If you're on the fence about the lesson videos in Patreon, this one might be a good one to join for! Lots of tips on making crazy effects using Ableton stock plugins.
Yep, my first thought was, this needs to be used in moderation. The real weight in this effect comes not from the effect itself, but the contrast of it between the rest of the sounds going on. That's what gives it the feeling of power.
This effect absolutely gets overused nowadays. A steady wave of pops and rumbles that tickle your ears is fine for certain things, but not EVERYTHING. Compare the sound design of the latest Mortal Kombat with the latest Smash Bros for a perfect example. Smash's focus on meaty bass makes every hit feel like a huge impact, but everything in MK sounds the same -- tinny and weak, like you're bashing wafers instead of human skulls.
@QuintessentialWalrus the best modern game you could think of for obnoxious poorly mixed sound effects is Mortal Kombat, a series that has been doing that since Sega Genesis
By now it's super overused and annoying. Playing Hellblade 2 right now and besides it being a pretty bad game the mid rumble is used constantly and for everything. I just knew they'd overuse it. It's an okay sound effect but why does every second modern game make its signature sound?
"More like hot sauce than salt" is the perfect way to phrase it. I noticed a strong rumble effect for the first time 4 years ago in an anime, and it made everything sound _so_ good. But recently, I've noticed it being used as a crutch in a lot of media. It gets turned up to 11 and used on everything. I think a lot of people say "well EVERYTHING has this weight, so every thing should have the same, consistent sound effect to show it all has the same effect on the environment." Which has merit, but after awhile it becomes too samey. However, I'm saying all of this as a consumer of media, not a sound designer. This is a great video and it's wonderful to hear the thoughts of a professional on something not talked about too often.
@@TRK--xk7bb Suprisingly, no. It was actually Reincarnated as a Slime. You wouldn't think so, since it's just an anime adaption of an isekai manga. Low effort right? But it's really good
@@TRK--xk7bb I actually looked it up, and apparently the same guy who did that, also did the sound design for all of Jojo, which is absolutely insane. Pretty neat lol
Dude, so happy that you are back making videos again. I'm one of the majority of watchers you mention who isn't a sound designer but have always found your videos super eye opening.
I consume a lot of Game dev content even tho i never intend to become a Game dev. And you fit a niche within that spectrum barely anyone covers. And then you always do it in such an engaging way. I Truly get exited any time i see that Marshall McGee Notification. Love your stuff 💙
7:15 "But I also hope that we don't start to hear it so frequently in games and movies that it loses its power and novelty" Oops, too late. Everything everywhere sounds like swallowing food underwater now.
Soundtoys Crystalizer is fantastic for this stuff. I spotted it in the effects chain of that Mortal Kombat sound design Vice documentary and started using it the same way myself.
I hadn’t played a Halo game since Reach from 2010 until I played Halo Infinite a year or so ago. It was fun and played like a Halo game, but at the same time felt very separate from what I remember them being like. Now I realize that it’s the rumbly, worbly undertones that almost all the sound effects have!
343 Industries thankfully doesn't overuse their warbles TOO much, but it's definitely noticeable how different things sound in modern Halo versus Bungie Halo.
I think this tendency towards muddiness is also reflected in the art direction, unfortunately. The original trilogy--especially CE--had some beautiful saturated metallic colors with lots of contrast to bring out those tones. Gave it a very futuristic feel. Infinite's palette is much too dirty and looks like dull paint with too many mid tones. I really lament how the feel of the series has strayed so much from its roots
Just wanna say if you all don't know who NVK is then you better READ UP ^^^ And buy his insane reaper workflow tools! He worked on Jedi Survivor and is a super talented and nice guy :)
Lot of designed banks from Boom Library recently has been designed with this punchy intense crunch in mind. Sometimes it's too much indeed, where everything is pushed to the max already, leaving not much room for the rest. But when well executed it does sound great of course.
As a part of the non-sound designer majority, this has shed light on the fact that I've really enjoyed scenes with this rumbling effect but I never knew what it was I liked about them until now.
After all of the sound design processes you mentioned, try putting Max4Live Conflator (free ableton version of Oxford Inflator) at the very end of your chain. Full dry/wet if you don't want to clip; play with the input gain to change the flavor. The Curve values have very specific sweet spots so hold down shift while adjusting it; left for more low emphasis, right for crisp highs. It really brings out every detail of a sound & is potentially the step that will bridge the gap between your example and the examples you cited.
