I decided to experiment properly with mid/side recording in the field. I’ve done it a few times in the studio before, but never to capture ambience on location. I noticed that when linking two on the channels on the 633, there’s a M/S option. After a quick read of the manual, I figured out this was mid-side matrixing. I initially thought this meant I wouldn’t have to do anything to process the signal afterwards – but that turned out to be wrong, I still had to flip the phase and double up the figure 8.
I just set up in my garden – as I only had a tabletop mic stand and a full sized mic stand to play with, so I set them up on a table outside to experiment with the signal and see what it sounded like. My garden runs adjacent to a road, so while there was some nice nature sounds (birds etc) there was also unfortunately the drone of the cars on the road. As it was only an experiment it didn’t matter – the ambience could well be useful for a suburban soundscape at some point too.
The actual stereo sound was fantastic – a lot better by comparison than the X/Y mic i’ve used before. The center mic gives some really nice focus – while the figure 8 gives a lovely wide stereo spread. I used two 414’s in this example – but I may experiment with other microphones in the future. Possibly the Neumann – which i’m aware has a figure 8 pattern. The main issue with using these large diaphragm condensers is mostly portability, and as i don’t have a mic clip for mid-side, my option would be to cart out two mic stands with me whenever I want to record in the field. which isn’t an impossibility – it’s just a pain (as I usually walk to my locations).
A few people pointed out that they’d usually put the figure 8 mic on top of the cardioid. I didn’t see any reason to really, as that front angle is already covered – but might be something for me to remember to do in the future. The experiment was mainly just to see if the technique actually worked – which I really think it did.

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I decided to head to the nearest grassland that I was aware of, and that was Lincoln’s own South Common.

I decided to head up to catch the sunset, and brought a recorder with me to capture some ambience. The space is big, but not huge; it is also surrounded by roads unfortunately, and it was roughly 5 when I arrived at my recording position, meaning the roads were at their busiest. Nevertheless, I settled down and began recording.

As it was a relatively long walk (and because the 633 was booked by someone else), I decided to use the Zoom H4n with the Rode NT4 stereo mic. This was no massive deal, as the H4n still records in 96k and has two XLR inputs that I could link to take a stereo file of the recording.I brought a little tabletop mic stand to put the Rode on, and just used the Zoom’s Rycote to keep out any wind. The recordings were, well, okay. I think I’m particularly critical, but I found the pre-amps very noisy – noisier than i’d expected. The 633 isn’t exactly perfect – but it is a clear step above the Zoom in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio.

I did capture a fair amount of traffic noise, but I did also get some really lovely ambience, particularly birdsong. I was sat just in front of a large woodland area, and I recorded a large amount of multiple birds singing, and the echo through the space. There were a number of different voices – and I’ll definitely use a lot of the birdsong when i’m constructing the ambience in Taphobos.
I found the mic to be particularly sensitive, which was very interesting at points. I could clearly hear peoples voices and movements from 50+ meters away, and I occasionally heard voices from people I couldn’t see around me (which was very weird).

Below is a small sample of the recording:

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So I’ve spent the last month recording heavily, capturing a lot of original ambience for Taphobos. I’ve had the motivation of completing my 100 Hours Project to aid the extensive recording process, and up to this point, about 80% of what i’ve recorded for that project will be used in Taphobos. It’s really a common ground – the project is more demonstrating my ability to actually do field recording, while the profits of that will be unique, original recordings I’ve personally captured, that’ll make Taphobos a genuine and compelling experience.

As I said, I haven’t posted for a while, and have since ploughed through 20 odd hours of recording. I will go into detail in separate posts to follow, about what I recorded and how, and where possible, what purpose it’ll serve in the game.

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So last week, I took myself and the trusty 633 up to the cathedral at 7am to capture some ambience for the game. I went so early in the morning so as to avoid capturing as much human sounds as possible. I decided that a good starting point to begin constructing the ambience of the grand church in Taphobos was to actually record the sound of a church, then begin experimenting with that source material. I contacted the cathedral with the request and they were more than happy to let me record in the space, offering me wednesday as the quieter day of the week.

