Panagiotis Kouvelis

AES announced a second international conference dedicated to Audio for Games.

Some details from the site:

Following the success of the last AES game-audio conference, the AES 41st International Conference on Audio for Games aims to explore further detail and explore current trends in game audio.The conference will be held 2nd-4th February 2011 at the prestigious BAFTA building, 195 Piccadilly, London.

This specialist conference provides a relevant and in-depth look at game-audio. It provides a forum for professionals and academics to communicate about issues that are pertinent in this field.The committee is working hard on a detailed content track that brings up to date information to seasoned developers and also provides the necessary starting points for attendees who are new to the area.

As previously, we’re working hard on the right balance of technical and creative sessions from the industry’s experts. Interest so far means we’re shaping up for something pretty special.The committee is has now opened the public calls for papers and sessions.

For further details click here.

Cheers!

A great new addition on my sample libraries is the first instrument of Native Instruments focusing on dark and tension-filled sound aesthetics, for the instant creation of horror-genre style atmospheres for movies and video games. Paranormal spectrums provide the modern composer with an unmatched arsenal of sounds and soundscapes ranging from the eerie to the truly terrifying. Starting from field recordings of forlorn places, or unsettling sampled sounds, Paranormal Spectrums combines these sonic images with a synthesized part, created in Absynth or Massive. This unique approach allows for a true playability that can lead you to some very dark and strange corners of this immensely flexible collection.

I’m pleased to announce the licensing of the Native Instruments Evolve Mutations Bundle sample library. This bundle includes the Evolve Mutations 1 and Evolve Mutations 2 in one package. Both sample libraries are heavily used in soundtracks for films and game music compositions and after many years of following their development I took the decision to add them on my tool-set. I will soon start producing some content with those instruments and will post some

Just added the NI Session strings on my arsenal of orchestral sound libraries. This is the description from the developer’s site: Aimed at producers looking for high-quality ready-to-go string sections for modern productions, Session strings produces immediate results without hours of fine tuning and tweaking, yet also boasts an incredible set of expressive features accessible from a highly intuitive interface. The fully production-ready sound is made up of four violins, three violas, two celli and two double basses – played as one perfectly realized ensemble. Recorded and produced by e-Instruments in one of the best sounding studios in Germany famous for its disco and pop productions during the 70s, this ensemble excels in delivering beautifully warm, punchy and direct strings. Precious instruments from the 18th and 19th century were recorded using the highest-end studio equipment. Top musicians from some of the finest orchestras in Europe performed a large number of strings articulations at the highest musical level.

I’m pleased to announce my second addition on the drum samples of my arsenal, the Native Instruments and Abbey Road second collaboration, the Abbey Road 70s Drums.

Abbey Road 70s Drums is the second of Native Instruments’ collaborations with Abbey Road Studios London. This instrument contains no emulations or modeling of any kind – Abbey Road 70s Drums is built entirely of high-quality samples of two distinctive vintage drum kits from the 1970s, made accessible via an easy-to-use interface newly created in conjunction with the Abbey Road experts. Made up of thousands of painstakingly sampled hits, every sound in this instrument was recorded in Abbey Road’s legendary Studio Two using classic vintage equipment from that period. Two highly-sought after vintage drum kits were chosen by Abbey Road and Native Instruments’ sound engineers to give two highly distinctive 70s drum sounds, first the Open Kit is a Ludwig Vistalite Tequila Sunrise from 1972 with a 26″ kick drum, 14″ rack tom and 16″ and 18″ floor toms – recorded in the legendary Studio Two of Abbey Road, this kit provides the big roomy sound immortalized on countless classic rock recordings and then the Tight Kit is a vintage 1970s Premier model with 22″ kick drum, 13″ rack tom, 14″ and 16″ floor toms – the samples from this kit were also recorded in Studio Two of Abbey Road, but dedicated acoustic panels were put around the kit to achieve the tight, punchy and dry sound that was very popular throughout the 70s. Abbey Road 70s Drums were recorded using an EMI TG MKIII mixing console and 16-track analogue 2-inch tape machine using 1970s professional Dolby Noise Reduction and Ampex 456 tape.