@@AlbertBalbastreMorte I was lucky enough to have a Sound Engineer roommate and he taught me the fundamentals of recording. From there, I started recording almost everyday. Mainly Music. I got into Voice Acting and started getting requests from Clients to add Sound FX. That was when I started doing Soud Design professionally. Most of my knowledge started from Trial and Error but I really learned the craft by listening to my Clients. The more descriptive they were with their requests the more I realized I could think way outside the box. Once I started thinking about Sound Design in "layers" things really took off and I started to do my own Field Recordings, buying plugins for Sound Design and dedicating more to the craft. I wish I could say I had a straight forward path but it all happened as a happy accident because of my roommate.
Sound designer (nonprofessional) here, and yeah the main thing that came to mind was that it's a very full-spectrum thing. Matches with the Gearbox guy's comments on how audio needs to be functional across all output systems. And yeah, that of course is not the entirety of the factors.. something needs to sound good in the first place for the task of making it sound good across all audio systems to be worth doing. Also yeah, bouncing audio and re-processing it is so key, for so many different techniques.
Great video Marshall! This is a topic that I've been thinking a lot about since I started hearing this sonic style cropping up more often over the last number of years. As a sound designer for games myself, I'm very cautious about when and where I use these techniques because honestly, I'm starting to feel like this style of sound design is already becoming overused, especially in games. I hear it so often when reviewing show reels on job applications that my ears have become tired of it. The pitfall I see many aspiring sound designers falling into is leaning much too heavily on this technique to define the character of a sound and not exploring other parts of the frequency spectrum. As a result, sound designers are probably not showcasing their own unique voice/style as much as they could. The plugin I see most often associated with these types of sounds is Disperser by Kilohearts. It's kind of a one stop shop, and usually if you put it on any sounds with rich transient detail and lots of low mid range frequency content like rock falls or explosions it'll get you very close. Your point of treating this less like salt and more like hot sauce is so good! A little goes a long way :)
you have no idea how great it is to see more stuff from you :D your content has made me appreciate sound design in media wayyy more than i used to, and has honestly kinda changed my perspective of the world around me a little bit... like there's been quite a few times I've heard a sound and gone "ohh... i bet that'd be a great sample for something" lol
Thanks for making this!! This is something I’ve noticed in a lot of spaces but didn’t know what to call it. Truth is, I struggle with it/have rarely achieved it, so thanks for sharing!
Mortal Kombat 11 (and now 1) as well as the more recent Star Wars games are where I've noticed this the most and, frankly, it really impressed me. To me there are two elements; punch and crunch. Punch are fast impacts that sound a lot like the fast pitch decay sine wave transients hardstyle producers are adding to their kicks (probably because of phone listeners). While crunch sounds like they're scrubbing through grain tables of crumpling cans and paper while more slowly ramping pitch.
Yup, I'm very familiar with the low rumble. My roommates love to keep the surround sound cranked outside my door while I'm trying to sleep. All movies and games are constant rumbles now
This is soooo interesting. Being a music producer for 4 years now and I am only now seeing that I can use my skills to make game sound effects? Sick video! Made me motivated.
back to say god you really struck something with that phase rotation/shifting idea I've been getting so much good + varied stuff from sessions based around it over the last couple months, thank you !!
I hear a lot of this in Neurofunk / Neuro sound design. A lot of really technical drum and bass music does this and of course in other electronic genres of varying bpm.
This is so interesting for you to bring up, because I've noticed this too! The first time I noticed it was Doom 2016. I remember even the reloading sounds were so.... crunchy? Or something. You can also hear it in the Force Awakens when Finn ignites Lukes lightsaber.
Wow this is awesome. I’m at school for sound design, composition and audio implementation right now. I’m going to utilize this on some projects I’ve got coming up for sure
I also love this style, especially in UI. It was really interesting to get some more technical insight like what frequency range these sounds are in! So happy that you've been making videos lately :)
Well put at the end there. I feel that this technique really pulls away from the context of the thing. I think the gratification and allure of this flashy trend is subtracting from some of the narrative thinking about what a sound could describe. Like every trend though it’s just overused at the moment and in some of the biggest games out there, given time it’ll settle down and be more tastefully used.
🤚 also not a sound designer. I used to teach HS music production, though, and I wrote an entire sound design unit around the techniques I learned in your videos. So, fwiw, lots of students got interested in sound design because of you.
this is EXACTLY why I admire the music of Street Fighter 6 SO much! as a producer, I originally heard it as it was, and was thinking "dude, why are these mixes so freaking THIN!?" Then I heard it in the context of the game, and it's *genius* in motion.