My equipment setup was the 633 and the Rode NT4 stereo X/Y mic, which i’ve used a number of times before to great effect. I was recording at 96k to SD, and I monitored on a pair of KRK headphones.

The sound of the space was, well, not what I was expecting. I’m not sure exactly what it was I was expecting – but it wasn’t what I captured. Sitting on the dusty floor in the middle of the main hall, I realized that the main sound source was actually the central heating and numerous radiators around the church. They produced a low hum, which was accentuated by the reverb of the space. The sound I captured was mainly this – the low rumble of the heating. I was disappointed to find the 633’s pre-amps actually created a vast amount of noise – moreso that i’d experienced using it before. This was largely due to the fact I had the gain running very hot – as the space was technically very quiet, I had to crank the gain up to capture the subtleties and nuances of the space. This resulted in the large amount of noise and also capturing arbitrary sounds – like the traffic outside and footsteps – much clearer that i’d have hoped. I felt this was a bit of a shame – as i’d been sold the idea that the S/N ratio was very good on the 633. Perhaps I used a bad mic. I’m not sure.

The sound I captured was usable though. I’ll roll off the top end and use the base hum as a building block to layer other sounds into, creating a multi-layered environment sound. I blogged about the recording on my 100 hours blog – you can read the post here.

Below are a selection of the raw recordings – these are straight from the 633, no processing or editing done (other than slicing up the clips to highlight interesting events).

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So Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is another game that instantly sprang to mind when James told me about Taphobos. Amnesia was developed by The Chinese Room, the incredible company behind Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and more. The studio is known for it’s incredible composition accompaniment, by composer Jessica Curry, who I was lucky enough to interview for my dissertation.

The sound design on Amnesia was done largely by Samuel Justice, an English sound designer and co-founder of SweetJustice sound. He has worked on numerous games, such as the Battlefield series (whilst he was at EA DICE in Sweden), Dear Esther, Batman: Arkham Origins, SOMA, COD: Advanced Warfare, and many more. His work is fantastic, sonically brilliant and uses many interesting techniques to great effect. I’m particularly a fan of his work on SOMA – and I may well explore the sound of this game in a separate post, as it is definitely relevant to Taphobos.

The sound of Amnesia is very specific. It is almost heavy, thick and dense in many places. From what I understand, Justice worked on the sound single-handedly – and I’m also aware the game is renowned for the extremely low budget that the sound was created with, same for the music. This implication meant that Justice had to innovate in many areas to maintain a high standard. Justice has also talked about his intention to blend the lines between the game sound and reality, creating a world of ‘warped realism’. I like this focus on immersion, and as this is something Taphobos also aims to do (with the coffin), I’ll try to take cues from Justice in this area.

In this clip, the player actually explores a church, not too dissimilar to the one i’m designing for in Taphobos. This space is an ideal reference point for when I’m creating sounds, and there are elements i’ll take from this for my own creation. I love the huge space as the character enters the huge hall, but i’m not too keen on the lack of space when in the smaller areas – although this makes sense, I think a lot of the sounds in the smaller areas would diffuse into the reverb in the larger areas. When I implement my sounds into Taphobos I think i’ll mix in more reverb – maybe at a distance – from the larger reverb areas. I also really like the ambient tone, almost like a presence in the room. I also really like the occasionally weird sounds mix into the ambience, again using justice’s idea of blurring reality and insanity.

The two main elements to evaluate – the footsteps and the ambience – are both done really well. Again, I think more variation in the samples used for the footsteps would be beneficial – and again this is probably due to sound file budget limitations, as I mentioned in a previous post. The ambience is perfect – and pretty much exactly what i’m looking to re-create; a low, ominous rumble, small ‘one-shots’ with interesting content to add some life to the sound (myself and james discussed rat scuttling or faint wind in the background) and a lovely air to the space. It’s likely mixed into an overall reverb, along with the footsteps and other character sounds.

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