Au­dio

Group photo of the Orga Audio department in summer 2024. Pictured from left to right are Jessica Schmidt, Timo Hoffmann and Sebastian Krois.

The audio department teaches how to create and implement suitable sound effects and music for games. In particular, it shows which aspects are specifically important for games and how these are implemented with FMOD, which is often used in the industry. People with no music experience are also welcome in the audio workshop!

Skills in the Au­dio De­part­ment

Musikmechanik im GamesLab Spiel "Melodie der Meisen"

Con­cep­tu­al work

One of the goals of audio is the intensification of the game feel. With a good and consistent audio design, the game world becomes more believable and immersive. Furthermore, audio gives useful adaptive game feedback to the player. To achieve these aspects, planning from the audio department is needed.

Audio erstellt in Ableton und ein dazu erstelltes FMOD Event.

Me­dia Pro­duc­tion

Audio assets are produced for a video game, which includes music, sound effects, voice lines and ambience. These are created in programs for audio production and in recording studios. How the assets should be played is prepared and adjusted in FMOD studio. For the implementation and the mixing, audio designers also work in Unity.

Implementierung von Audio in Unity

In­­­­ter­­­­dis­­­­­­­cip­lin­ar­ity

The audio department works together with all departments, but especially close with coding, because code is often needed for the implementation of audio. With the artists, the game’s style, mood and atmosphere are discussed. Game designers write the voice lines that should be recorded and give the game's direction.

Our role and re­­spon­s­ib­il­it­ies

In the game jam during the winter semester, the learnings from the audio workshop come to use in a small project. Throughout a small timeframe and in consultation with the team consisting of multiple departments, audio assets are produced and implemented. Due to the limited time, the students have to make assessments of what they can do and how much they can do. Therefore, it is often better to do the next task instead of doing polish for too long, not everything has to be perfect. The game jam project serves as an additional learning experience, where not just teamwork and communication, but also self-initiative and the weighting of priorities are practised. 

In the summer semester following up to that, students can attend again to further improve and make use of their learned knowledge in a semester project. In addition comes the role of the audio lead, who takes care of the team’s coordination in things about audio. The longer time in a bigger project gives the opportunity to deliver more polished assets, to mix the in-game audio even better and for long-term planning. The audio department can communicate even more with the game designers, especially in terms of the narrative design and voice acting. For example, audio can play a supporting role at expanding the worldbuilding by reflecting upon the game world through the audio design. The increased communication with all departments can lead to a more coherent and content-rich game.

Vocab­u­lary of the Au­dio De­part­ment

A Digital Audio Workstation, short DAW, is a program for recording, editing and creating audio files. Examples for popular DAWs include FL Studio, Ableton, Cubase and REAPER.

Audio in games can be dynamically adapted to what is happening in-game. For example, players expect a reverb to be present in caves and that there are different step sounds for different surfaces. This is called adaptive audio. The program FMOD Studio offers various tools to make in-game audio adaptive.

In-game sounds can be played from various positions. Nearby sounds are louder than sounds that are further away. Sounds from the left are heard more in the left ear, sounds from the right are heard more in the right ear. The adaptive implementation of this is called spatial audio and sounds with position are called spatial sounds

Sound effects for games can be newly created through your own recordings of real sounds. Through techniques like layering, sound synthesis or through the use of effects, it is possible to give not just real objects, but also non-real objects sound.

To the various sound effects belong the so-called ambient sounds. These should represent the players environment by sound and thus immerse them further into the game world.

When the maximum peak level is exceeded during the recording, export or playback of audio files (meaning it’s too loud), clipping appears. This is noticeable as an uncomfortable sounding distortion. Because it usually can’t be removed from an audio signal, it should be avoided from the beginning.

Open-source audio format, with which the file size of audio files can be drastically reduced with only a small impact on quality. We use this format for the audio assets that are implemented in the finished game.

Uncompressed audio format, which is used for recordings and post-processing of sound effects and music.

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