THE Homunculonic AEStheticator

I wanted to test T.H.E. algorithm with a variety of products, and so chose a First Person Shooter, a war game, an epic fantasy, a sports simulator, and cards, for my investigation. Well, the poker tournament didn't work at all (probably because the game had no sound) but I was totally floored by the HA's effectiveness on the other games. I laughed, I cried, I played those games 'til I was blue in the ass, then got a pillow and played some more. The sound was simply unbelievable!!

How Do They DO That!?

Although the details are a closely guarded secret, the concept is quite simple. The developers started with the question "Why do game soundtracks have to SUCK so bad!?" and realized that you actually could "fix it in the mix". Current interactive audio mixing practices tend to negate emotional drama in game soundtracks, which never seem to move you the way a great filmscore can. When the peaks and valleys of storyline are abolished for a non-linear environment, how do you provide the tension and release required to create dramatic irony?

That's when the nucleonic biophysicists got involved. They traveled the world, sampling sonic brainwaves from the greatest mixing engineers alive, then synthesized, digitized, encrypted, and compressed the data until they had something about the size and shape of a plastic Army man, but not as green. Then they programmed it with an essence of aesthetics distilled from Plato, Shakespeare, Kubrik, Jon Stewart, and others, and sealed it in a vacuum tube (because everybody knows, tubes just sound better).

T.H.E. algorithm (patent pending) is deceptively simple to use, and hides enormous complexity behind a few dials and switches. Let's look at each one:

Dramatic Tension
You know how you can always predict what the combat levels are going to sound like, even before you turn up the volume? Boom boom, whiz bang, same old same old - well, the Dramatic Tension knob can infuse any game level with emotional content, just by changing the emphasis of the mix.

I saw a perfect example of this at Charles Deenen's keynote address at the recent Game Audio Conference in Austin. He used a climatic battle scene from the movie "The Last Samurai" (where a cavalry of swordsmen are decimated by a few men with guns) to demonstrate the power of this technology. First, he played the clip with the knob turned all the way to the left [cliche], and we heard, in multi-channel sound, every clink of armor, schwing of sword, blast of gunfire, pound of hoof, all terrifically rendered and meticulously mixed.

Then he turned the Dramatic Tension knob all the way to the right [ironic], and played the scene again, as you'd see it in a movie theater ... what a difference! Magically, all the sound effects moved into the background, and a haunting melody by Enya permeated the soundtrack. Suddenly, there was no glorious war, no charge into battle. Instead, there was an overwhelming sadness for the heroic death of a magnificent dynasty ... amazing what you can do with sound these days!

Intelligibility
You ever been at a loud party, and spilled beer in your lap, and right then the room goes suddenly quiet, so everybody can hear you say [oh shit!] (I hate it when that happens). The Intelligibility knob is both fun to pronounce, and useful for mixing dialog. Full left is "full ducking", full right [say what?] perfectly balances the music, sound effects, and vocals, while providing on-the-fly EQ and para-normalization. This setting always lets you hear the dialog clearly, whether it's a whisper in a cathedral, or some drunk at a loud party yelling in your ear!

Focus
This confabulous slider functions more like a camera lens than an audio tool. It takes raw microphone input and "de-mixes" it, so you can bring out important background details. You see them do it in the movies all the time: the detectives stand around listening to a garbled pay phone call, "what's that in the background?" one of them says, and the audio guy moves some sliders, aha! A bell rings, and the cop says "hey, that's the 12th street bridge!"

The problem with microphones is they pick up all the sound in the room, everything in the [fruitbowl], as it were. But with Focus, you can move the slider up to hear 'some' out of 'many' (just the apples, not the oranges). At the top, of course, is the [banana], and all the attention is on just that one fruit - but remember: "Not everybody gets to be the banana".

