Squirrel Wood sent this my way, and I say thankya: Sound Borb Ambience Generator is a free, fun way to play endless soundscapes on your computer. Since we know I have a vested interest in this sort of thing, it gets me thinking more about how we could have better environmental ambience in Second Life.
Operation of Sound Borb is easy: start the program, select a borb (set) from the dropdown menu, then push play. It also has "Intensity" and "Happiness" sliders which seem sufficiently descriptive, but I haven't figured out on my own what exactly they do, yet.
If you're looking for something more configurable, have a look at EarSaver and/or Atmosphere.
Call me crazy (yes you may), but I'd be so tripped out to have an audio setup streaming live, hi-fi ambience from a distant place in the world. For example, the mingling diners at a fine sushi joint (like this, albeit in surround sound and not mono), or the shuffling of luggage and intermittent announcements in an airport. If I closed my eyes, I might feel more like I was there, but even with eyes open, I'm convinced it'd have an effect on my work, as if I was displaced sonically and found cultural influences from abroad leaking into my home.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Like WindLight, except that it's audio! Being an audio engineer by heart, I'm sad to see there's more focus in SL to visual beauty, while sound is so overlooked (last time I checked, there was 1 audio file in th SL4B timevault and several hundred textures).
I'd love to see for estate owners a tool like this available, so they can control their environment visually with WindLight and use SoundBorb for audio atmospheres. When I edited sound for some short films, the people were always amazed how sound was half the movie. People don't know the power of sound until they hear it, so I think giving SL estates more sound than the standard wind will truly open people's ears.
Also, I now sometimes do hear people adding boxes with environmental sounds, but because that's always coming from one source, it always sounds weird when you walk around. It's never globally around and I haven't even heared stereo effects with it.
Torley, what a great find. My brain's melting.
This, combined with my SL-induced sleep deprivation, should make for a pleasant nap this afternoon
haha.. this rules. have you ever seen the freesound project? it's run by one of my very best friends in the world. check:
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/searchText.php
search ambience.
it's not quite the same but it could serve as a nice little musical snack, eh? i haven't gotten so far as streaming things yet but i often parcel my land and put different mp3s on each (one playthrough and then it stops and becomes boring, thus forcing you to carry on.)
How excellent! I thought you might like to check the work of locus sonus, who i saw recently demoing a live stream of ambient sounds from around the world, at the steim microjamboree in Amsterdam. An audio version of RL! i share your enthusiasm!
No Mac version?
Your friend runs that, Thaumata? That's supercool. I needed to make a video with no copyrighted stuff on it, so I browsed through a million CC-ed stuff and that page in the way. Lovely stuff!
Maybe we could get Katharine to make a HUD or something like this for SL when AjaxLife is ready. xD
I must add that's a great video btw. I like the atmosphere difference between the kitchen and the public place.
Also, there's a great atmosphere in SL in Tehama, I'm sure you know it. If that could be done on parcel/estate level, it'd be an enormous addition to SL.
@Daedalus: We both have passion for audio, so clearly I feel there's an imbalance between visual and audio in SL right now. That's an interesting observation re: the SL4B vault too. When thinking of future feature designs, I consider current "hacks" — for example, people who set their parcel media URL to a New Age "dolphin song" or "gentle river brook" station. Which plays globally throughout a parcel, but isn't spatialized. For different kinds of sounds, we'll need both. I also believe crossfades are pretty essential, otherwise that disrupts the experience like a gap in the horizon (which is still in the normal viewer but fixed in the newest WindLight one).
@Aenea: Just happy to share what Squirrel brught me!
@thaumata: Ah yes it's been awhile since I was there… I like checking out field recordings. When I was younger, I liked the HyperCard stack of Audobon's birds. What I also recall is the early 8-bit dithering which made natural stuff have an eerie digital feel to it, an effect which later got used in many retrogaming tracks.
@Parthenon: First time I've heard of "locus sonus", they perform in Second Life too?
@Mariel: I grieve when there's kewl stuff on Mac but not PC and vice-versa. Tough to find analogues for some useful tools. But EarSaver (while commercial) is available for Mac, if you wanna try that.
@Daedalus again: O, which video? I'm missing something here!
Ah, I mean the Sushi Conveyor video.
Re: crossfades, just what I meant in my previous comment: although there's a distinct difference between the kitchen atmosphere and the public atmosphere, this change happens gradually. At my filmschool they used to say: "You make video cuts with your eyes all day, but with your ears you're constantly making crossfades".
Hey folks, I'm the creator of Sound Borb. I'd be very interested to hear about anybody using SB in Second Life…That sounds very cool.
@Daedalus: Ah! Intriguingly, I recall reading about distinct transition styles by various directors — including George Lucas and his Star Wars iris and other kinds of wipes. I think if I were to make longer movies, jump cuts would be the minority, and most pairs of scenes would be crossfaded, albeit very quickly as to not become distracting and drag on.
@Tom: Thanks for visiting and commenting! I don't think there's yet a way we can actually use SB in Second Life, but the principles and simplicity are inspiring.
Oh yes, editing is an art in itself. You can make a point with just a cut, like the transition from the bone to the spaceship in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (Monolith: It all started with a cube?). See the Dawn Of Man scene here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sdoA3AJ6zGE
Another amazingly edited movie is Requiem For A Dream. Though very graphic/violent/and so on, the splitscreens and the drugtaking montage are very effective and all have a narrative role in the movie.
@Daedalus: I haven't seen Requiem for a Dream in its entirety, but definitely appreciate Darren Aronofsky's editing work in his earlier film, Pi. I also want to see The Fountain… at least the trailer for that looked gorgeous.
I recently learned that transition in 2001 is called a "match cut"!