Mixing for TV/Consoles

[WillRock]

Ok, so I was talking to Pete Lepley about mixing for a Project M theme track he's doing. He's been told by the devs that "mixing on a console is awkward" and he has to mix it in a certain way otherwise it will sound weird when they mix it into the game. They have not said what causes this, I can only think they must change the sample rate or something similar to that.

I've not heard of this before and doesn't really make much sense based on my own experiences with writing music for game/film where people have not asked me for anything out of the ordinary mixing wise. Also, it seems very strange to ask for a specific type of mixing because it will sound different (worse) when they put it in the game. How can you even know what to do to it to make it sound as good as possible? Should it even be your problem if you're not the one mixing the track into the game itself? It all seems very odd to me. Does anyone else in the know have any insight on this topic?

[Garrett Williamson]

That's odd. I'm doing a track for Project M as well, but I haven't heard any of this from any of the directors/administrators, so this is new to me. Would love to hear some feedback on this.

[timaeus222]

I'm believe zircon did something kinda like this for Fittest after listening closely to the mixing. For example, the strings sound great in Photosynthesis and the bass sounds great in Morsecode, but a little reserved in the loudness, I think.

So, maybe whatever reason they have has something to do with not "distracting the listener" from the game, which could mean holding back on the fullness of the mixing?

[Nase]

I'm believe zircon did something kinda like this for Fittest after listening closely to the mixing. For example, the strings sound great in Photosynthesis and the bass sounds great in Morsecode, but a little reserved in the loudness, I think.

So, maybe whatever reason they have has something to do with not "distracting the listener" from the game, which could mean holding back on the fullness of the mixing?

That's part of the psychological side of scoring music for something, mixing it with other media. It's clear you wanna end up with a product with perfect synergy of all elements, where nothing overshadows something else but everything works together to make for a "greater than the sum" experience.

Can't know if that's what the guy meant though. Willrock understood it as a technical thing, and from that perspective the only thing i can think of is making sure you got enough headroom for other stuff. The idea that stuff just sounds different in the game doesn't make sense technically, just psychologically.

Listen to the Starcraft Terran music; apart from playing relatively quiet, the mixing is also very subdued, no punch, nothing jumping out at you. It's symphonic proggy rock, mixed elevator music style. If you were to listen to it once on a cd, it'd probably sound forgettable.

Ingame though, you're going to listen a hundred times, with constant sound fx over it. The goodness and detail of the tracks is going to infect you slowly.

And they simply refuse to get old! It's one of those OSTs that adds so much while being easily overlooked for a long while.

If you're working on an ingame track that you think kicks ass, but your ears feel exhausted after listening for an hour, that's probably a bad sign.

[timaeus222]

If you're working on an ingame track that you think kicks ass, but your ears feel exhausted after listening for an hour, that's probably a bad sign.

This could just be because of the audio system though. At least for me, my headphones hardly give me any ear fatigue. If your system is supposedly minimizing ear fatigue and it's not doing it, either it actually isn't functioning as intended or yeah, it's whatever you're working on that's causing it. (My guess is that thin resonances that are there but you may or may not hear is a cause. Oftentimes I tame resonances in FM bell sounds, for example, and their waveforms go from looking 'uncompressed' [dynamically all over the place] to 'controlled', yet no actual compressors were used.)

Edited April 19, 2014 by timaeus222

[Phonetic Hero]

It's hard to know exactly what he meant when we didn't go into much detail. I'll talk with him more about it later, but he's a busy guy, and I kinda am too at the moment If I get anymore info from him directly, I'll post it here, but until then it's kind of a lot of conjecture unless someone has some more solid information (and if that's the case, by all means, enlighten me/us!)

What I kinda got out of it was that he wanted the instruments to pop more. He said to mix with more "garishness", which to me says maybe a little more dynamic, and really exaggerate important lines while backing off on supplementing parts so that the frequency spectrum isn't constantly full, leaving room for sfx. What I'm working on now is the main theme, which will play as the main themes for Brawl or Melee do during match setup. I think these allow for less of a "full" sound like that, because you've got the announcer's voice going (which is always ENORMOUS and takes up a ton of frequency space) and all the selection sound effects. I guess it's also the exposition for the game rather than BGM during a fight, so maybe it's better to let it breathe a little more like that? But then I think of how grand the themes for SSBB and SSBM feel, and I want to convey that sense of grandeur to the player too... I keep going back and forth. Thoughts?

