Noise Ploys with Lorin Tone

How many dimensions, would you say, are there in virtual worlds? If your answer is three, then maybe think again. For a virtual environment to really be immersive, there is another dimension that will lift, color, enhance and amplify your build, whether it be a sci fi paradise or a woodland tableau. That is sound.

Sound is one of the hardest things to get right in virtual worlds. Too many noises, or noises repeated too often, can spoil a sim, while if your audio is too sparing, visitors may not notice it at all. But how can you create the perfect aural environment?  Consult the Sorcerer of Sound, of course.

Lorin Tone: Sometimes sound effects can be used as a major component in build or environments. For most environmental soundscapes, the sound should not be featured, but more "felt" than noticeably heard. At other times, you can bash people over the head with sounds that enhance the most important elements of a build. 

Lorin Tone

Lorin presents a fascinating course on using Sounds in virtual worlds. The class lasts about an hour, and is held twice a month on Sundays, at 10am Pacific Time, on his region Soundscapes, within the Koryphon Academy complex on Alternate Metaverse Grid. Events are advertised on AMV and on social media such as Facebook and Opensimworld, the next event will be on September 18, and it is very much worth your while attending. The course is partly in Voice, partly in text, and obviously you need to have your audio turned on as Lorin guides you through some of the pitfalls, tricks and tweaks you can use to up the quality of sound on your build. Not only do you get his expertise, he has also put together a complete pack of how-to information, scripts, and sounds that you can use to put into practice his suggestions. Just buy the contents of the big black box.

The garden classroom on Soundscapes

There were two of us in attendance on Lorin's new region Soundscapes this week. My fellow student was Chris McCracken. The Safari visited his impressive Mythical Realms build a few weeks back. Chris said he has attended the course a few times, simply because there's so much information, it's worth returning to take it all in. Glad to know I wasn't the only one to find it a quite overwhelming treasure trove of knowledge.

Chris McCraken

Chris McCracken: Lorin's class is a wonderful experience to learn about how important sounds are in virtual worlds to help develop a better more realistic experience in your vr builds!

Free sound effects, and how to use them efficiently

The class is broken down into nine or ten main points, ranging from how to make sure the sounds you upload to your grid are loud enough to be useful, and how long they can be - SL wisdom is that a sound clip can only be ten seconds long, turns out in opensim that's not always so, yet longer clips can be unwieldy when your viewer preloads the sounds. What's the optimum length? 9.566 seconds. Who knew?

Using Audacity to maximize your noise quality

Among the many lessons learned was the danger of flanging. That's a good thing apparently if you're a rock and roll musician, but a very bad thing in terms of sim sounds. It's when you have the same sound being emitted from two sources that are close enough together that your avatar can hear them both. It's that whooshing distortion that we've probably all come across from time to time. A classic example is the multiple camp fire build- each one has the same crackling sound in it, and because they're all on top of one another, you get a messy sound, not the crisp realistic fire sound you want. 

Layers of sound are key. Lorin illustrated this perfectly with his waterfall example. In the real world, something different is happening at the top, middle and bottom of a waterfall, and in each case, the water is making different sounds. So to mimic this successfully, you need more than just the noise of rushing torrents.  

Three sound emitters marking the three points on a waterfall

As you can tell, this is a potted version of a much more complex and rich conversation. Since Lorin runs this class twice a month, you too can participate, working to make your build even more lovely and memorable than it currently is. You'll be led through a whole series of technical and artistic hints, showing how you can bring blissful music into your environment, make funny sound games for your visitors, improve the realism of machines and natural environments, and some sophisticated effect, like this one.

Lorin Tone: The Sequenced Sounds method can always be used for musical stuff at well.   Here's a first example, it's a Requiem composed by Gyorgy Ligeti, chopped into 3 three parts that fade in and out for different time durations, causing it to constantly evolve. When I say constantly, that is literally...due to different time durations in each one, they constantly fade in and out a varying time intervals.

Gyorgy Ligeti requiem evolving with us at its center

The grand finale was a wonderful interactive soundscape.

Lorin Tone: Aurora Project.  I did this concept with a builder named Elicio Ember on the Second Life grid.  He did a beautiful build based on the musical piece, which was composed by Hans Zimmer.   The piece is a reverent tribute to the victims of the Aurora, Colorado shooting massacre. To be safe, I asked permission to use the piece.  They said fine, as long as I don't make any money off of it. What I did was cut the musical piece into five parts, fading each one in and out.  They all loop using the Sequenced Sounds script. I've built them into a circle that rotates, to enhance the proximity effect from all the prims.  So it constantly revolves and constantly merges the parts a little differently each time. Since these emitters are not interactive, I added another rotating set of emitters loaded with single voice parts that are tuned to the musical piece. When clicked, the prims randomly select one voice part and play it once, causing the prims to briefly glow.

Thirza Ember: such serenity

Lorin Tone: A truly beautiful piece of music

Chris McCracken: very calming

Lorin Tone: For whatever reason, I think that this is the most popular build that I've ever done.

Last but not least, Lorin has set up a new Sound store on his sim, where you can get sounds prepared for optimal use in opensim. They range from animal noises to helicopters, cityscapes, and dolphins and a whole lot more.  Unmissable, and eminently repeatable!

Lorin Tone's sound store and more:    alternatemetaverse.com:8002:Soundscapes