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Filtering Sounds

Author: Tobbi Dala

So you are tired of the Stormtroopers dialogue, or it just doesnt fit the action of say your new cutscene? Well then you are fortunate! Fiddling around with various sound software the other day, I finally discovered a way to make a normal sounding sound file have that filtered sound of a stormtrooper. Now im sure that some of you already know how to do this, but i had never gotten my stormie sounds to be this precise. Also included are ways of making garbled radio chatter like the x-wing pilots in Sw:Anh, and an easy way of making sure your new wavs have the correct header when saving it. So without further adue heres some tips on how to make your own filtered wavs:

Ok, you need two programs for this. (Other than Jk and Mots of course) The first one is ConMan (Container Manager v0.9a) - for extracting the sounds from the Gobs and Goos, its available in the programs section. The other one is a sound editor called Goldwave, you can download at www.goldwave.com

Now remember that this sound editor is a shareware program, you can use all the fancy stuff, save your stuff and so on, but it shuts down after you have used it for a while.Not a problem though, just open it again.:) Remember, if youre going to buy an audio shareware prog, this is it. I have mostly all of the fancy sound stuff out there, but this one is still my favourite since the days of Dark Forces because it can handle a variety of sound formats inluding Df's Voc's.

Note: For this Tutorial im using Goldwave 3.24.There is a newer version out now, but its a beta.(you use it the same way in that one anyway) And im using sounds from both Jk and Mots, since the stormtroopers in Mots dont have any "clicking" sounds when they speak mysteriously enough...

Extract i00s111z.wav from Jk's Res1hi.gob
Extract rc61121.wav from Mots's JKMsndLO.goo
Open them both up in Goldwave, this is what you should see:

Select the rebel commando wav, rc61121.wav (which we will make into a stormtrooper) and access the effects pulldown menu.Now choose "Filter", followed by "Bandpass/stop" This is the filter that you will use:

For this particular wav file we dont have to change any of the presets really, just set it to "Dynamic" and the steepness to 2, that should do it.Now these variables vary on other sound files, you are going to have to experiment with them yourself.And there are loads of other fx you can come up with, com radio chatter and so on. I myself managed to fix up a filter who sounded exactly like the Rebel pilots garbled radio communications with each other on the attack of the death star.I'll show you how to do that further down.

Ok, take a listen to the new rebel commando wav, sounds like a stormtrooper right? Almost. First we have to polish it up a bit, select this part of the stormie wav, copy it and use "paste at beginning" on the rc wav, like this:

This lets the our new stormie wav have those clicking sounds that are missing from Mots, repeat it with the end "click" noise from the original st wav like this:

There ya go, with the filter laid and both clicking sounds, the end result should look something like this:

Ok, that would be it, you may find it a bit too quiet, so did i. thats easy to fix though. Just raise the volume of it in goldwave. :)

Oh yeah, the garbled x-wing radio communications ala Sw:Anh... Makes the sounds a bit Wobbly.(Watch the film if you cant remember! :) ) Thats another filter called "Mechanize" it looks like this :

This one is easier to apply, but harder to get it right, since there are fewer options. On some sounds you have to use another filter to make them more radio-like. GoldleaderGoingIn.wav here is a stormtrooper wav which i used mechanize quality 20 on. Since it already had a radio-ish quality to it, it sounded exactly like the rebels in A new hope.

As an extra tip: If your own custom wav file that you have recorded yourself, should be in some sort of wrong format. i.e. not mots or jk's, or the Hz of the file would be wrong, thats easy to fix too, just do this:

Open both your wav and the either one from mots or jk.
Use "Cut" on the mots/jk wav so its totally black.
Paste your wav into the empty mots/jk one.
Save it under a new name, and dont change the settings in save. This lets your new wav keep the header settings of the one its pasted into.

Well, thats it really.Just remember: The LucasartsWavs in Jk/Mots are Copyrighted, i only used these for a demonstration everyone owning these games could follow.So dont go editing them, use these filters with your own sounds. And dont stick to the preset filters either.Experiment wildly, the results can be weird! :)

Happy editing!