I am the Studio Audio Director for Electronic Arts Canada
2. What are some of the projects Electronic Arts has done in the past, and what current projects are announced?
EAC has done FIFA series, NBA Live series, NHL series, NBA Street, FIFA Street, Need For Speed, Def Jam 1 and 2, SledStorm, WCW Mayhem, MVP Baseball, Triple Play Baseball, Fight Night, Bond 007, March Madness, and many many others.
3. How many people are in the audio department at Electronic Arts?
At EAC there are 18 audio artists and 8 audio software engineers
4. What sort of equipment do you use in the sound department at Electronic Arts?
At EAC we have standardized set ups based on roles (e.g. speech, sfx, mix, editing contractor). Here's a list of some of the gear we use in multiples:
Mackie 1604,1202 analog mixers, Outlaw 990 amps, Canopus ADVC, ProTools I/O 96, ProTools HD-2 Cards, ProTools HD- Cards, DIGI 002 racks, SPL Controller 2489, Logitech 5.1 Z-5500 (small surround), Mackie HR 824s speakers, Mackie HR S120 subs, Dorrough loudness meters (pairs, and 5.1 version), assorted synths, keyboards, and control surfaces
For software pretty much every main pro audio software kit: Waves Platinum, Sound Toys, NI Komplete, PLuggo, Nuendo, Logic, DP, etc.
5. How did you decide on Nuendo as your audio platform?
I got burned by Digidesign way back on my Project system as far as affordable updating to Protools 5.x. I was a Cubase VST user and heard about Nuendo from the Steinberg rep. I was able to get one of the first Mac copies of Nuendo and combined with the Nuendo 9652 was able to get work done faster and with a higher resulting audio fidelity than the Protools Mix Plus system at the time. The fact that the whole Nuendo system was a a fraction of the price of a ProTools rig and offered all advanced midi features of Cubase, I was sold. I have not looked back since.
6. What features of Nuendo are most essential for your workflow?
- The realtime clip based volume and fades
- Edit history
- I can keep rolling while tweaking edits on the fly
- Audio pool with folders and grouping
- Mac/PC full compatibility
- Predictable file import/export formats
- Multiple video files in the same session
- Session to session drag and drop
- Many others....
After using Nuendo other systems feel like I'm wearing boxing gloves when operating them
7. How is game sound design different from other fields of audio production?
Game sound design has to deal with non-linear game event driven audio. The audio engine has to be able to modulate the audio data in realtime based on physics, animation, game states and other unpredictable attributes. When designing sound for game playback you have to build the sounds in layers that can be combined and and composited on the fly providing the needed variety but still being appropriate to the event triggered. The method of audio playback influences and informs how the sounds should be designed and put together.
8. What features would you like to see in future versions of Nuendo, to better optimize it for use in the games industry?
There are a couple of things that would help.
1. Being able to select multiple named edits on the edit tracks and bounce them all out as individual named audio files at once.
2. Being able to describe an edit session as a text or xml file. This would make it easier to reference the edits and their layering in our in-house dev tools as needed.
9. Do you use any other Steinberg applications or instruments, such as Cubase or Wavelab?
Halion, V-Stack
10. Any words of wisdom for people wanting to get into the sound for Video Games?
First you have to be an ace at the linear audio arts (film post/mix, music production/editing). These skills are directly transferable. You then have to be able to think in a non linear manner. When thinking about audio for a game play moment or feature you have to break the task down into a method(s) that can be driven from the game engine. There is both a creative and technical side to game audio. Even though you can lean more to one side of the line or the other, you still need to understand both. Experience in audio systems like Reactor or Max MSP definitely help. Also there are free commercial game audio engines you can down and work out with like FMOD or Wwise that are now available for you to get a taste of what it's like to work in a game audio development environment.