Sound Optimization Tutorial

[mikeisman2]

I looked through the sound and music section of this site one the music is pretty terrible no offense and the quality of it in terms of production value are shotty. Plus there is no tutorials or discussions on how to optimize sound files for people who really want to add that extra something into their maps. So i was curious as to how many people would like me to make a good tutorial on sound optimization which is file reduction for wc3 maps and go over how it works and most likely post original music on the sites sound section.
If your thinking i dont know if hes qualified well i have been doing music production for 4 and half years and i mentored under a producer who signs songs to Spinnin Records I am not going to toot my own horn because my work is for you to judge but was just curios if there is a big interest in songs and sound effects for peoples games and if it would be worth my time to contribute such to the site.
Plus i can make custom music for peoples maps if they want just contact me through email or message me on here if you are looking for that.
But if there is a genuine interest in this i will contribute and post quality EQed, mastered and optimized sound files to the site for everyone to use for free.
Also i will add downlods and links to free tools for sound optimization!

 

[GreeN!X]

Basing on how you wrote the first post, if you're gonna make a tutorial, it's going to be damn hard to read. But heck, if you're telling the truth about being good in doing sound & music creation and optimization, then please do make a tutorial. That would certainly be useful to most users here.

 

[mikeisman2]

Well ill definitely explain what everything means and how it works lol!

 

[Dr Super Good]

By applying digital signal processing to it!

In reality you cannot optimize sound for size without loss past a certain point defined by various data theories.

 

[Ralle]

I can't wait to see it. I hope you have some good free audio tools to recommend and of course the whole process of how to do things .

 

[Dr Super Good]

Frequency filtering and noise reduction are key. You need to remove frequencies that correspond to noise as that simplifies the data content of the sound sample. Most lossy compressors will then be able to compress it better as they do not have to encode the noise factored into it.

 

[mikeisman2]

I understand and that would be explained of course but i will also explain how going to certain compression levels will have no effect anyways. Im not teaching a class though i will show people how to use certain free tools to optimize sounds for their games if their truly more interested in this they can watch tutorials on the internets or just message me.

Compression of any kind will affect the the wavelengths of any sound file. Because with any compression you lose wavelengths for example mp4 are an mp3 compressed to a high quality version of a song to make larger songs still keep a level of quality but it does have wavelengths of the songs or sounds missing because it is in fact compressed. It is also a more secure file type but that's not relevant.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Compression of any kind will affect the the wavelengths of any sound file. Because with any compression you lose wavelengths for example mp4 are an mp3 compressed to a high quality version of a song to make larger songs still keep a level of quality but it does have wavelengths of the songs or sounds missing because it is in fact compressed. It is also a more secure file type but that's not relevant.

Only lossy compression will alter the signals.

You can happily put an uncompressed .wav file into a zip and it will be compressed (smaller than original) and still reproduce the same signal as the original. FLAC encoding is also aimed at lossless compression of audio to a better degree and more useable than simple zip and such file compression techniques.

Generally you want lossy compression for signals such as sound. Humans often have problems discerning any loss. Since lossy compression techniques produce smaller results than lossless compression, the trade off is often worth it.

However under no circumstances should lossy compression be used at an editing level. It may introduce artefacts and cause gradual signal degradation over time. It should only ever be used as a publishing format intended to be read-only.

 

[mikeisman2]

Well im referring to lossy compression here because of the fact i wll not be showing people how to zip a file but to reduce the kbps quality of the song file so yes wavelengths will be lost in this process but i will discuss the proper points at which you are losing quality with no gain and the point at which you can reduce the file size more.

Dont mean to multi-post but
Im going with lossy approach because if you do compression without loss you can not make the file sizes small enough for these wc3 maps without being to much of a hindrance to your maps file size!
But on another note Dr Super Good are you testing me here to see if am capable of making this tutorial or are you trying to convince me to not make it i don't understand your point in this thread. Do not take this the wrong way just curious if your playing the devils advocate that's a strong way to put it no offense for a reason or just striking an intellectual discussion on the topic.

 

[Dr Super Good]

I am making sure you are stating the truth...

Compression of any kind will affect the the wavelengths of any sound file.

This sadly was not true as lossless compression is still a kind of compression and will not affect the sound signals in any way.

Also why are you saying wavelengths all the time? I know that they are the ^-1 of frequency but generally people talk about a sample's spectrum in terms of frequency and not wavelength.