[Nase]

This could just be because of the audio system though. At least for me, my headphones hardly give me any ear fatigue. If your system is supposedly minimizing ear fatigue and it's not doing it, either it actually isn't functioning as intended or yeah, it's whatever you're working on that's causing it. (My guess is that thin resonances that are there but you may or may not hear is a cause. Oftentimes I tame resonances in FM bell sounds, for example, and their waveforms go from looking 'uncompressed' [dynamically all over the place] to 'controlled', yet no actual compressors were used.)

If something is mixed way hot and full spectrum though it's going to cause fatigue on any system.

I intended to use "fatigue" as a term covering both mixing and composition to some degree; using the starcraft example again, it works well because the everchanging and pretty intricate composition is defused by the very bgm-ish mixing.

The question simply is, what kind of music do you wanna fit in, and how will the mixing have to adjust to make it pleasant and not obtrusive. Like, making very non-ambient music work in a sort of ambient way.

Edited April 19, 2014 by Nase

[ectogemia]

I had the same thought a while ago. I even made a thread about it here, but it didn't really go anywhere.

I think Nase is right, that the idea is to create an interesting piece of music which is not so interesting that it becomes distracting or tiresome. You can do that through subduing the writing, the mixing, or both -- whatever sounds best. That being said, I experimented with toning down the mixing and bit in the soundtracks I'm working on, and I didn't like the results, so I decided to mix as though I'm writing a studio album and see what the players' feedback is like. If it's positive, I'll keep mixing like that in the future; if negative, I'll flatten my mixes a little.

... not that that helps you since the Project M dude specifically asked for changes in mixing, but iono, try listening critically to SSB tunes and comparing the frequencies, transients, and balance to your own and talk to the dev about the comparisons you've drawn. If your tunes already sound SSB'y, maybe you can convince him that he's asking for something you shouldn't be doing anyway.

[timaeus222]

Listen to the Starcraft Terran music; apart from playing relatively quiet, the mixing is also very subdued, no punch, nothing jumping out at you. It's symphonic proggy rock, mixed elevator music style. If you were to listen to it once on a cd, it'd probably sound forgettable.

Great analogy.

I think these allow for less of a "full" sound like that, because you've got the announcer's voice going (which is always ENORMOUS and takes up a ton of frequency space) and all the selection sound effects. I guess it's also the exposition for the game rather than BGM during a fight, so maybe it's better to let it breathe a little more like that? But then I think of how grand the themes for SSBB and SSBM feel, and I want to convey that sense of grandeur to the player too... I keep going back and forth. Thoughts?

Yeah, that's what I was suggesting. You could try making it less full than usual, and Nase and you (and ecto, who agreed and made a similar previous topic about something like this) have a correspondingly logical reason of leaving room for sound effects. The challenge could then be to scoop the right frequencies so that the music doesn't sound overly compensated by itself and also sounds complementary with the sound effects. That just takes careful locating of the frequencies that create the particular qualities of each sound you want.

So for you, Pete, I think grandeur can still be done, but it would then just be about finding a good balance in the frequency scooping gain, once you find those frequencies. Since you mainly use FL, I believe, it should be easier than in some other DAWs due to the visual EQ you have.

Edited April 19, 2014 by timaeus222

[Argle]

mix very quietly, because that's the level many people will hear the music at.

[Nabeel Ansari]

When making music for media, you have to reserve parts of the sonic space for other elements of the medium. In both games and film/tv, this means dialing back more common frequencies of every day life (voices, maybe city background noise, gun sound effects) to make it so that when someone is trying to mix in dialogue and SFX they don't end up just slapping a tone-shaper EQ and scooping out a huge range of your song.

Listen to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. It fits into the movie without a meaningful amount of EQ shaping because it's written in a way where it doesn't fight for the sonic space of swords clanging and people yelling.

Specifically, you're dealing with a game that has a lot of punch in its sound effects.

EDIT: After reading your OP I realized that my and most other replies aren't even close to answering your actual question. I'd get in touch with the devs and get an answer from them.

Edited April 20, 2014 by Neblix

[Phonetic Hero]

EDIT: After reading your OP I realized that my and most other replies aren't even close to answering your actual question. I'd get in touch with the devs and get an answer from them.

God, thank you haha

EDIT: To clarify, from what I've gathered by talking with Corey, it's not a problem with the mix itself but that there's something lost/changed in translation from point A to point B in the mix. Will and I were wondering if anyone else had heard of that, if it's common, and if it's a problem that DOES exist (rather than it just being a matter of switching from hearing it on your computer to hearing it on your TV), what the best solution would be

Edited April 20, 2014 by Phonetic Hero

[Nabeel Ansari]

Buy a TV and mix on it.

[Phonetic Hero]

Buy a TV and mix on it.

