Sounds Advice for sound modding

[ktulu77]

Hi there,

I'm the guy who released the Alfa Romeo 155 sound mod on RD some time ago. It was my first mod. I faced several issues and I wanted to discuss about it with some experienced modders.

As I wrote on the mod page, I used a Youtube video to get the sound (I also put it on the mod page, so you can understand my problem).

The problem with creating interior sounds from Youtube is that you have the whole sound at the same time. So the main problem I think is that for the transmission sound we hear a lot in the video, I don't manage to reproduce it correctly because (if I'm not mistaken) the transmission sound is not relative to the rpms but to the speed of the car. I think it's the transmission sound, the high pitch sound we hear, right ?

There is very little information about creating sound mods. I have already checked every Youtube tutorials, but they don't really speak about this problem.

I would be interested to know what I can do to try to replicate as accurate as possible the interior sound of this car, which I found gorgeous! I'm not very happy compared to the original video and I think most of the differences come from this problem because I tried to remove the transmission sound but I lot also other sounds which were in the same frequencies.

Thank you for your help !

 

[Ben O'Bro]

i tried to gather what i found here :

How to MOD ! (Links & ref)

Hey there. In my Caterham (& modding) journey to Assetto, i keep going back to useful posts, sometimes savings links as shortcut to be sure to keep that valuable info on how to something in particular. Today i decided it would be nice to do a sticky note where we would edit this post in useful...

www.racedepartment.com

there's 3 videos on the "sound" section
it's a tricky business, for me, and from what i saw on tutorials, you need a pretty clean base sound, otherwise it's difficult to save

 

[ktulu77]

i tried to gather what i found here :

How to MOD ! (Links & ref)

Hey there. In my Caterham (& modding) journey to Assetto, i keep going back to useful posts, sometimes savings links as shortcut to be sure to keep that valuable info on how to something in particular. Today i decided it would be nice to do a sticky note where we would edit this post in useful...

www.racedepartment.com

there's 3 videos on the "sound" section
it's a tricky business, for me, and from what i saw on tutorials, you need a pretty clean base sound, otherwise it's difficult to save

Hi

Yes, I saw all of them. SHR Modding was very useful!

But even, on all his videos, the one explaining how to create samples was the last one he uploaded very lately, and it doesn't speak about this problem.

Actually, I even wonder how professionals do it. Even with access to the car, how can they separate these different sounds? At this point, I wonder if they record the real engine sound or if they try to recreate it with something else.

I am very curious about this

And by the way, thanks for all your mods, loving it!!

 

[Ben O'Bro]

My small career of sound making... Some sounds go along with the audio you find. Carburettors were here as well as a bit of wind, the whining of the transmission too, and was indissociable of the audio. Those sounds will always be here when you press the gas anyways so it goes along nicely.
The difficult part for me was to find a good coast, and the huge difference a car sound makes when you hit de gas versus when you don't.

Professional, could have access to a bench, have different microphone inside and outside and in different places, to prevent the wind for exemple and add the wind later.
But mostly they will have access to the car and be able to accelerate or coast how they want it, in a clean manner...

I remember one of the sound modder (but who?) working a bit differently and kind of building his own sound, using all sounds. That sounds like a real art to me!

Or you have this guy: (he has plenty of very interesting videos on how it works!)

 

[ktulu77]

My small career of sound making... Some sounds go along with the audio you find. Carburettors were here as well as a bit of wind, the whining of the transmission too, and was indissociable of the audio. Those sounds will always be here when you press the gas anyways so it goes along nicely.
The difficult part for me was to find a good coast, and the huge difference a car sound makes when you hit de gas versus when you don't.

Professional, could have access to a bench, have different microphone inside and outside and in different places, to prevent the wind for exemple and add the wind later.
But mostly they will have access to the car and be able to accelerate or coast how they want it, in a clean manner...

I remember one of the sound modder (but who?) working a bit differently and kind of building his own sound, using all sounds. That sounds like a real art to me!

Or you have this guy: (he has plenty of very interesting videos on how it works!)

oh yes, I also forgot about the wind you're right ... It's frustrating!!

Thanks for all these information, I feel less alone. I'm going to check this video about virual engine!

 

[ktulu77]

OMG !! : https://catalog.engine-sim.parts/parts/131

 

[Ben O'Bro]

aha i didn't know they made a "catalog" with people participating, pretty interesting
i guess it's not too far stretched to get all the wav you need from the software and the proper sound

 

[Emery]

If there's time & money available, the pros strap the car to electric dynamometers so no wind noise or tire noise. Multiple mics are used during the recording session, typically a transmission pickup, engine bay, interior, and exhaust. The mics are set close to sound source(s) so extraneous noise is reduced by lack of proximity, but this also requires mics that can tolerate high sound pressures and aren't ultra-sensitive. With all the separate tracks, it's much easier to mix the levels to get the right sound because what we want to hear isn't always what was recorded pure.

Working from YouTube samples has to be the worst way to mix car sounds. Like @Ben O'Bro, yes, I found the off-throttle sounds are the hardest. And there's a reason none of my attempts have ever been published.

 

[ktulu77]

aha i didn't know they made a "catalog" with people participating, pretty interesting
i guess it's not too far stretched to get all the wav you need from the software and the proper sound

Yes, I will see how it goes. The sound won't seem very alive I think but it's interesting to test anyway. Thank you for the tips anyway.

If there's time & money available, the pros strap the car to electric dynamometers so no wind noise or tire noise. Multiple mics are used during the recording session, typically a transmission pickup, engine bay, interior, and exhaust. The mics are set close to sound source(s) so extraneous noise is reduced by lack of proximity, but this also requires mics that can tolerate high sound pressures and aren't ultra-sensitive. With all the separate tracks, it's much easier to mix the levels to get the right sound because what we want to hear isn't always what was recorded pure.

Working from YouTube samples has to be the worst way to mix car sounds. Like @Ben O'Bro, yes, I found the off-throttle sounds are the hardest. And there's a reason none of my attempts have ever been published.

Thank you for the information. Not very motivating though

 

[T2Beatnik]

Or you have this guy: (he has plenty of very interesting videos on how it works!)

I thought I was going to be able to create a great sound mod from that Engine Simulator program, but I gave up. The problem is, if you have a specific engine and a specific sound you want to create, you need to know EVERYTHING about the specs of the engine, including a lot of information that may not appear in any published source, such as volume of the intake plenum, or the length of the connecting rods. If you try to guess, your engine is most likely never going to run. It is not really designed to recreate an existing engine, although some people seem to have been able to do that OK. It seems to be used mostly by engineering geeks (I mean that in a good way, really) who are having fund creating bizarre engine configurations that don't exist in real life. I haven't given up on it, but I would need to learn a lot more about engine dynamics before I could use it effectively. It also needs to catch up to the current decade as far as UI is concerned, because right now it's stuck in the 1980s.