"Professional" sound development system?

[Sargon]

I develop games as a hobby, but I wonder... how do I properly test the audio?

The way I hear sound on my PC might be very different than most players, so I might be tweaking the audio wrong.

What is a proper way to test sound so I can tweak the sound correctly?

[The Flying Sloth]

I don't know about games but for studio recording the big test is the 's***ty car stereo test'. Doesn't matter how good the mix sounds on your expensive gear, if it doesn't sound good on a cheap, stock car stereo there's no point in releasing it because the vast majority of listeners (if it becomes popular) will be on cheap car stereos. 

 

Game audio can be a little more interpretive so I wouldn't worry too much about it, so long as there's no clipping and you're using the Valve 3D audio system you should be all good.

[HM-2]

11 hours ago, The Flying Sloth said:

but for studio recording the big test is the 's***ty car stereo test'

And this goes some way to explaining why most music these days is shitily produced, mixed, mastered, compressed to hell, totally lacking in any dynamic range, and almost completely intolerable through anything vaguely competent at reproducing sounds.

[The Flying Sloth]

11 hours ago, HM-2 said:

And this goes some way to explaining why most music these days is shitily produced, mixed, mastered, compressed to hell, totally lacking in any dynamic range, and almost completely intolerable through anything vaguely competent at reproducing sounds.

I'm not sure I agree, the tracks are still likely mixed on a big fancy console with expensive reference monitors but the car test is just to make sure you can still 'get' the music on a car stereo.

[HM-2]

Tell that to all the DR2 and DR3 tracks you see in the charts.

[The Flying Sloth]

1 hour ago, HM-2 said:

Tell that to all the DR2 and DR3 tracks you see in the charts.

I'm not arguing whether or not charting songs are badly produced, I'm just saying that if they are it's not because of the car test. The car test has been around since music radio in cars has been around, now, I won't pretend to understand what you mean by DR2 but I assume it's a measure of Dynamic Range and I'll comment to blame the mastering engineers. 

I don't record through a compressor unless I have to for stylistic reasons, I try to edit as little as possible both because I'm lazy and to allow the artist to shine naturally (though I have been known to bring out melodyne if I get annoyed enough). There's only so much natural shine and dynamic range you can get in a track that's just a MLP cosplayer screaming at butts.... and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

[Derkoli]

14 hours ago, HM-2 said:

And this goes some way to explaining why most music these days is shitily produced, mixed, mastered, compressed to hell, totally lacking in any dynamic range, and almost completely intolerable through anything vaguely competent at reproducing sounds.

God, tell me about it.

 

On 8/1/2020 at 3:12 PM, Sargon said:

I develop games as a hobby, but I wonder... how do I properly test the audio?

The way I hear sound on my PC might be very different than most players, so I might be tweaking the audio wrong.

What is a proper way to test sound so I can tweak the sound correctly?

Really, you want something that is somewhat accurate.

 

Alot of modern studio monitors actually have the option to make them sound similar to common playback systems. Focal speakers let you reduce their frequency response to match a phone or TV speakers. It's pretty clever and helpful to make sure your final product is actually listenable to the listener.

 

Most "GAMERS" will be playing games with either Monitor speakers, Crappy speakers or GAMING headsets. Few actually use decent playback systems. But god when you have a decent playback system, bad game audio is bloody awful.

 

Personally, I just master for a pretty balanced FR (Not too little or too much of anything). No point having rolled off bass and highs just because some people don't have the gear to properly reproduce it. If their gear can't reproduce it, then they most likely don't care that much about sound quality.

27 minutes ago, The Flying Sloth said:

and I'll comment to blame the mastering engineers.

27 minutes ago, The Flying Sloth said:

I'm not arguing whether or not charting songs are badly produced, I'm just saying that if they are it's not because of the car test. The car test has been around since music radio in cars has been around

Funnily enough alot of mastering engineers actually used to reference to boomboxes when that was the "in style" thing.

 

Now-a-days we just have clever speakers, and I believe some monitor controllers let you EQ the output to sound similar to certain things.

[The Flying Sloth]

53 minutes ago, Derkoli said:

Funnily enough alot of mastering engineers actually used to reference to boomboxes when that was the "in style" thing.

 

Now-a-days we just have clever speakers, and I believe some monitor controllers let you EQ the output to sound similar to certain things.

Present company excluded of course, you know I'd never diss you like that 

Yeah, there are those funny mono cube things that were all the rage for about three seconds, I even had car speakers hooked up to my PC for a while to reference but yeah, it's reeeeeeaaaally important to make sure your music doesn't only sound good on high end gear because most people listening won't be listening on high end gear, simple as that.
 

[Derkoli]

2 hours ago, The Flying Sloth said:

Present company excluded of course, you know I'd never diss you like that 

Yeah, there are those funny mono cube things that were all the rage for about three seconds, I even had car speakers hooked up to my PC for a while to reference but yeah, it's reeeeeeaaaally important to make sure your music doesn't only sound good on high end gear because most people listening won't be listening on high end gear, simple as that.
 

I've got Logitech Z906 sat on my mixing desk for referencing to lower end gear lol. The subwoofer on it is awful but it's helpful to have a crappy reference.

 

Alot of the stuff I master is for corporations, so I also reference to the crappy little white plasticky in-ceiling speakers. I've got an EQ setup on EQAPO for this, and it work's pretty well.

 

I can remember the little cube things pretty well. (I'm guessing you mean the Auratone 5C)

[The Flying Sloth]

3 hours ago, Derkoli said:

.

 

I can remember the little cube things pretty well. (I'm guessing you mean the Auratone 5C)

Then Behringer did a copy, yeah, thems the ones