10. New Sound Actor Icons

9. Multiple Sound Slots for AmbientSounds

8. SoundGroups are now called SoundClasses

7. SoundClass Editor

6. Ambient Zones

5. Visual of Min Radius

4. Switch from OpenAL to XAudio2

3. Improved Distance Models

2. Improved Low Pass Filters

1. Content Browser

Simon Ahsby and the team at Audiokinetic continue to push the boundaries of Game Audio integration with their amazing toolset WWISE.

WWISE is an audio tool set that was developed with the sound designer and composer as its focus. Audiokinetic offers WWISE as a bridge between the world of Digital Audio Workstations (Pro Tools, Logic Audio) and the code driven world of a game audio pipeline.

For those of us who are experienced with audio tools for Music and Media Postproduction, the introduction of WWISE onto the scene has been exciting to say the least. Keeping with this trend, the team at WWISE is proud to present a module (plug in) that will expand the power of WWISE as a sound design medium.

The first module, SoundSeed Impact, can be used to create variations of resonant impact sounds, such as sword clings, footsteps, bells, etc. Audiokinetic promises to deliver Impact shortly and is already working on creating additional modules.

“Too often, sound designers must set aside their creativity in order to comply with memory usage or recording costs constraints,” says Audiokinetic CEO and president André Nadeau. “SoundSeed breaks this paradigm.”

A very tongue in cheek look at Wii Music from SarcasticGamer.com. They crack on the limited music selection in the game, all songs are either from Nintendo or the public domain. How many different ways can you play the Super Mario Bros. theme? There is also the flailing that come naturally with any Wii game, there is no real instrument to play so the controls may take some getting used to. With game like Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 on the shelves it sounds like Wi Music might have a tough time competing with a popular mix of licensed music and plastic instruments.

An excellent look into the audio direction of Gears of War 2.  The design team from Epic talk about their goals in the for music, dialog, and sfx of the game.

Metallica’s newest release “Death Magnetic” has been heralded as a return back to their aggressive rock roots.  But recently the album version has caught some flack for being distorted and overcompressed.

To make matters worse a single from the album “Suicide and Redemption” has been released for Guitar Hero that doesn’t have the same problems (Music Radar and Mastering Media)  Players with keen ears who own both the cd release and the downlable content for the game have noticed that the version inthe game has more dynamics and punch then its counterpart on the cd. There is even a youtube video focusing on the differences. Take a listen for yourself!

Activision and the game studio working on Guitar Hero and Rockband recieve the individual tracks from the labels in advance of the final mix.  This is so they can prepare the game for release at the same time as the album and single.  Two different audio engineers came up with two seperate mixes for each medium that would be released.  However many people agree that, while each versions have their own drawbacks, the version in Guitar Hero is the better mix.

People in the forums are up in arms over the whole ordeal and started a petition demanding a remix of the album. Petition and Forum Link 1 2 There has even been a post by the mastering engineer Ted Jensen claiming that the tracks we smashed before he got them, he says :

“I’m certainly sympathetic to your reaction, I get to slam my head against that brick wall every day. In this case the mixes were already brick walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice it to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me I’m not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else.”

This is all the outcome of a race to the loudest cd.  Also, known as the “Loudness War” a term coined by the people over at www.turnmeup.com.  Watch a video presentation describing how we percieve loudness in audio.