Another sample library is added on my arsenal of drum samples, this time its the Native Instruments and Abbey Road first collaboration, the Abbey Road 60s Drums.

Abbey Road 60s Drums is the first of Native Instruments’ collaborations with Abbey Road Studios London. This instrument delivers expressive acoustic drums that combine detailed realism with flexible and nuanced control. Containing no emulations or acoustic modeling of any kind, this instrument consists entirely of high-quality samples of two vintage kits – beautifully recorded with period equipment in Abbey Road’s legendary Studio Two. The heart of Abbey Road 60s Drums consists of two highly sought-after vintage drum kits, first the Gretsch round badge White Marine Pearl (Jasper Shell) from the early 60s includes a 24” kick drum, one 13” and one 16” tom and the second kit is a Ludwig Hollywood from 1967 with a 22″ kick, and 12″, 13″ and 16″ toms.

After long research on a way to control and handle the vast majority of virtual instruments a sound designer and composer can have in his disposal, I decided that the best solution would be Native Instruments’ Kore 2. Native Instruments’ Kore 2 is the Next-Generation Workstation – a powerful software / hardware system with a versatile library structure in which the user can load, save and control the majority of virtual instruments and effects. This piece of software together with hardware approach allow me to load, configure and save countless presets and retrieve them instantly for any need my productions may have. No need to say that I’m very happy to add this piece of equipment/software on my tool-case of sound mangling tools.

The Native Instruments’ Komplete 6 Bundle is now a part of my sound design arsenal, everything from detailed sampling to extreme sound synthesis and all in between can be achieved with this bundle. The list of products includes: Kontakt 4 – The industry standard sampler, Absynth 5 – The legendary synthesizer, Guitar Rig 4 Pro – The ultimate all-in-one guitar and bass solution, Battery 3 – A dedicated drum sampler with a vast library of premium drum kits, Massive – The formidable sound monster for fat basses and piercing leads, FM8 – Crystal-clear, airy, and razor-sharp digital sounds ideal for melodies and percussion and last but not least Reaktor 5 – An extremely versatile instrument studio with modular architecture. Komplete 6 brings together seven cutting-edge products that no studio should be without. Containing groundbreaking and multi-award winning samplers, synths, guitar/bass amps and creative effects, this collection represents Native Instruments’ most powerful software tools.

It’s time for SAE Athens to open its doors for the public once more, on the annual Open Day of the Athens Department. On the Open Day people get to know the school of Audio Engineering SAE from top to bottom, by touring through the institute’s studios, facilities and classroom, and they get to experience free lessons for various topics including one that I’m teaching and is my favorite.

Sound Design and Adaptive Music Production for Games and Interactive Media. The specific topic is of great importance to me, because not only teaches the disciplines of one of the most modern sectors of Audio Engineering, but it also gives the Engineer the tools and knowledge he/she needs to become productive and efficient using the latest tools and technologies available.

The lecture went great and I had more visitors than expected, the hours passed very quickly as the classroom was filled with people full of pure interest for the subject, and I’m very sure that many of the people I met on this day will come back for more!

A big thank you for the great help I had from the SAE Athens Supervisors, Stuff and Administration. Looking forward for a great lecturing year!

Today at Aventurine’s Headquarters the whole team gathered to celebrate our main project’s birthday.

Darkfall Online is celebrating 1 year from release and everybody was very happy. We had a little office celebration with gifts, cake and wine, it was great.

After many years of hard work, we achieved to gather many happy players around this great game. As the Sound designer I’m feeling proud that this MMORPG gives people a very vivid experience of PvP game play and everything seems to be going ok, the future is very promising and the team is bonded, working like never before.

Once more, Happy Birthday and Long Live to Darkfall!

As of today I’m a proud professional member of AES, the Audio Engineering Society.

