1. CS4995-1: AudioPage 1 Game Audio Often given too little attention. Can be an important element in game play. Really annoying if not done correctly –Sounds playing too late –Sound missing or intermittent –Wrong sound –Low quality

2. CS4995-1: AudioPage 2 Consumer audio encoding standards Mono – one speaker Stereo – left and right channels 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1 –5, 6, or 7 channels plus a Low Frequency Effect (LFE) channel - Subwoofer

3. CS4995-1: AudioPage 3 Dolby Dolby Surround - 4ch surround (L, C, R, S) encoded into 2ch ProLogic ® - decodes Dolby Surround into 4ch –Without ProLogic, Surround encoding plays in stereo ProLogic ® II – decodes 5ch sound (L, C, R, SL, SR) encoded into 2ch. –If source is normal stereo, ProLogic ® II synthesizes 5ch separation for a “wider” sound. Dolby ® Digital 5.1 – encodes/decodes 5.1 channels separately (L, C, R, SL, SR, LFE).

4. CS4995-1: AudioPage 4 Other encodings DTS –less compression than Dolby which relies on psychoacoustics to provide perceived quality at greater compression rates –DTS-ES –- 6.1 ch encoding –Neo:6 –- 5.1 or 6.1 from 2, 5, or 6 ch encoding PCM – Pulse Code Modulation, also Sony’s original digital audio format for videotape SDDS – Sony’s 8ch digital film sound format THX – Playback sound quality compliance

5. CS4995-1: AudioPage 5 API OpenAL (Creative Labs, et al) –Buffer, sources, one listener –Synthesizes 3D position (fading and panning) –also doppler effects DirectX (Microsoft) –Manages all aspects of audio including 3d spatialization, pitch/reverb/sfx, MIDI, plug-ins

6. CS4995-1: AudioPage 6 Audio SFX multi-track audio - lots of different sounds playing independently, distance effects - further sounds are fainter, sound pan - left/right, front/back, spatialization - locating a sound in 3D space, ambience - acoustics of spaces such as an echo-filled empty warehouse or a quiet glade, occlusion - sound is behind a wall or in another room, obstruction - sound is not in line-of-sight, say behind a pillar, but not isolated by a surrounding structure.

7. CS4995-1: AudioPage 7 Sound representation WAV – (Microsoft/IBM) waveform, no compression AVI – Audio-Video Interleave (by Microsoft) –De-facto standard for PC Mpeg – lossy compression MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) –Represents audio parametrically. –Saves space if using synthesis –Most effective when space or sound flexibility/variability are issues

8. CS4995-1: AudioPage 8 Issues Event randomization (ambient sound effects occurring at random times) Timing Storage