Sound Bites
Carolyn Koh drops by to tell us about the importance of sound in her gaming life.
Editorial By Carolyn Koh on December 26, 2006
Sound Bites
By: Carolyn Koh
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily those of MMORPG.com, its staff or management.
advertisement Dana Massey’s editorial entitled Graphics Whores stuck a chord when I thought of my own gaming experience and what I look for before I consider a game really good. For that, I want sound. Good sound. Well produced sound.
Turn off the sound in a movie and what have you got? A bunch of moving heads and not much else. Turn off the sound in an MMOG and you don’t know that an Orc has come up behind you and is beating on your head like a drum, or that a pesky trooper has dropped down under you and is trying to take your BFR out with a popgun – that seems to be the challenge in Planetside currently – soloing a BFR.
As our senses go, sight seems to be primary. We smell something nasty… we hear the tiger’s roar. But we don’t start running until we actually see the danger. Perhaps it is the nature of most MMORPGs but sound often seemed to be added on as an afterthought. The annoying repetitiveness of Rivervale’s music was enough for many EQ players to turn sound off, but I sure kept it on in zones where there were giants! My character couldn’t track so I listened for their footsteps.
Thief3 in 2004 was the pinnacle of integrating sound into gameplay. It pushed the envelope. It proved immersive and successful, and the industry took note. In the MMOG genre, one of the first developers to hire a high-profile music and sound designer was Mutable Realms who tapped Academy and Emmy award winning sound editor, Michael Kimball for Wish (since cancelled). The first bars of music and sound I heard instantly transported me into their world of fantastical medieval Europe. It sounded like a movie soundtrack! I was in aural lust and slavishly downloaded the short sound tracks they released from time to time.
Since the ante was upped by a little guy from nowhere, other MMOG developers quickly followed suit. Reaching into deep Sony pockets and connections, SoE hired Academy and Emmy Award winning composer Laura Karpman to score the music for EverQuest II and record it with an 84 piece orchestra. Not to mention the Hollywood voice actors.
For ArenaNet’s Guild Wars, you can access upgraded sound packs and Flying Labs has teamed up with Richard King, Oscar winner for Master and Commander:Far Side of the World, to design the sound for Pirates of the Burning Sea.
But with all this great sound available in games these days, what are we as gamers doing? We spend a couple thousand dollars in the hand-picked components of our gaming rig –top of the line video cards, matched high-performance RAM, the fastest CPU we can afford, a kick-ass sound-card… then we cheap out on the component that transforms electrical impulses into sound and actually delivers it to our ears, the speaker system.
How many of us have a screaming fast gaming rig but rinky-dink speakers? Hands up now… don’t be shy! Who’s got a forty dollar 2.1 speaker system hooked up to that $200 sound card? Speakers with only a range of 40Hz to 20kHz trying to handle the output of a sound card capable of processing a frequency response of 10Hz to 40kHz in full 7.1 channel glory? Woot! 10 watts of power for that “thumping” bass! Or even more likely to be found… a stereo pair no taller than that 6ms response 20” LCD monitor with a frequency response of maybe 80Hz to 18kHz.
In theory, the audio band (what an average person can hear) is 20Hz to 20kHz. The lowest note on an organ is 16Hz which can be felt rather than heard, but 40Hz is about the 8th key from the bottom of a piano. You want to experience an explosion of magic or artillery? Feel the footstep of a gigantic Mech? Figure out where that damned sniper is shooting from? Ain’t happening with those dinky lil’ $24.99 speakers.
Reviews of “Gaming” speakers are far and few between, and most talk about “thumping” bass. Few about image and detail – that is, the ability to pinpoint where that sniper is, or about resolution – the ability for you to make out your squad leader’s instructions in Voice Chat over heavy weapon fire… or “More DOTs!” over the sound of sword and magic combat.
