speakers > 6 speakers, and then decided to go out and get yourself adequately set up, you’ll no doubt be chuffed! Prototype first to use new 7.1 surround sound [CVG] More »

Plantronics Launches New PC Gaming Headphones

7:04AM Logan Booker | I’ve always been suspicious of companies with products that go out of their way to market and brand their stuff as “specially designed for gaming”. Anyone who’s ever used a pair of Creative’s Fatal1ty gaming ‘phones (which, I will shamefully admit, includes me) can attest the fact that “gaming” doesn’t necessarily mean “better”. Or even “good”. I do own a Microsoft Habu mouse that is unreal, though. Regardless, it was with extreme tentativeness that I headed along to Plantronics’ launch of its new range of .Audio headphone products last night, which included the .Audio 365 and 770 – apparently engineered with us gamers in mind. What this really means is that they come with huge-arse ear muffs, noise-cancelling mics and, for the 770, an open-ear design so when you’re at a LAN, you can still hear people telling you how much you suck behind your back. We weren’t able to get specific prices last night, but Plantronics’ national retail sales manager Chris Brown did provide a $60-$70 price for the 365s and a $100+ for the 770s. StaticIce seems to agree as far as the latter is concerned, but we couldn’t shake a price out of it for the 365s. The 770s are pictured above, and you can find a snap of the 365s after the jump. More »