Scale
This knob does a great job of turning a single sound into a vast chorus. For instance, full left is "[one] cricket", halfway is "a few crickets", and full right [gazillion] is "summer evening in new england" ... and all that from a single sample! I tried turning one archer into an invading army, morphed the "clip clop" of hooves into a "stampede!", even took a single violin and created an entire symphony orchestra! It's incredible what this technology can do (literally!)

Romance
This offensively phallic toggle needs little explanation.

Comedy
Although this deceptively humorous knob goes from cutesy Internet icons [smiley face] to [Roll On Floor Laughing], it hides a dire control mechanism. Twisting the knob left brings increasing pain to the user; twisting it right sends pain away towards someone else. Depending on the other settings (particularly Romance and Banana), this knob can also create tragic con-sequences (MIDI only).

Mel Brooks says, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die". Of course, some might say that it's only funny until somebody gets hurt (and then it's hilarious!), but I think using the Comedy knob judiciously in a game isn't gonna kill anybody (and you know what they say about dying ...)

Volume: 0 - 11
Thank sonic goodness for this knob! So many games have the volume permanently set to 11, trying to make the soundtrack so loud and cool, "It's In Your Face!©" ... Nigel Tufnel may need that one little extra boost, right at the top, but the rest of us just want a little contrast. Most people can't hear much difference between Absolutely Deafening and Completely Cacaphonous, but nobody misses it when you go from really quiet to FREAKIN' LOUD SUCKA!

This trick was used to good effect in the football game I tested. When the quaterback drops out of the pocket for the long bomb, he hears the thunder of the approaching blitz, the grunts of the linebackers, the roar of the crowd, he shoots ... and suddenly, everything goes quiet. The crowd is muffled as the ball flies high in the air, there's a little breeze blowing, aah, it's so peaceful up here, but then gravity guides you back down to the receiver's hands and KA-BLAM! The sound comes rushing back like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist, and the stadium goes wild as you score the touchdown! Now THAT'S good audio!!

MASTER
And finally, the most fantastic dial of all. It's a little bigger than the rest, and therefore more important, but it actually does do more than all the other controls combined. It's as if you had Oscar winners Michael Hedges and Chistopher Boyes right there in the box, using their golden ears and a roomful of gear to perfectly balance all the myriad audio elements eminating from the Xbox ...

But then the real magic happens! Sure, the audio sounded great through my 5.1 Meyer Sound setup when the dial was set full right [home theater]. But most people don't have an acoustically perfect environment and flamboyantly expensive speakers to play games with, so I hooked up the HA between my PS2 and the stereo TV, and set the MASTER dial to 12 o'clock.

The results were so fantabricated, I quickly tried it again on my T-Mobile Sidekick, with MASTER dialed full left [cell phone], and holy crap, batman! I've never heard anything like it!! The game sounded exactly the same on all three platforms!!! It was completely unbelievable ... how do they DO that!?

Bottom Line

Truth be told, none of the technologies used in the Homunculonic Aestheticator are really all that new. In fact, most of the functionality that powers the device already exists in various forms on many interactive audio engines. Games have been using these kinds of techniques for years, and there has been much progress and innovation.

However, by automatically applying T.H.E. aesthetic to interactive mixes, this implausible and preposterous machine can take the most mundane, boring, lifeless soundtracks, and infuse them with drama, pathos, levity, nobility, joy, sorrow, and wonder. It's so simple to use, practically anyone with a little cash and a good connection can now create compelling game audio! What used to require trained professionals, months of work, and millions of dollars, can now be produced by hack amateurs in their back bedrooms, in half the time, and at no cost whatsoever!

The ancient Myxolydian proverb "No Harmony Without Dissonance" is inscribed by hand on the back of each and every HA unit. All joking aside, I highly recommend this inconceivable piece of technology. If you are serious about doing game audio, you have simply GOT to get yourself one of these!

      - pdx

How has the Homonculonic AEStheticator helped you produce better game soundtracks? Please share your tips and techniques with us, and with your fellow game players and developers!! (For manufacturing and licensing info, write to the annoying audio guy ;-)