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February 2014

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34 Post • February 2014 www.postmagazine.com tions to MMORPGs, Lackey believes you have to pick the right tools for the project. "Sound designers have it good and bad in terms of tools. Because of music, there are heaps of powerful gizmos, instruments, soft- ware, and emerging technologies available to create and manipulate sound. The bad thing is that almost none of it is made for sound designers. We are always bending these tools beyond their intended purpose to get the results we want. I'm agnostic in terms of DAWs, computers, and plug-ins, but the post-specific developments in Nuendo over the last eight years have been incredible for sound designers." Steinberg's Nuendo 6 is a digital audio workstation designed to meet the specific needs of audio post professionals. It even comes with an integrated loudness meter that can be adjusted to measure loudness in compliance with any broadcast standard around the world. It offers VST Connect technology that works like ISDN. It allows Nuendo 6 users to connect with each other to record talent remotely via the Internet. It has sample-accurate sync, a live video feed so you can see the talent, talk back, and an online chat. Like ISDN, everything is happen- ing in realtime, but it's all happening on your desktop. For more information about the features and functionality of Nuendo 6, check out the Steinberg Website (www. steinberg.net/en/shop/nuendo.html). Nuen- do 6 retails for $1,700 and is available for both the Mac and PC. Wabi Sabi Sound often creates sample- based sound design for games. For example, when they create a monster for a game, it's designed as if it's a major beast destroying things in a movie. For final export though, instead of making a .wav file of a stereo mix, they have to export hundreds of smaller samples that can be triggered by run-time game events. Lackey notes three features in Nuendo 6 that are extremely helpful on projects like this. First, he explains, you can use a .csv file to import an EDL with all the notes and timing points. The timing points appear as markers on the timeline, complete with all the notes. "This allows us to take a client character spec (a laundry list of sounds needed), lay it out in a spreadsheet (if the client hasn't already), and assign timecode in/ outs, names, and sound type (voice, SFX, Foley)," he explains. "After that, we import it into Nuendo and voilà, the session is 100 percent laid out for us with very easy naviga- tion via the marker system." Another useful feature in Nuendo 6, Lackey finds, is the ADR taker. After import- ing the spreadsheet with the marker infor- mation, he knows where all the ADR and Foley cues are. He can then configure the pre-roll, insert beeps, and handle the cue mix. "It is literally easier for me to do Foley than pull and edit sounds from a SFX library, if that is the best creative choice. This is a dream come true." Lackey also likes how Nuendo 6 handles file exports. "You can batch transfer select markers off the busses you want in just a few button clicks. To top it off, it has a batch nam- ing function as well. The first time you use it, you're saving tons of time exporting and naming files. Revisions are a snap as well." Lackey explains that once everything is laid out in the spreadsheet you import, you never have to type anything else for the rest of the project. After you run the export, "you come back from your coffee break, open a folder, and there you have a 100 files waiting for you, all named, submixed correctly, and converted to your client's spec," he adds. With so much of the busy work being handled inside Nuendo 6, Lackey feels he's able to spend more time being creative. He's currently creating sounds for several complex characters for Skyforge, a AAA- class MMORPG under development by Russia-based game development studio, Allods Team, in collaboration with Obsidian Enter tainment. Wabi Sabi is handling the voices, Foley, and sound design elements for dozens of actions in the game. Traditionally, this would be handled by three separate teams of people, during three different pro- duction phases. "Individually, these teams can create high quality results, but since they are working independently, the sounds don't often com- bine well in the final stages of putting the characters together," says Lackey. "The actor has no idea what the Foley, sound design, or voice processing is, so there is no way for them to nuance their performance against it." Using Nuendo 6 allows the sound design- ers to handle all the voiceover and ADR, Foley, and sound design in one session. Lackey explains how this benefits the Sky- forge characters he's working on. For one character, he built a sampler bank with robot UnsUng AUdio geAr Hoffman Sound's Justin Mayer uses Native Instruments' Battery 4 Drum Sampler for creative sound design.

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