Again, not really the main issue. The main issue is whether or not it actually IS a problem. If it IS A PROBLEM, I can figure out how to work around it. I'm a big boy.

[Nase]

EDIT: To clarify, from what I've gathered by talking with Corey, it's not a problem with the mix itself but that there's something lost/changed in translation from point A to point B in the mix. Will and I were wondering if anyone else had heard of that, if it's common, and if it's a problem that DOES exist (rather than it just being a matter of switching from hearing it on your computer to hearing it on your TV), what the best solution would be

Only thing i know where that can happen is stereo to mono. They're not doing that...right?

[Garrett Williamson]

Only thing i know where that can happen is stereo to mono. They're not doing that...right?

It would be silly if they were.

[timaeus222]

So then does it have anything to do with variable (unpredictable what they are) speakers used for TVs, or...? I mean, you don't really know what speakers people will use when they use their TV. o.o;

At this point, we're just asking you questions about your question.

Edited April 21, 2014 by timaeus222

[Phonetic Hero]

Only thing i know where that can happen is stereo to mono. They're not doing that...right?

I agree with G-Mixer, it'd be silly if they were. But I dunno what all's going on in their coding process, so I suppose that IS a possibility. I'll check with one of the devs when I can

So then does it have anything to do with variable (unpredictable what they are) speakers used for TVs, or...? I mean, you don't really know what speakers people will use when they use their TV. o.o;

At this point, we're just asking you questions about your question.

That was one of the possibilities Will and I came up with (which I touched on a post or two ago), and might be pretty probable. I'm not sure if Corey would be expecting to hear it differently as far as frequency response goes (not sure how much he knows about audio), so it's entirely possible that he's hearing it "differently" because his TV has vastly different response than his computer/headphones. Again, I'll try to talk with one of them about it more when I can

[Garrett Williamson]

I agree with G-Mixer, it'd be silly if they were. But I dunno what all's going on in their coding process, so I suppose that IS a possibility. I'll check with one of the devs when I can

That was one of the possibilities Will and I came up with (which I touched on a post or two ago), and might be pretty probable. I'm not sure if Corey would be expecting to hear it differently as far as frequency response goes (not sure how much he knows about audio), so it's entirely possible that he's hearing it "differently" because his TV has vastly different response than his computer/headphones. Again, I'll try to talk with one of them about it more when I can

Let me know what they tell you because I'm also doing at least one track for them and I'd like to know what I'm dealing with here.

[Nase]

I think non-sound people have a good enough grasp on the idea that stuff sounds different on different speakers...would be surprised if that's it.

The stereo>mono thing would be silly too, but if it was a silly bug, i could imagine audio-clueless people to be confused. Depending on the mixing, It can sound quite alright for the most part, but parts of it are going to be weird or non-existant.

[José the Bronx Rican]

You'd be surprised how much is out there that gets lost once the mix is in mono. That may well turn out to be the case here. The issue is present in many of our own ReMixes; I noticed once while working on the BadAss trailer; we also accidentally posted the Maverick Rising trailer in mono, and it turned up there. My tinnitus compels me to constantly judge my mix in mono sound to make sure everything works. Even in this day and age, there will be setups that won't be friendly to music that was created without enough consideration to a full mono mixdown. Some of the sounds I worked with (especially pianos) get lost almost completely, so the tools available in FL to deal exactly with this problem are valuable to me. Come to think of it, I wonder now if this happens with HD Remix.

[Garrett Williamson]

I suppose since this isn't like a ligit game and rather a mod, it's possible it could be in mono. But when was the last time music for a game was in stereo? Really. Often games have a mono option, but just about if not every game by default is in stereo.

I highly doubt this is the case, but since this is a mod and not an actual ligit game, I'll stay open to the idea.

The New Super Mario Bros. Wii mod is in stereo, though. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

[José the Bronx Rican]

To clarify: not saying that this game/mod might be in mono, just that it might be a consideration that someone's normal gaming environment might have that effect on the sound they're hearing. I assume major recording studios still have to engineer music to sound wonderful on everything from the largest theaters to the smallest, cheapest single-speaker iPod rigs. Everything can still be in stereo, but have much less separation depending where you're sitting, how the sound is being directed to your ears, etc.

[Garrett Williamson]

I know. I'm just bringing it up since we're still on the mono-related subject.

[Meteo Xavier]

Forgive my rather ignorant question, but why would you need to mix for TV/Consoles for streaming music anyway? If you go to get your soundtrack mastered, isn't the whole point to get it to sound generally good across media anyway? Especially since not all TVs and sound systems are equally balanced and do what they want to do all the same?