To me the most noticeable thing about the trend is the sound of the disperser. Was it just me, or did it sound like every sound in that Mortal Kombat trailer had a phase disperser on it? It kind of makes everything sound squishy
I heard the sound of rumble crunch for the first time in the anime “the time I got reincarnated as a slime at the charybdis chapter” maybe it’s because the last theme for a magic sound was the chimes and sparkles were more so an odd choice for the sound of magic.
This video is so vindicating -- I knew I wasn't crazy! I've noticed that "steady waves of pops and rumbles" are the Next Big Thing in sound design and I can't stand it when they're overused. My personal nicknames for these rumbles include: - Bubble wrap - Rice crispies - Wibble warbles - Earthquake ASMR
the multiple EQ Three trick is common in EDM, particularly dubstep. mimics the Disperser fx from kiloheartz. Its cool to see this used in other ways. Also cool to see that producers like myself implement this in music.
I too have been noticing this happening in so much modern sound design. I feel like I really started to notice this trend when DOOM 2016 came out. But I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing this type of sound design popping up everywhere. I think it does add a lot of coolness to certain sounds, but I definitely feel like I'm already hearing it getting way overused. I feel like Shadow Warrior 3 added a layer of "low rumble" to each sound before adding yet 2 more layers. Anyways, very cool video, looking forward to checking out the rest of your channel.
Not a sound designer, but you nearly inspired me to become one years ago! I regretted it for a bit too, but I was already too deep into my VFX degree, haha.
Oh my god FINALLY. FINALLY I FOUND SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT THIS. I've noticed this thing a couple years ago and it's eating me alive because it got saturated so quickly and I couldn't even describe this cause I didn't know the name of this thing. It's really annoying now, thank you for speaking on this.
The first time I remember hearing low well defined sound design was in Mad Max in an Atmos theatre, and recently Oppenheimer used rumble too. Now when it comes to kickass car engine roaring and atomic bombs it makes sense to use this sound design, but I guess it has become ubiquitous. Transformers, that was also influential in its sound design, also used lowmid punchy rumble everywhere.
I feel like this style has really been influenced by dubstep and neurofunk dnb. There's surely influence both ways (especially these days) but I think the film and game sound design trend of that particular kind of rumbling morphing bass followed the development of those sounds in bass music as it started getting really hi-fi from around the mid-late 2000s. Feels like there's a clear line between some of these modern game/film sounds and what artists like Noisia and Misanthrop were doing 10-15 years ago. 'Sinkhole' by Noisia is basically a 3.5 minute masterclass in these kinds of sounds 🤤
its funny, i knew exactly what this video was going to be about before i even started it. just immediately thought "it's gonna be about that weird squishy sci fi noise that every explosion has now, isn't it" and i wasn't wrong
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Great video, packed with information as usual :) I feel like this area of 180 - 400 Hz is the most tricky one.. It can make or break the sound. When I started out mixing music I learned from bunch of youtube tutorials to cut a lot of the frequencies in this area resulting in flat, weak sounding mixes. It took me a loong time to make purposeful moves, reference a lot and just trust my ears.. don't do anything just because a tutorial says so. The magic truly is in the midrange!
I remember the first time I realize these modern rumbling sound since MK 11, and then Injustice 2 also have a very similar sound since they're from the same developer, and it's became more and more frequently used in every games or even movies
I do sound design, though not on a really professional level, and tbh I just think of it as the "Serum" noise, the VST that every EDM act used to sort of do post-dubstep music, to me it sounds like a by-now past gen of dance music
This is what I listen to on a daily. This specifically sounds like Snails. Your process reminds me of Mr Bill, Kompany, Virtual Riot. You can also try Parallel Processing and stacking lows, mids and highs to give it that crisp and well-rounded texture.
Oooh, so that's what it's been happening. I remember noticing specially on Injustice. I was wondering how they get that type of sounds, being doing work as sound designer at times ^^ Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the video Marshall! Ever mess with bitwig? It doesn’t have video editing but it’s sick with a huge amount of modulators. Some tips to try would be to actually use additive eq to pull out low end of any sound and then actually saturate it. Different distortion types obv will create certain kinds of artifacts but if you get too much intermodular you can run it in parallel. If the sound has no low end then you can try frequency shifting it down first. Oh and fuzz distortions, ring modulators and bitcrushers are great for adding high end crackles back into sounds without ott. Love your channel! Would love to bring you on mine as a guest sometine
First time watching this channel. The title caught me cause I watched Oppenheimer yesterday and noticed how mid and saturated the rumbles were. I was pleased to see this is about vidya tho.
Great assessment of not only what this phenomenon is, but why it should be used in moderation. Bluepoint's changes to the magic sound design in the Demon's Souls PS5 remake is an excellent example of why it's so important to use in moderation and appropriately. I don't know what they were thinking. Nice Vulfpeck celeb shot, by the way.
