The Sounds of Home
by ted2112 HSM team writer
Underneath Disneyworld is a room that controls most of what you hear in the park. This master audio control, called the DACS, has been fine-tuned over the years to make sure you are hearing birds in Adventureland and futuristic space noises in Tomorrowland, and not the other way around.
This all happens on a very subtle level, and there are thousands of effects in the park, everything from a pan flute to a dog howling. Casinos for years have “tuned” the metal coin catch of slot machines like a musical interment, creating a pleasing and exciting sound. Your local mall has sophisticated speaker systems that play upbeat, happy music. The theory is that this encourages shopping, and seeing how there is money involved, I bet they’re right. The comic books of my youth couldn’t reproduce sounds, so they relied on those “Bam! Pow! Wham!” catchphrases.
Your ears are incredibly important and fill your brain in with a ton of information about your environment. Are you safe? Should you relax? For gamers, it starts the second you turn on your PS3, you hear the concert C tuning, a cue for you to be quiet and pay attention. Game developers have known this for years, and if you peel back the layers of the onion and listen to what’s going on in spaces in Home, you will be amazed.
Please keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times for out whirlwind tour of the amazing audio and sound effects inside this technological wonder we call Home.
Our first stop will be the core spaces. The Hub is designed to sound busy even when it’s not. White noise and the hurried sound of the overhead trains fill the space. Sportswalk is a great example of proximity triggers. If you stand close to the stadium, you hear the roar of the crowd. Stand close to the club, and you hear music. This space also has four different bird noises, as well as the same water lapping noise found in the other core spaces. Pier Park has the great and very subtle creak of the Ferris wheel. The new Adventure District has some great surf noises throughout the space, which get louder the closer you get to the water – very cool.
A cornucopia of sound
Our next stop will be the Great Edo of Nippon. No, you are not losing your mind: that traditional Japanese song follows you at high volume, making voice chat impossible. I think what Granzilla is saying to us is: welcome, but don’t stay too long. Let’s move on quickly before we are tempted to use the bamboo swords in ways some might find crude and in poor taste.
Let’s check out the personal spaces. These, above all, really use sound effects well. The Harbor Studio is a smorgasbord of audio delights. Seagulls as well as three other kinds of birds soar overhead, the hustle and bustle from the docks with creaking and bell sounds from the boats below. I also hear what sounds to me like a jet aircraft taking off from some far away airport just around the bend. This by the way is just how Waikiki Beach sounds to me – surf and jet noise. Ah, paradise.
(And lots of people chattering in Japanese. –Norse)
Darla’s Den is also rich with ambient room noise. Car noise, hot dog and hamburger vendors call out as well as actual voices from people. You can clearly make out a woman asking, “Are you having a good time?” Why yes, we are; thanks for asking.
Ever wonder what the future sounds like? Just go to the LOOT Space Station apartment and feel the deep vibration nose on the low end and a sustained looped tone on the high end of the musical scale.
The Complementary Hotel Room at the casino, car and street sounds lets us know we are not high rollers.
I really love how the Hollywood Hill House uses wind to define it. When mixed with the traffic in the distance, it creates a very grand scale of open space.
Loco Roco might be the champion of what you hear in a personal space. Music, and not just any music, but songs written in a new language designed to make us feel good. Our little friends there stop and say hello to us and we merrily make our way down the beach and listen to the surf. Ah, that feels good.
The Eden Primarch’s Vigilarum space. You hear the Final Fantasy music upon entering, but turn up your volume all the way and listen to the air conditioner pumping air into the space. This is a great example of how subtle these effects can be. Even if you think you can’t hear the AC unit, your ears are reporting to your brain you are in an enclosed space. Pretty sneaky, sis.
As we make our way back to the station we hope you enjoyed this brief sample of the sounds of Home. Please stay seated until the car has come to a complete stop. We also hope you can appreciate all the thought and hard work that goes into making Home more of a home. The world around us is a rich palette of wonder for our ears to take in and run a backstory of where we are and what it means to us. It is important not only in Home, but in real life. These effects are not designed to fool us, but rather to enrich the experience of Home, making it a place we feel like we belong.
