New X-Plane Sound Engineering Blog

[ARTI]

https://sound4xplane.wordpress.com/

Everybody is welcome...

regards

arti

[XPAfrica]

Hello Arti,

very interresting stuff, and getting the sound in x-plane better is a very good goal.

I have an education as a sound engineer myself so i'm particularly interrested in this subject.

THe F18 Hi-G example is really cool and sounds very good already, although one would maybe have to use not only an EQ but also a dynamics processor to make the effect more real - i haven't extracted the audio from the real-life video you link on your blog yet, but i'd like to do so and study the dynamics, in order to get an idea on how they look.

Your earlier video, where you  expose the idea of using longer loops than the standard x-plane sounds do, reveals something that has annoyed me on some custom soundsets for x-plane planes, most notoriously heinz's Spitfire: longer, seemless loops are indeed something one should strive for, and that's what has been done with the Spit's custom sounds, but these custom sounds annoy me in flight - the fact that you have longer loops should imply that you have enough "stable" material from a spectral point of view, and that's what's been done wrong with the spitfire, where you find yourself listening to the same unwanted rumble in the sound (probably a vibration during recording) every few seconds, and where this artefact is logically pitched lower or higher depending on engine rpm setting in x-plane, which in the end results in something totally unrealistic.

The contrary example would be Greg Hofer, who has put a lot of work into layering all the different sounds (engine, afterburner, vibrations etc....) of his CF-104 and that's in my opinion the best way to go to obtain realistic sound, instead of doing what's been done in the spitfire and decide to include the vibration the engine gives off to the mobile parts of the plane at a certain rpm setting with the engine sound itself, agai, resulting in unrealistic sound.

In your video, the loops are longer and for some of the sounds it is a great benefit, but on some other sounds you get these "artefacts" coming over and over again, and if i consider my experience in flying, that's not realistic, as for example the afterburner: like some original x-plane loops, its spectrum sycles, i'd almost be sure that going the other way and using shorter loops with seemless looping points would be better (i have little time for x-plane lately, but i'd like to give that a shot sometime soon.).

As for the original x-plane sounds, they're old, probably have been normalized (in my opinion the worst invention in digital audio yet), they lack definition and propper bandwidth (i assume they used to be lower resolution and have just been converted along the way when they were normalized), but they have a quality that makes them still useable: they're "stable" and you don't get odd vibration sounds that change pitch with your thrust setting. They basically suck, but in the mix, you don't notice the crackles and bad ooping points too much, at least on standard equipment.

Furthermore, there are a few points to consider: everyone does not have a a good audio setup, something that reproduces the whole spectrum and dynamics like studio monitors do, so one should have to go through the same process you go when you produce music and finish a song's mix in order to make sure it "sounds good everywhere": mastering.

Finally, what's the starting material - most important point in my opinion, a good recording is 90% of the work.

As you can see i'm really interrested in your work and i'd relly like to knwo more: how do you work, what do you work with? what source material do you use ? etc.. ...

Also there's a question i haven't found an answer to yet: what sound formats, definitions and sample rates can x-plane support and how do they affect rendering (eg. fps) ?

[ARTI]

Hi sorry for the late reply. Thank you, in case of F-18 sound it was just a basic tweak to show how easy would be to simulate such a vortexes (I already extracted such a sound and you'll find it in the new much anticipated F-16).

The problem with the loops it our psychoacoustics. Humans can indentify very well any loops, our memory is really remarkable.

default audio X-Plane architecture supports WAV files, mono&stereo.

But we shouldn't concentrate on the old technology.

Look for the DreamEngine. I'm cooperating with Conex.

It's still in the works but we'll have many advanced tools on it, even ambisonia...

It's good to be in touch,

regards

arti