Is This The Future Of Sound Design Software?
Following the release of 2.0 earlier in 2019, Sound Particles 2.1 adds a completely rewritten audio engine, batch processing and increased track-based functionality, along with many more feature updates. But before we get into the new features let’s look at what Sound Particles is all about.
What Is Sound Particles?
Sound Particles is an immersive 3D CGI-like standalone application for film, TV, VR and game audio production. Introduced in 2015, Sound Particles offers unique workflows, increasing creativity and reducing the time needed to create and record complex sounds in virtual 3D environments.
Since its release just over four years ago, Sound Particles has played a part in helping audio professionals create unique effects on Hollywood feature film releases, epic TV shows, and AAA video games, including Game of Thrones, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Ready Player One, Alita: Battle Angel and Assassin’s Creed: Origins.
What Is New In Sound Particles V2.1?
Following the release of 2.0 earlier in 2019, Sound Particles 2.1 adds a number of feature updates…
- New Audio Engine – Completely rewritten 3D audio engine, optimized for smoothness, efficiency and maximized sonic precision.
- Batch Processing – Render hundreds of variations of your session with just a few clicks. You can use different audio files for each render and several variations of the random parameters. Sound Particles will render these files in the background so that you can focus on your next project.
- Track Presets – You can now be even more productive by using track presets. You can create and save an infinite number of track or microphone settings and recall them whenever you want. With just two mouse clicks quickly save or apply any track preset. Sound Particles have included over 100 of their own presets to help get you started.
- User Templates – Save sessions as templates. Include any number of tracks or microphones that you wish to reuse frequently.
- Additional Features – Users can now enable and disable modifiers and audio files. Enhanced automation features have been added and Sound Particles have fixed a number of bugs.
What Production Expert Thinks About Sound Particles 2.1
For many years now, we have experienced what CGI has done for film production, enabling scenes to be created that were either too costly or just impossible to create. Even though sci-fi is an obvious candidate for CGI, enabling the creative team to bring the imaginary worlds to life, CGI has also found its way into all kinds of film genres to create backgrounds etc.
What if we could do this with audio? What if we could create an army from a handful of sound files. With Sound Particles, you can do just this.
Just as CGI can create huge visual scenes that would not be possible or not cost-effective, with Sound Particles we can do these kinds of tricks with audio.
We found that it is best to start with some simple setups, to get a handle on how Sound Particles works, like a flypast with one sound source, then build on that with an emitter setup with multiple sound sources flying past the microphone, as we demo in our exclusive Sound Particles Demo and Tour Video above. Try this in surround or better still Atmos, if you can, it sounds spectacular.
Then once you have got a handle on the simple setups, you can expand and get into the big soundscapes like a battle scene...
That said, all the new presets introduced in v2.1 make it so much easier to get started and the latest batch of tutorials from Sound Particles have also made it much easier to follow and understand. Together with the presets they make getting started with Sound Particles slot easier to get to grips with.
I have had a lot of fun creating some soundscapes, like a flock of alarm clocks leaving their cave. You can listen to then either in the demo video above or in 5.1 by downloading the audio files below.
What is very clever and helpful, is that whilst you in a design and tracking mode, you can use a stereo mic configuration as the ‘camera’ and then when you are really you can simply change the mic to 5.1, 7.1 or Dolby Atmos and just re-render immersive audio tracks.
One thing to be aware of is that even though Sound Particles has a powerful range of audio modifiers to be able to modify and provide variety when producing soundscapes with lots of objects, you will still need to make sure that you have a good collection of appropriate sound effects to get started.
It would be really good for independent sound effects producers to create libraries designed for use with Sound Particles, with collections of similar sounds that you can then import into Sound Particles to create your soundscapes.
In conclusion, why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? It seems so obvious but maybe that is the genius behind Sound Particles that they have been able to create the audio equivalent of CGI.
Original Source - Production Expert