Until next time this is ted2112, saying, Bam! Creak! Pow! Hum! Tweet! and Wham!
April 18th, 2012 by ted2112 | 5 comments
ted2112 is a writer and a Bass player that has been both inspired and takes to heart Kurt Vonnegut words...."we are here on planet Earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different."
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This is so true Ted. I have noticed many sounds all through Home since I started here. Central plaza was full of sounds like insects and birds. The Assassins Creed personal space has some of the most noticeable ones I think with the low chatter of people in the outside streets, a church bell and the creak of the gondola and the water lapping at the edges of the house from the canal it sits on.
You are right in assuming that we don’t always register these things at a conscious level, especially if they are subtle, but they still enrich the experiences we have in Home a great deal.
If we could taste, touch or smell like in real life it would add more of course, but they have taken the two senses we do have and used them very well in Home to create an incredible experience for us.
Nice article, loved it.
Good write,Ted! I have far too often turned my volume down because of places like Granzella and the repetitive music, and failed to turn it up again. Because of this goof I never noticed until recently the lush sounds at the Midnight Glade. Any one who has it: go and turn up the volume…LOUD. It’s gloriously peaceful. I don’t know anybody who has the Final Fantasy Vigilarium, but when people hear the lavish music in my Vigilarium, they are impressed as though I had anything to do with it. The sounds on home are great. One last one I get spooked by, the green lit door in Cutter Ridge manor haunted house. Stand close and turn up the volume. Spooky.
This is an awesome article. I have always loved listening to the different sounds on Home. I especially love the sounds of the different birds. In Satorini Greece I love the sound of the passing airplane. (Or maybe it’s on the yacht, I can’t remember which). I agree at the Great Edo of Nippon that the music is a little too loud. This is also the same in the Home Journey space. I also love the sounds of Loco Island. I love the music, the muimuis and the laughter of the yellow smiley loco rocos. I also think it is cool about the proximity triggers. I like that in certain areas you will hear a sound and if you walk away from it, it disappears. The only sound I am not crazy about is in the Hub of the overhead train.
But great read and thanks for the tour!!!
My favorite spaces for sound…two; first would be, I believe it’s called, the Uncharted space or something to that effect. It is a space fashioned by the Uncharted game and many seem to not appreciate the space because it IS mostly furnished already (I’ve had no problem adding some things to make it MY Uncharted PS Home space.) However, it is the space I enjoy going to when I want a reality-check in Home.
To me, it actually feels as if I’m in the game…*fades to my imagination*….Just finished taking out the bad guys and I’ve come back to my South American, sweating and flies buzzing around-with the ceiling fan trying to cool off the 500 square foot non-airconditioned; hole-in-the wall but “homey” space…to swig a finger of Scotch and pat myself on the back for a job well done-space! AND… there are the sounds of traffic and birds and talking….chimes tinkling on the porch… There are trucks passing by downstairs and a fountain in the background gurbiling (this could be my own addition to the space..lol.) VERY realistic space for PS Home..IMO
Secondly…the first new club space that came out with the large room w/bar in the front and the huge pool in the back with chair’s you could lay down on for the FIRST time in PS Home…can’t remember the name of this space (memory is getting harder at 49! lol.) In this space I like to go out by the pool, lay down in a chair and just listen to the sounds….of…silence-nothing!! I can lay there…enjoying just being ABLE to lay there. Enjoying the company of any friend that stops by…to JUST lay there too…and enjoy the sound…of silence in PS Home! : P
Nice job on this article Ted! …….*silence*
Wouldn’t it be nice in addition to the music items, we also had a sound machine with sound effects such as rain, thunder, aeroplanes, and other sounds like were available on vinyl recordings and compact discs.
What a grand idea this is!!!!!!