I think there's also something to be said about strain on the ears. The more high pitched sounds there are in a game, the faster I am likely to stop playing simply from being exhausted by the sounds.
I never really picked up in this sound design trend, but now that's it's been pointed, I've easily noticed it more often now. I think from a game design perspective, the sound is really awesome sounding but should only be used for the most important sounds. Like mentioned where a character uses a really powerful spell, an enemy fires a doomsday like weapon, or the player reaches a new skill tree. That way it's impactful. Plus, I think players would subconsciously notice the low mid bass of it when those moments happen and thus it kinda triggers a dopamine effect in their brain.
Literally just thought it was Uberloud loaded on everything. Everything sounds like an earth sound lmao. And it sounds great. Provided there’s some contrast
i liked the whole video but I was bugged by 4:52 where you didn't explain the exact important step, or where does the main effect reside on all processes that go in the same step, grasped it before with envelope followers which is nice but... after two reasonable steps (pitching down and gating) you mixed like six different sauces at the same step, one of them being "the secret one" and went through it too fast, it's almost like a soup recipe going: -add water -then salt -and then for the secret ingredient, open this canned soup and pour it, so this is how you make soup, also in my patreon is the full recipe. don't take it as hate comment, I like the entire video, and the result was spectacular, i'm sure it's all to leave a better "reward" for the patreons, i understand that, I just wanted to comment what I would felt if I didn't know about phase rotation and allpass filter stacking, and were so close to know the "secret sauce", for it to be not clear only on that exact part. maybe would have been nicer to separate step 3 in two more steps (like 3- allpass stacks 4- extra processing), or talk about phase rotation by allpass stacking before the example, even a little bit on the extra filtering and saturation you did after stacking, which sounded very good or get a little deep into the EQ stacking so viewers can see at least something more than a macro knob going up on the allpasses (at least you didnt use disperser right away so, that's nice!). i'm subscribing tho, appreciated the hard work through the video and the editing, the scripting and voicing... interviewing... recreating the example... it's a lot I reckon, thank you!
If you're on the fence about the lesson videos in Patreon, this one might be a good one to join for! Lots of tips on making crazy effects using Ableton stock plugins.
Listening to your voice, I think you are using the sm7b. Am I correct?
I absolutely love that first spectrum visualizer on the video that laid over the game. That’s so sick 🎉
Can we still sign up for the patreon and will there be more content on there?!
ngl i'm a Sound Designer
@@colourbasscolourbassweapon2135 I be designing sounds after Taco Bell ngl
Yep, my first thought was, this needs to be used in moderation. The real weight in this effect comes not from the effect itself, but the contrast of it between the rest of the sounds going on. That's what gives it the feeling of power.
This effect absolutely gets overused nowadays. A steady wave of pops and rumbles that tickle your ears is fine for certain things, but not EVERYTHING. Compare the sound design of the latest Mortal Kombat with the latest Smash Bros for a perfect example. Smash's focus on meaty bass makes every hit feel like a huge impact, but everything in MK sounds the same -- tinny and weak, like you're bashing wafers instead of human skulls.
@QuintessentialWalrus the best modern game you could think of for obnoxious poorly mixed sound effects is Mortal Kombat, a series that has been doing that since Sega Genesis
By now it's super overused and annoying. Playing Hellblade 2 right now and besides it being a pretty bad game the mid rumble is used constantly and for everything. I just knew they'd overuse it. It's an okay sound effect but why does every second modern game make its signature sound?
"More like hot sauce than salt" is the perfect way to phrase it. I noticed a strong rumble effect for the first time 4 years ago in an anime, and it made everything sound _so_ good. But recently, I've noticed it being used as a crutch in a lot of media. It gets turned up to 11 and used on everything. I think a lot of people say "well EVERYTHING has this weight, so every thing should have the same, consistent sound effect to show it all has the same effect on the environment." Which has merit, but after awhile it becomes too samey.
However, I'm saying all of this as a consumer of media, not a sound designer. This is a great video and it's wonderful to hear the thoughts of a professional on something not talked about too often.
Let me guess, Fate: Unlimited Blade Works was the anime?
@@TRK--xk7bb Suprisingly, no. It was actually Reincarnated as a Slime. You wouldn't think so, since it's just an anime adaption of an isekai manga. Low effort right? But it's really good
@@Sykroid Hah. Never would have guessed!
@@TRK--xk7bb I actually looked it up, and apparently the same guy who did that, also did the sound design for all of Jojo, which is absolutely insane. Pretty neat lol
Dude, so happy that you are back making videos again. I'm one of the majority of watchers you mention who isn't a sound designer but have always found your videos super eye opening.