Here are some words about this wonderful organization:

The Audio Engineering Society is the only professional society devoted exclusively to audio technology. Founded in the United States in 1948, the AES has grown to become an international organization that unites audio engineers, creative artists, scientists and students worldwide by promoting advances in audio and disseminating new knowledge and research.
Currently, over 14,000 members are affiliated with more than 75 AES professional sections and more than 95 AES student sections around the world. Section activities may include guest speakers, technical tours, demonstrations and social functions. Through local AES section events, members experience valuable opportunities for professional networking and personal growth.
The AES also serves the educational needs of its members and the audio industry at large through international technical meetings, equipment exhibitions, and a wide range of publications.
Conventions, which include scientific presentations, student activities, workshops, and exhibitions, are held annually both in the US and Europe. Additional conferences and regional summits are held periodically throughout Latin America, Asia, Europe, and North America.
Many research papers presented at conventions are ultimately published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. Other convention papers and conference proceedings are compiled in the online AES E-Library. Members have access to this information for a small fee, along with a wealth of other resources, including tutorials and technical documents, through the AES website.
Finally, the AES is continually involved in the creation and maintenance of international standards in the areas of digital and analog audio engineering, communications technology, acoustics, media preservation and creative practice. Through the AES Technical Council and its subsidiary working groups, AES members and the Society as a whole are at the forefront of both established and emerging audio technologies and techniques.

As of today I’m a proud professional associate of AudioGANG, the Game Audio Network Guild.

The GANG is a non-profit organization promoting the quality and technical integrity over the ever-expanding field of Game Audio and the Application of Sound on Interactive Media. This field is one of the most interesting and one of my basic occupations within tha audio industry.

Here you can review the objectives of this great organization:

* Provide one voice to articulate, discuss and confront issues affecting the interactive audio industry
* Build a strong community for its fellowship through an online forum, local chapters and industry-wide events
* Celebrate accomplishment and recognize excellence within the interactive audio industry via awards, advisory committees, and achievement-based membership levels
* Encourage the creation of excellent audio by educating interactive entertainment developers and publishers about the value and importance of excellent audio content as well as evangelizing the broadening of audio production budgets, use of professional grade equipment and the adoption of proven production techniques
* Improve and expand production options for interactive audio projects by creating standards, developing and consulting in the development of products and forming relationships between the interactive audio community, product manufacturers and key organizations throughout the entertainment industry
* Gather private and public grants, scholarships and funds available in support of the arts
* Advise companies on issues related to audio for interactive media
* Explore, create, develop, and promote ancillary profit avenues for audio intellectual property within interactive entertainment
* Foster education in interactive audio by participating in and/or hosting seminars, presentations and panels, providing scholarships to members, producing and publishing scholarly works and assisting educational institutions with the development of a comprehensive curriculum for interactive audio
* Legitimize the art and craft of creating and producing audio for interactive media by providing sufficient public relations support for the industry as a whole
* Collect key data to produce statistics about the interactive audio industry for use in promoting, reporting on and improving the industry
* Partner with other organizations to promote the industry, develop the community and tackle key issues
* Develop and maintain a robust public resource called the Game Audio Database containing key information about the production and creation of audio content for individual interactive products
* Provide coverage of current events and news related to the interactive audio industry for the public-at-large by reporting on said events and news and by partnering with other media outlets to achieve such ends
* Nurture member career development through continued education, highlighting professional opportunities and job openings, and assisting in the formation of apprentice/intern relationships between established professionals and aspiring professional members
* Provide networking opportunities for its members
* Offer and develop a comprehensive benefits program to its members to assist in the development of their craft and/or business
* Engage in any additional activities that promote excellence in audio

As of today I’m a proud professional member of IGDA, the International Game Developers Association.

The International Game Developers Association is the largest non-profit membership organization serving individuals that create video games. The mission of the IGDA is to advance the careers and enhance the lives of game developers by connecting members with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating on issues that affect the developer community.
The principles that drive the IGDA’s essential and enduring tenets are Community, Professionalism, Expression, Innovation, Impact, Leadership and Fun.

The super-awesome East West series of sample libraries added to my arsenal of sampled sounds. It was time to upgrade the libraries I’m using for composing music for games. The specific collection is probably one the best around for quick production ready compositions in all formats, including 5.1 Film sound presets recorded at some of the best sounding music halls.

