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eastern57
05-02-2008, 01:31 PM
May as well post here too...

In the process of three new sound fonts based on Lightsaber Forms:

- Soresu - based on the concept of defensive tactics, no clashes, replaced with many blaster deflection sounds. WIP

- Jar Kai - Two saber wielding madness! Doubled-up sounds, dual poweron/off, clash/swing combinations, Force push is cool: poweroff-push-poweron... like you have to free up a hand before you can force push :) WIP

- Dun Moch - Duel of the fates. Seduction, Taunts, Lures with each clash... still planning, not started yet...

I have sounds from TFN and Erv's site, but if anyone knows of another good source of saber and blaster sound fx, any help would be greatly appreciated :)


Thoughts, questions, comment, complaints, please...

SWAT Strachan
05-02-2008, 01:45 PM
- Jar Kai - Two saber wielding madness! Doubled-up sounds, dual poweron/off, clash/swing combinations, Force push is cool: poweroff-push-poweron... like you have to free up a hand before you can force push :) WIPWouldn't that sound a little daft if you only have the one saber? Or are you planning to use one sound-enabled saber and a stunt saber?

eastern57
05-02-2008, 01:53 PM
I suppose it does sound redundant - and yes, silly, now that you've pointed it out. I haven't tested it out in an actual saber, but it sounds pretty cool with Erv's sound mixer, there's only one hum, not two and if you imagine blocking & slashing and Parrying & thrusting, as you would with two sabers, it starts to sound more sensible....

But who knows, it might sound totally ridiculous in a saber...

Sithblade
05-03-2008, 08:15 AM
I personally love the idea of a dual-blade sound font. I've got a CF v4.0 coming soon ;) and this is my dream sound set. My favourite sounds from all the films are the Maul saber sounds. :cool::cool:

eastern57
05-03-2008, 10:36 AM
it's close to the maul sound... but with more hits.

DARTH KALEL
05-03-2008, 02:26 PM
I need to make a transformers "transforming" sound font for one of my sabers.

eastern57
05-03-2008, 05:41 PM
Soresudemo.mp3

http://www.mediafire.com/?zueemjmdfmg


kalel, take a second to judge my work, you might change your mind about asking me... I'm no Novastar...

edit: Steampunkdemo.mp3
http://www.mediafire.com/?yf3gkmzjmhx

stupid mediafire... if you can't just open it, try downloading... sorry y'all

xl97
05-03-2008, 07:15 PM
funny I saw 'steam punk' in there..

Im currently doing my own 'steampunk' monitor conversion with an extra Dell monitor..LOL

:)

eastern57
05-03-2008, 08:31 PM
whoa, monitor? You're certainly no stranger to work... seeing your saber bench, interactive saber builder, now this... do your days have more hours than mine?

The steampunk font was my surface impression of the subculture, like doc brown's refrigerator from BTF3. At first, I didn't want to do a disservice to anyone that's fully indoctrinated to the genre, but the more I read and discovered, the more I felt validated... it's a personal fulfilment, rather than a movement with rules...

Soresu took me two days to put the demo together... and not what I'd consider back-breaking labor. Take it for what it is - if you think it stinks, I'd still like to know... feed back is essential to learning and growing... you don't have to be nice, I don't care.

This is tricky stuff... it certainly requires a degree of finesse that only comes from doing it... hats off to all those that create super-duper awesomely professional sounding fonts...

Shadeslinger
05-04-2008, 07:50 PM
^^I agree. It's not that hard to make fonts, but it's not exactly that easy either! At least not anything of awesome caliber.

I think the soresu fonts pretty decent. I like the low pitched swings a lot although some of the clashes have a bit too many hits in them for my taste (but of course that's what your going for right?).

Anyway, since were posting WIP fonts, here's version 2 of my holy reaver font. Hopefully I'll get it done sometime this century...
HolyReaver2.0.mp3 (http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/1280080_vaynh/HolyReaver2.0.mp3)

eastern57
05-04-2008, 08:19 PM
Whoa dude... that's certainly something new... in a good way. Have you had problems with judging volume and tone? My problem is that I have sound holes cut buhind the speaker, and that robs a lot of the bass out of it - which in turn, accentuates the high end - so adding more low to the actual sounds is tricky because the speaker (even the 8ohm/1w) can only handle so much...

Right now, Soresu is the right volume, but there's still too much low... makes some distortion... and I've cut the sounds enough times this weekend to find it acceptable for now :( maybe next weekend will provide more patience...

Thanks you for putting that here, Shade. It's nice to compare. Let me know how it turn out.

Shadeslinger
05-05-2008, 06:03 AM
I've had some slight issues getting the right volume and that's just from the mixer. I won't know how it sounds in an actual hilt till I get my CF board installed....which probably means alot of re-tooling. Again. :D

eastern57
05-06-2008, 08:55 PM
Ho Boy! the fun hasn't even started yet... if you have hair - say goodbye to it...

Shadeslinger
05-07-2008, 08:30 AM
Well, the hair I have is slowly going south anyway.:)

I do some slight advantage in that I've been doing this on my laptops stock speakers. So it might sound close to what would come out of a hilt (without resonace of course)....come to think of it, that may not be much of an advantage at all. What's that number for Bosley again?

