Where Audio and Interactive Media Converge
Explore resources, research, events, standards, and community initiatives dedicated to advancing audio for games and interactive entertainment.
Sources of Information and Events
Tutorials and features
Audio Ear Training, or Learning to hear what you can hear! (Tutorial Seminar)
Audio ear training can be a powerful and effective component of education for audio engineers in research, audio production, live sound work and forensics. Benefits include faster work, fewer errors, and more rapid professional advancement
AES Events
137th Convention
The Los Angeles AES Convention (137) is coming this October, and there will be many Game Audio Track events
AES E-Library
Game Audio: Transforming Simulation and Interactivity
Game audio has reached a state of maturity that implies parity of status with graphics. The most recent research in the field is concerned with connecting sound design to other game creation processes in a more integrated fashion and with devising adaptive sound design tools to increase emotional involvement and interactivity.
by Francis Rumsey
Behind the Mix—An In-Depth Look at the Audio Engine in Hitman: Absolution
IO Interactive’s proprietary engine, G2 gives freedom to sound artists by providing a high-level graphical programming environment, as seen with systems like MAX/MSP and PD. G2 allows the sound designer to freely perform adaptive and interactive mixing and sound setups, which is the foundation in our attempt to create the living, breathing world.
Interactive Mixing of Game Audio
This paper will discuss some of the unique challenges associated with mixing interactive audio content, including trying to determine what exactly is meant by ‘mixing’ game audio in the first place.
Technical Council
Technical Committee on Audio for Games
This Committee is the portal through which the AES becomes more widely informed of and responsive to the needs of Audio for Games. We will be proactive in defining recommended game audio practices, capabilities, services and standards. Our mission is to cooperatively influence hardware and software design, to leverage the combined skills of the diverse audio community and to improve the performance of audio across all gaming platforms and applications.
AES67-2013: Networks, audio-over-IP interoperability
This standard defines an interoperability mode for transport of high-performance (high resolution, low noise and low latency) audio over networks based on the Internet Protocol. Comprehensive interoperability recommendations are provided for the areas of synchronization, media clock identification, network transport, encoding and streaming, session description and connection management.
AES31-2-2012: AES standard on network and file transfer of audio – Audio-file transfer and exchange – File format for transferring digital audio data between systems of different type and manufacture
The “Broadcast Wave Format” file format for audio data can be used for the seamless exchange of audio material between different broadcast environments and equipment based on different computer platforms.
An optional Extended Broadcast Wave Format (BWF-E) file format is designed to be a compatible extension of the Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) for audio file sizes larger than a conventional Wave file. It extends the maximum size capabilities of the RIFF/WAVE format by increasing its address space to 64 bits where necessary. BWF-E is also designed to be mutually compatible with the EBU T3306 “RF64” extended format.
This revision additionally packages a set of machine-readable loudness metadata into the BWF file. This is compatible with EBU v2 broadcast wave files.