I took over further lecturing duties at SAE Athens by adding Digital Audio as part of the Audio engineering Course. Together with SAE Athens Technology Institute we continue expanding our collaboration, aiming at higher education standards in the fields of Creative Media.

Understanding how Digital Audio works is a mandatory knowledge, especially for the modern Audio Engineer. Each day our production pipeline dives deeper and deeper into the use of this wonderful and very interesting technology. There is no other path to choose than going digital when the task requires precise editing, heavy signal processing and a non-destructive approach. By understanding how this technology works and it’s fundamental rules, the Audio Engineer establishes a direct connection with the current production pipelines and the future of this craft.

I’m looking forward to present to the students of SAE Athens this topic and add a powerful weapon to the arsenal of knowledge they need for the Digital Millennium.

I’m happy to announce that I just upgraded my PC system to a new one based on the new i7 platform of Intel. This system runs with Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. After many tests and actually real world projects running, I’m happy to inform everybody that the system works flawlessly without any downtime, bugs, issues or drawbacks. Performance is boosted and now I can run even more signal processing application real-time while watching high definition movies and encoding video in the same time.

With this productivity increase I can, at last, press pause and smell the flowers!

Just finished recording guitars for the Promo CD entitled “Pact With The Devil” for my band Mahakala. 200 free copies of this -limited to 300 copies- promo will be given to the audience (and 100 more to the press), on the forthcoming reunion show at the Sin City club in Athens along with Homo Iratus and Damned Creed, so you better be there!

More information you can find at our MySpace or Facebook pages where you can subscribe to our friends lists and get notified for future shows and releases. Rock on!

A very interesting addition to my software synthesizers came from Plogue again. The application is named Chipsounds and it is modeled to recreate authentic the sound of classic video game consoles, vintage 8bit home computers and even the 80’s arcade machine I loved playing so much.

Chipsounds authentically emulates more than eight vintage 8bit-era sound chips (on top of their variants), down to their smallest idiosyncrasies, allowing me to dynamically reproduce the accidentally discovered sounds effect tricks and abusive musical techniques, that were made famous by innovative chip music composers and classic video game sound designers, which for the good part of the last 3 decades, have pushed beyond the boundaries of the original chip designs.

Joined the Sludge/Stoner/Metal band Mahakala. There is nothing more to say about this, except that I am very happy to be part of this team of creative artists.

Band members are: Jim Bob – Bass and Throat, Big Badda – Guitars and Backing Vocals, Panozk (that’s me) – More Guitars and Aris_h – Drums.

I’m looking forward to start rocking again after all this years my guitar was just a dusty surface. If you like to pick up some news and get notified for future events and releases of Mahakala, you can subscribe to our friends lists on our MySpace or Facebook pages

Just purchased and installed the brand new Roland TD-12KX electronic drum set. This just replaced the old Alesis set and it works wonderfully with all my percussion sample libraries that are already installed in my system. The set also includes some fine presets for quick pre-production work and from the first test session me and some drummers tried is seems to give fine results.

Already installed and successfully running on daily basis is the real time modular environment for audio processing called Bidule by Plogue. It offers many varieties of modules that are available within its library. It may seem like the other modular software, but this application really makes it easy and fast to connect modules together and work on new patches. It includes many mathematical functions and many useful processing algorithms. It also gives me the ability, as a VST host application, to run my installed VSTs within the modules structure and it also runs as a VST on any host. Probably the best routing companion I could find for designing sound effects on Reaper.

After may years of research and testing I concluded to install Cockos’ Reaper as my main audio sequencer. Reaper is a powerful application full of features and tools, programmed from the beginning, Reaper offers a fresh approach on audio sequencing and top notch performance. It has a warm user base and the programmers of this great piece of software already proven that they listen very carefully to their clients and incorporated many features me and other audio engineers have asked.

Reaper’s no-compromises 64-bit audio engine and 64-bit end-to-end signal path offer the maximum in resolution and headroom and gives me both power and flexibility that i already started using on my projects. If you don’t know this fine product you should give it a try. Visit my links page to find out the address and give it a try.