Novastar
05-07-2008, 04:31 PM
Well these all sound like good stuff to me! I like the idea of the Soresu font with all the blaster deflects... I do not know if people would want it as a "normal" saber font, but it's certainly a more unique way to look at blaster deflects. One thing though... with the v4 of CF, you *CAN* have four blaster sounds now, so they could indeed include a few different swings + blaster sounds.

Like I said before, I really dig the Holy Reaver font! :) That one should be nice, especially if the original Ben Burtt sounds get either disguised more, or replaced. That's just *MY* thoughts on it, although this does NOT mean a designer should EVER take my opinion. Do things as you wish!

Finally... some things I will note to people with Erv's mixer:

* Adjust the "ATT" level to be higher if you want less "dip in/out" from the hum sound when you play a swing, clash, etc.

* Adjust the master volume and individual FX and hum volumes to get better results as well

* If you DO use Erv's mixer to put together your font... when you cut apart the individual files... be CERTAIN to do some kind of "zero-crossing" (either by program tool or by hand) so that you get fewer pops & clicks overall

There will also be my video tutorials on mixing sound with Goldwave (and using Erv's mixer) on the upcoming sound CD I'm releasing. Along with 19 sound fonts, a staged combat tutorial, the "250 Battle", and a throng of other stuff. :)

Novastar
05-07-2008, 05:14 PM
Well, the hair I have is slowly going south anyway.:)

I do some slight advantage in that I've been doing this on my laptops stock speakers. So it might sound close to what would come out of a hilt (without resonace of course)....come to think of it, that may not be much of an advantage at all. What's that number for Bosley again?oops, sorry for the double post, but... there are two good ways to sort of "be certain" of the sound you'll hear from your CF while mixing on your computer:

1. Bring up your sound font exampler in some sound editor program (Goldwave is good), and then go to Equalizer. Drop out the ranges of 60Hz to around 200Hz or even up to 250Hz. You don't have to save it this way, but... it will sound more like this on most mini-speakers. To a point.

2. Wire up a miniature to some kind of headphone jack. Polarity is irrelevant. Plug it into your speaker port, or even "headphone" jack. Voila. Done. It will sound EXACTLY like that. Be careful not to turn the volume up WAAAAAY too high or you'll destroy your little tiny speaker guy there. :D

There ya go.

eastern57
05-07-2008, 09:22 PM
Hey thanks, Novastar! I had to look up zero crossing, I was already doing that to some degree, just didn't know what it was called. Soresu turned out fine, not Navastar caliber, but okay. I'm using it as my primary, just because I like the sounds. I might tweek it a little more, maybe not. If people like it, it's available, otherwise, no hard feelings. But thank you, regardless.

I think I'll try that speaker/headphone jack idea. It certainly beats the heck out of cutting sounds, converting it to .raw, loading a card, disassembling a saber, inserting the card in the narrow space, reassembly... and finding out that it's too quiet...

Novastar
05-08-2008, 02:42 AM
Well... the most important thing for the volume concerns really is about getting to around 1dB in the waveform.

BUT... there is also the concern of how your volume POT (located on Erv's board) is set. Too high will give you distortion... too low will render even "well-done" sounds... uh... too low. :)

SO, the trick is to STAY CONSISTENT... certainly for your own sabers, if not to be consistent for ALL CF boards made.

So why 1dB? Why not go nuts and pump to 5dB? Well... the quickest way to explain it is... you let the AUDIO AMPLIFIER (on Erv's CF) do this job... the "make it louder"... *NOT* by increasing the volume on the "actual" sound.

If you go past 1dB... you'll start to be creating distortion that will be present at ANY volume level. That sucks.

If you stay WAAAY below 1dB (say 0.5dB)... you'll essentially have to turn your POT waaaay the F up... and thus... you'll just be making CF work harder, draw more current from the batteries... and reduce runtime.

Now, this is just a basic explanation. When working with the hum sound vs. other sounds... you might actually WANT the wave form to be more around 0.7dB. It depends. And FURTHER... well... (*deep breath everyone*)... if your sound primarily contains "bass" sounds (deep and low tones that are 60Hz to 200Hz)... well guess what... those little tiny mini speakers will NOT be able to play them, and therefore those sounds are as good as "not there", and THAT alters the waveform!

WHICH results in your sounds possibly dropping from around 1dB to... maybe 0.6dB. Or maybe not. It depends on the original sound's characteristics.

Anyhow.

It's complicated. SO... sure... if you are out there and you want to make your own fonts--you go right ahead. It really isn't too bad. But when it comes to the DETAILS and getting things consistent... it sure can be a big pain in the butt. Especially if you want EVERYONE to be happy. :) Making it work in your own saber... well... that ain't too tough. :D

Finally... there is absolutely *NOTHING* I can do to avoid distortion being heard on my sound fonts if people turn the POT wwwwaaaaaay the heck up. If you are getting distortion with *MY* sound fonts... you have your POT up too bloody high!

It's like turning the volume to.... *ahem*... "11". :D

Shadeslinger
05-08-2008, 08:42 AM
Good info to know Nova, thanks again!

It seems every time I step away from this font for a few days then come back there's always something more to tweak out, clean a swing sound here, replace/rework a clash there, but it's still fun. :) Going through this process I can appreciate a lot more now all the hard work you, and everyone else who've made all the great fonts for this wonderful board have gone through.

eastern57
05-17-2008, 06:49 PM
man, I haven't even thought of continuing this... maybe I'll just scrap it for a plain old saber sound font... heck with v4 on the way, I'll have to add all the new sounds anyway... [end of thought]