Love that you included a critique of the sound you made. Gives us a frame of reference for what professionals expect.
I consume a lot of Game dev content even tho i never intend to become a Game dev. And you fit a niche within that spectrum barely anyone covers. And then you always do it in such an engaging way. I Truly get exited any time i see that Marshall McGee Notification. Love your stuff 💙
NO WAY MOKEYSNIPER??? i love ur apex content dude! just watched ur rev reborn movement guide
7:15 "But I also hope that we don't start to hear it so frequently in games and movies that it loses its power and novelty"
Oops, too late. Everything everywhere sounds like swallowing food underwater now.
Soundtoys Crystalizer is fantastic for this stuff.
I spotted it in the effects chain of that Mortal Kombat sound design Vice documentary and started using it the same way myself.
how do you go about this with crystallizer? i've owned it for ages but haven't used it a ton
I hadn’t played a Halo game since Reach from 2010 until I played Halo Infinite a year or so ago. It was fun and played like a Halo game, but at the same time felt very separate from what I remember them being like. Now I realize that it’s the rumbly, worbly undertones that almost all the sound effects have!
343 Industries thankfully doesn't overuse their warbles TOO much, but it's definitely noticeable how different things sound in modern Halo versus Bungie Halo.
I think this tendency towards muddiness is also reflected in the art direction, unfortunately. The original trilogy--especially CE--had some beautiful saturated metallic colors with lots of contrast to bring out those tones. Gave it a very futuristic feel. Infinite's palette is much too dirty and looks like dull paint with too many mid tones. I really lament how the feel of the series has strayed so much from its roots
0:34 I love this sound and imagine it was made by someone nice and very cool
Just wanna say if you all don't know who NVK is then you better READ UP ^^^ And buy his insane reaper workflow tools! He worked on Jedi Survivor and is a super talented and nice guy :)
😂
@@MarshallMcGee You are too kind 🙏thank you for blessing us with videos once again
Lot of designed banks from Boom Library recently has been designed with this punchy intense crunch in mind. Sometimes it's too much indeed, where everything is pushed to the max already, leaving not much room for the rest. But when well executed it does sound great of course.
As a part of the non-sound designer majority, this has shed light on the fact that I've really enjoyed scenes with this rumbling effect but I never knew what it was I liked about them until now.
for me its the exact opposite. i just realised how overused this is and how stupid and unrealistic it sounds lol
After all of the sound design processes you mentioned, try putting Max4Live Conflator (free ableton version of Oxford Inflator) at the very end of your chain. Full dry/wet if you don't want to clip; play with the input gain to change the flavor. The Curve values have very specific sweet spots so hold down shift while adjusting it; left for more low emphasis, right for crisp highs.
It really brings out every detail of a sound & is potentially the step that will bridge the gap between your example and the examples you cited.
I just applied for my first real Game Sound Design job yesterday and immediately thought about your channel! Glad to see you're making new videos!!
Hey man, where did you learn and study sound design?
@@AlbertBalbastreMorte I was lucky enough to have a Sound Engineer roommate and he taught me the fundamentals of recording. From there, I started recording almost everyday. Mainly Music.
I got into Voice Acting and started getting requests from Clients to add Sound FX. That was when I started doing Soud Design professionally.
Most of my knowledge started from Trial and Error but I really learned the craft by listening to my Clients. The more descriptive they were with their requests the more I realized I could think way outside the box.
Once I started thinking about Sound Design in "layers" things really took off and I started to do my own Field Recordings, buying plugins for Sound Design and dedicating more to the craft.
I wish I could say I had a straight forward path but it all happened as a happy accident because of my roommate.
I call it the 'Disperser' sound from the kilohearts plugin! I hear it everywhere hahaha
Sound designer (nonprofessional) here, and yeah the main thing that came to mind was that it's a very full-spectrum thing. Matches with the Gearbox guy's comments on how audio needs to be functional across all output systems. And yeah, that of course is not the entirety of the factors.. something needs to sound good in the first place for the task of making it sound good across all audio systems to be worth doing.
Also yeah, bouncing audio and re-processing it is so key, for so many different techniques.