Yes, I’m a sound and music geek. Way back when, I plugged my PC sound into my music system. It was a boom-box to be sure, but I had replaced the boom-box speakers with better ones. The boom-box drove the speakers and when I was not gaming, I listened to music through the system. I never bought “computer” speakers as I felt that I got better sound through my “music” speakers. If they could resolve with detail and clarity, a harpsichord in a baroque orchestral or a sonorous double-bass without distortion, they could handle the highs of an incoming mortar shell and the explosion when it hit.
Invest in a good set of speakers and you’ll never have to spend another cent on upgrading them. You know why? That’s because unlike the rest of the computer system, you aren’t going to require better speakers to play new games every year or so. You’ll only upgrade them if you want, not *need* bigger, better. I play my Xbox360 on “bigger, better” but those speakers I had way back when? I still have them.
Ok there are Two subjects herer and the author does not go into much depth with either.
First she talks about how MMO's have crappy sounds ( someting I agree with), but she doesnot elaberate, Then she goes into another topic of computer speakers, and true I do have a cheap 2.1 $40 speakers but they do the job, and in that one she just raves about what SHE has done and not other options.
All in all a decent artical but nothing informative.
I play EQ1 with the sound off and either TS or the in-game MP3 player on. I play EQ2 with the sound on, but most of the time, my speakers are turned off so that I can listen to the radio or talk to my husband or watch TV. There are plenty of visual clues about what's going on, from the text in my chat boxes (which I watch like a hawk ) to the "I'm being hit!" animation (since I tend to play scrolled out in third person), plus people in TS/on the other side of the room blurting out "add" (which is all I really need to know, in the case of the head-bashing orc.)
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Sometimes, I want to be immersed in the complete experience and great sound is a must. I have the option of putting the sound through my stereo at that time. Other times, I want to play with the sound off for various reasons.
When I wish the full experience, the sound quality can make a game or break a game. Sometimes the sound is so poorly rendered, that I end up turning it off just so that I can enjoy the game. When the sound actually enhances the gameplay, it makes a good game great. Some games have such well done music scores that I would enjoy letting them play in the background while doing other things.
Actually, I think MMOGs are getting pretty good with their sound, and getting better.
As for other options... better speakers?
Seriously. Unless I'm not understanding your meaning. If you have a game with kick-ass graphics and a screaming fast graphics card, you'll want to hook up a screaming fast monitor to it, not something that has a 24ms response time and capable only of 800 x 600 pixel display. Same with sound. If the game has really good sound and you want to take advantage of it, you'll want a good sound card and want to hook up some good speakers to your system.
Now... if you are looking for speaker recommendations... I could go into some drool-worthy mega-buck high-end audiophile stuff.
In the article, there is a very annoying advertisement placed right in the middle of one of the sentences, it blocks out several words and effectively makes that sentence unreadable. The article would make for a better read without it. Is this site a bastion of MMO discussion or of the almighty advertising dollar?
As for the main point, the effect of sound, I find headphones are the best auditory accessory - in games like CoX where mission-essential items often emit a noise to aid in their detection, my experience is that headphones work best over speakers of any type. Sound can generate high levels of emotion - the music that played while a player was on the planet Lok in Star Wars: Galaxies was just amazingly inspiring. To bad most of the rest of that game sux, good sound on one planet won't save that stinker. When done well, sound can be a fantastic addition to any MMO, but when done to even average standards it quickly become just background noise of no significance.
I agree that sound often takes a backseat in MMO's and this is one thing that Blizzard is best at in the genre. It often bugs me that in EVE Online, you probably won't keep the audio on longer than thirty minutes because of the mostly uninspired music, the buggy sound effects, the monotony overall, and the absurd CPU overhead (and its impact on performance).
And there don't seem to be any signs that changing the current status quo is a priority at all. The upcoming Kali update within the next four or so months focuses solely on getting us a shiny new DX9 engine, with a DX10 version of the engine soon to follow. There are rumours that we may be getting a new sound engine, but, imo, fat chance of that happening within the next decade.