And he's back! As a beginner sound designer - please come back more frequently with those uploads, been a dry season for a while =)
Great video Marshall! This is a topic that I've been thinking a lot about since I started hearing this sonic style cropping up more often over the last number of years. As a sound designer for games myself, I'm very cautious about when and where I use these techniques because honestly, I'm starting to feel like this style of sound design is already becoming overused, especially in games. I hear it so often when reviewing show reels on job applications that my ears have become tired of it. The pitfall I see many aspiring sound designers falling into is leaning much too heavily on this technique to define the character of a sound and not exploring other parts of the frequency spectrum. As a result, sound designers are probably not showcasing their own unique voice/style as much as they could. The plugin I see most often associated with these types of sounds is Disperser by Kilohearts. It's kind of a one stop shop, and usually if you put it on any sounds with rich transient detail and lots of low mid range frequency content like rock falls or explosions it'll get you very close. Your point of treating this less like salt and more like hot sauce is so good! A little goes a long way :)
Good job on creating that rumble sound! To think that you didn't even need a synth was quite cool. Just a sample, a heavy fx chain, and modulation!
Hey man, Met you many moons ago! Glad you're still at it! Hope you've been well!!!
you have no idea how great it is to see more stuff from you :D your content has made me appreciate sound design in media wayyy more than i used to, and has honestly kinda changed my perspective of the world around me a little bit... like there's been quite a few times I've heard a sound and gone "ohh... i bet that'd be a great sample for something" lol
It's the best approach as a sound designer👍😍
absolutely nuclear vulfpeck cameo, didn’t expect you to hit me where I live like that
Thanks for making this!! This is something I’ve noticed in a lot of spaces but didn’t know what to call it.
Truth is, I struggle with it/have rarely achieved it, so thanks for sharing!
Mortal Kombat 11 (and now 1) as well as the more recent Star Wars games are where I've noticed this the most and, frankly, it really impressed me. To me there are two elements; punch and crunch. Punch are fast impacts that sound a lot like the fast pitch decay sine wave transients hardstyle producers are adding to their kicks (probably because of phone listeners). While crunch sounds like they're scrubbing through grain tables of crumpling cans and paper while more slowly ramping pitch.
Yup, I'm very familiar with the low rumble. My roommates love to keep the surround sound cranked outside my door while I'm trying to sleep. All movies and games are constant rumbles now
This is soooo interesting. Being a music producer for 4 years now and I am only now seeing that I can use my skills to make game sound effects? Sick video! Made me motivated.
I knew what the sound was going to be before I even clicked on the video.
back to say god you really struck something with that phase rotation/shifting idea I've been getting so much good + varied stuff from sessions based around it over the last couple months, thank you !!
I hear a lot of this in Neurofunk / Neuro sound design. A lot of really technical drum and bass music does this and of course in other electronic genres of varying bpm.
absolute banger of a video, as always
This is so interesting for you to bring up, because I've noticed this too! The first time I noticed it was Doom 2016. I remember even the reloading sounds were so.... crunchy? Or something. You can also hear it in the Force Awakens when Finn ignites Lukes lightsaber.
TOP 10 best sounding indie game? Yes GO for it 🤝
I hate that sound trend, everything sounds soft like it was underwater, even the explosions, shots or hits. It rest intensity to almost everything.
Love the video. I've literally been thinking the same thing with Mortal combat and EA Battlefront 2. It's cool to see I'm not going crazy.
Finally someone else has noticed and talked about this! I feel heard. It was so cool hearing it be dissected and explained.
So happy to see a new video, i've just finished watching every video so perfect release time. Keep doing the Audio gods work @Marshall McGee
Wow this is awesome. I’m at school for sound design, composition and audio implementation right now. I’m going to utilize this on some projects I’ve got coming up for sure
Member of the 5% here and these vids are an amazing source of inspiration and information! ❤
YEEEES! I've been looking for a video like this, for sooo looong!
I also love this style, especially in UI. It was really interesting to get some more technical insight like what frequency range these sounds are in! So happy that you've been making videos lately :)
Well put at the end there. I feel that this technique really pulls away from the context of the thing. I think the gratification and allure of this flashy trend is subtracting from some of the narrative thinking about what a sound could describe. Like every trend though it’s just overused at the moment and in some of the biggest games out there, given time it’ll settle down and be more tastefully used.
🤚 also not a sound designer. I used to teach HS music production, though, and I wrote an entire sound design unit around the techniques I learned in your videos. So, fwiw, lots of students got interested in sound design because of you.
This is legitimately awesome lol
this is EXACTLY why I admire the music of Street Fighter 6 SO much! as a producer, I originally heard it as it was, and was thinking "dude, why are these mixes so freaking THIN!?"
Then I heard it in the context of the game, and it's *genius* in motion.
To me the most noticeable thing about the trend is the sound of the disperser. Was it just me, or did it sound like every sound in that Mortal Kombat trailer had a phase disperser on it? It kind of makes everything sound squishy
I heard the sound of rumble crunch for the first time in the anime “the time I got reincarnated as a slime at the charybdis chapter” maybe it’s because the last theme for a magic sound was the chimes and sparkles were more so an odd choice for the sound of magic.
Great video!!!
Great to have you back!
The main plugin effect a lot of the big name sound effect houses are using to achieve this sound is Kiloheartz Disperser.
This video is so vindicating -- I knew I wasn't crazy! I've noticed that "steady waves of pops and rumbles" are the Next Big Thing in sound design and I can't stand it when they're overused. My personal nicknames for these rumbles include:
- Bubble wrap
- Rice crispies
- Wibble warbles
- Earthquake ASMR
We're living through the, "Post-Deenan" era of sound, has been my bit 🤣
Really enjoying your vids dude! As a new game composer and sound designer these are super helpful for me. Currently working on my first OST and sfx!
the multiple EQ Three trick is common in EDM, particularly dubstep. mimics the Disperser fx from kiloheartz. Its cool to see this used in other ways. Also cool to see that producers like myself implement this in music.
Dang, Joshua has some sick synths...
lord forgive me for all my synths
Lol I’ve used that Ableton EQ Three side effect to achieve this sound, nice to see someone else had that idea too
The first time I noticed this type of sound design was in Dragon Age Inquisition (which is nearly 10 years old by now)!
I too have been noticing this happening in so much modern sound design. I feel like I really started to notice this trend when DOOM 2016 came out.
But I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing this type of sound design popping up everywhere. I think it does add a lot of coolness to certain sounds, but I definitely feel like I'm already hearing it getting way overused. I feel like Shadow Warrior 3 added a layer of "low rumble" to each sound before adding yet 2 more layers.
Anyways, very cool video, looking forward to checking out the rest of your channel.
Oh man im so glad ur back. Banger video
BABE WAKE UP NEW MARSHALL MCGEE JUST DROPPED!!
I like to call it “Synthetic Velcro”… because there’s something satisfying about it, like Velcro
The Vulf quote had me rolling on the floor laughing. Saw it coming when I saw Vulf looking at Darts bass. Gotta love that clip lol.
Not a sound designer, but you nearly inspired me to become one years ago! I regretted it for a bit too, but I was already too deep into my VFX degree, haha.
Oh my god FINALLY. FINALLY I FOUND SOMEONE TALKING ABOUT THIS. I've noticed this thing a couple years ago and it's eating me alive because it got saturated so quickly and I couldn't even describe this cause I didn't know the name of this thing. It's really annoying now, thank you for speaking on this.
The first time I remember hearing low well defined sound design was in Mad Max in an Atmos theatre, and recently Oppenheimer used rumble too. Now when it comes to kickass car engine roaring and atomic bombs it makes sense to use this sound design, but I guess it has become ubiquitous. Transformers, that was also influential in its sound design, also used lowmid punchy rumble everywhere.
It's great to see you again!!!!!!!!!
I feel like this style has really been influenced by dubstep and neurofunk dnb. There's surely influence both ways (especially these days) but I think the film and game sound design trend of that particular kind of rumbling morphing bass followed the development of those sounds in bass music as it started getting really hi-fi from around the mid-late 2000s. Feels like there's a clear line between some of these modern game/film sounds and what artists like Noisia and Misanthrop were doing 10-15 years ago. 'Sinkhole' by Noisia is basically a 3.5 minute masterclass in these kinds of sounds 🤤
i love sound design and am a gamer, but somehow i never thought to look at game sound design on youtube. great vid :)
I've really been thinking that a lot of sound designers have used this style of sounds for a while. I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed 😅
Granular Synthesis is great for this kind of stuff.
its funny, i knew exactly what this video was going to be about before i even started it. just immediately thought "it's gonna be about that weird squishy sci fi noise that every explosion has now, isn't it" and i wasn't wrong
Great video, packed with information as usual :) I feel like this area of 180 - 400 Hz is the most tricky one.. It can make or break the sound. When I started out mixing music I learned from bunch of youtube tutorials to cut a lot of the frequencies in this area resulting in flat, weak sounding mixes. It took me a loong time to make purposeful moves, reference a lot and just trust my ears.. don't do anything just because a tutorial says so. The magic truly is in the midrange!
YES! I hate the rumble!! It's so over the top and heavy sounding
I remember the first time I realize these modern rumbling sound since MK 11, and then Injustice 2 also have a very similar sound since they're from the same developer, and it's became more and more frequently used in every games or even movies
it really reminds me of the spectral smearing that naturally occurs as the sound of thunder propagates through the atmosphere
I do sound design, though not on a really professional level, and tbh I just think of it as the "Serum" noise, the VST that every EDM act used to sort of do post-dubstep music, to me it sounds like a by-now past gen of dance music
This is what I listen to on a daily. This specifically sounds like Snails. Your process reminds me of Mr Bill, Kompany, Virtual Riot. You can also try Parallel Processing and stacking lows, mids and highs to give it that crisp and well-rounded texture.
Oooh, so that's what it's been happening. I remember noticing specially on Injustice. I was wondering how they get that type of sounds, being doing work as sound designer at times ^^
Thanks for sharing!
Very interesting topic! And love the classy vulfpeck reference 😎
those sounds remind me of what you can get recording frozen lakes when you strike them hard
Thanks for the video Marshall! Ever mess with bitwig? It doesn’t have video editing but it’s sick with a huge amount of modulators.
Some tips to try would be to actually use additive eq to pull out low end of any sound and then actually saturate it. Different distortion types obv will create certain kinds of artifacts but if you get too much intermodular you can run it in parallel. If the sound has no low end then you can try frequency shifting it down first. Oh and fuzz distortions, ring modulators and bitcrushers are great for adding high end crackles back into sounds without ott.
Love your channel! Would love to bring you on mine as a guest sometine
First time watching this channel. The title caught me cause I watched Oppenheimer yesterday and noticed how mid and saturated the rumbles were. I was pleased to see this is about vidya tho.
Gotta love OTT and Disperser
I can't bellive! You back!
I would call them "glacial rumbles."
Great assessment of not only what this phenomenon is, but why it should be used in moderation. Bluepoint's changes to the magic sound design in the Demon's Souls PS5 remake is an excellent example of why it's so important to use in moderation and appropriately. I don't know what they were thinking.
Nice Vulfpeck celeb shot, by the way.
As a guy who loves his dubstep too much, please do more on the topic
Fantastic stuff
Every time I watch one of your videos it makes me want to go design something!
Yes! Yes! Yes! I adore these sound design videos
I think there's also something to be said about strain on the ears. The more high pitched sounds there are in a game, the faster I am likely to stop playing simply from being exhausted by the sounds.
He lives!
Another awesome video! I like the envelope modulation technique! Gonna have to try this one
This is my first time watching your channel. I'm gathering it is unacceptable to ever watch your videos without my headphones on.
I never really picked up in this sound design trend, but now that's it's been pointed, I've easily noticed it more often now.
I think from a game design perspective, the sound is really awesome sounding but should only be used for the most important sounds.
Like mentioned where a character uses a really powerful spell, an enemy fires a doomsday like weapon, or the player reaches a new skill tree. That way it's impactful.
Plus, I think players would subconsciously notice the low mid bass of it when those moments happen and thus it kinda triggers a dopamine effect in their brain.
Why do all fighting game punches have to sound like lasers now?
it sounds cool asf when used properly, but it's definitely way overused at the moment haha, appreciate the video as ever, keep up the great work!
Literally just thought it was Uberloud loaded on everything. Everything sounds like an earth sound lmao. And it sounds great. Provided there’s some contrast
I keep forgetting how powerful a sound design is with just pitching it down.
Holy shit finally!! I've been wondering for years what's behind that ever since i heard Palpatine's bass boosted voice in the Battlefront II trailer.
i liked the whole video but I was bugged by 4:52 where you didn't explain the exact important step, or where does the main effect reside on all processes that go in the same step, grasped it before with envelope followers which is nice but... after two reasonable steps (pitching down and gating) you mixed like six different sauces at the same step, one of them being "the secret one" and went through it too fast, it's almost like a soup recipe going:
-add water
-then salt
-and then for the secret ingredient, open this canned soup and pour it, so this is how you make soup, also in my patreon is the full recipe.
don't take it as hate comment, I like the entire video, and the result was spectacular, i'm sure it's all to leave a better "reward" for the patreons, i understand that, I just wanted to comment what I would felt if I didn't know about phase rotation and allpass filter stacking, and were so close to know the "secret sauce", for it to be not clear only on that exact part.
maybe would have been nicer to separate step 3 in two more steps (like 3- allpass stacks 4- extra processing), or talk about phase rotation by allpass stacking before the example, even a little bit on the extra filtering and saturation you did after stacking, which sounded very good or get a little deep into the EQ stacking so viewers can see at least something more than a macro knob going up on the allpasses (at least you didnt use disperser right away so, that's nice!).
i'm subscribing tho, appreciated the hard work through the video and the editing, the scripting and voicing... interviewing... recreating the example... it's a lot I reckon, thank you!
Can we have a challenge at the end of the episode like your older videos? Loved the encouragement to make my own version of these sounds.