Double Transients - The Secret Sauce in Sound Design

[@MWoeh]

One aspect worth mentioning is that this effect happens as well when we hear loud sounds irl. When exposed to loud sounds, muscles in the middle ear will limit how much sound energy can reach the ear. So a brief and quick drop in volume can psychoacoustically simulate that effect and make us believe that the sound is bigger than it is.

[@MattWalterman]

Seismic charges are a great example that instantly came to mind. I use double transients everyday in video game sound design, great breakdown!

[@Kharmatic]

This is very professionally done, your channel is going to take off if you keep this quality up

[@XanWilliams]

Excellent video. It's a principle I was shown by a mentor early on and that often comes up with juniors when they first start doing guns or explosions and want to know how to improve. This is beautifully broken down and explained. I'm definitely going to point people to this video from now on.

[@mikeloganaudio]

Love the way these are presented! Subbed, your vids are criminally under-viewed 👏

[@LAxemann]

Thanks so much, Mike! Really means a lot! :)

[@blindcinema_]

huh I realized I do this without thinking about it, really nice explanation here!

[@domdown]

Wow great video!! Thanks for taking the time to put this together

[@wishyourlife6861]

Not much into audio, but this was pretty interesting! The coin sound from Mario is another iconic one.😉

[@namoneeco]

Really informative and well laid out, thank you!

[@Bob-exponentiel]

Quality content!

[@eurk0]

inb4 this channel becomes the new Waveform (Marshall McGee's channel's old name)

[@PeterTMusic]

Same dude, writing this so I know I was here at 3k subscribers lol

[@nomad_composer]

Great one, very well explained! Thank you 🙌

[@matthew_b_golden]

@10:32 Very good insight. Thank you! Came here from Airwiggles. Liked and Subscribed.

[@TennessseTimmy]

😎Coool, I love watching discussions on stuff like this

[@ramalshebl60]

i believe "kachow" by lighting mcqueen is the best example

[@pavelsabacky]

Hello! Just discovered your channel - great content. I have a suggestion for a video - what are your ways of creating variations of a sound apart from obvious pitch and speed variation and reshuffling the inner elements of a sound. I would be very interested in that! Thanks. Cheers

[@phillipeulee4441]

What microphone did you use to record your voice? It sounds sooo nice!

[@LAxemann]

I'm using a super old and cheap t.bone SC 450. Most of the "niceness" comes from post-processing, I think :D

[@ramalshebl60]

​​@@LAxemann indeed the compressor you're using sounds amazing

[@Beatsbasteln]

can we collectively call it KaBoom transients from now on?

[@fabiofsimoes]

great vid!

[@knucaccino]

incredible

[@vittoriosommatinoSounDesign]

Awesome video. Thank you!

[@rangognochi]

Heyo I’ve been going through an audio engineering course at my local community college and have come to love sound design. I wanted to ask if you knew of any additional resources to learn sound design? I’ve been putting in practice but I seem to be lacking key words like double transients that is stunting my learning. Any advice would be appreciated thank you!

[@LAxemann]

Hey there! I think there are many great free resources available online which you can find by simply searching "Sound Design tutorial", "Game Sound Design Tutorial" etc. Don't get hung up on "Keywords" like Double Transients, especially when they are semi-made-up. :P I can also highly recommend joining e.g. AirWiggles, it's a little social platform for audio people, and I'm sure you'll get lots of feedback and tips there as well! :)

[@rangognochi]

Heyo, Thank you so much! I really appreciate the response.@@LAxemann

[@rolardnb]

great research work mate 🙌

[@LAxemann]

Thanks a lot, good sir! :)

[@georgechadwick8642]

I really like using this philosophy on wooshes as well

[@megazoned3973]

Interesting essay. I call them "syllables". Anyway, I have to disagree with your point when it comes to the area of time and anticipation. It works in your example of the seismic charge or in the case of horror sounds, but the time between the first and second syllable of a gunshot is so tight that the brain, while hearing it as two separate parts, doesn't have the time to register any anticipation as the sound itself hasn"t taken any time to build any. If there is anticipation then is micro- on the level of a metronome click compared to a laid back drummer playing a fast BPM- but that would be different as well- as that sense of feel would need a bar or two to register the feel and to allow for anticipation. Anticipation comes when there is expectation and expectation can only happen when our brains first know to expect something in the context of listening. When someone plays a game and hears a treasure snatch UI or hears a gunshot in a film the so called double transient is satisfying mainly because it is born out of sound tradition and early recording technology. Explosions and gunshots in real life don't "ka-boom"- they "boom". But when they were first recorded for film the sounds were so loud they caused optical film recorders to overload and compress creating the attack and release that we are familiar with. So in this way I don't feel as if the sound itself as psycho-acoustically satisfying as you say, rather, it's satisfying because it sounds like it "should" based on our collective understanding of sound throughout the history of recorded media. Just my take.

[@LAxemann]

Hah! Funny that you mention it, the topic of "collective understanding of how things should sound like", in a way, will be (one of) my next video(s) :)

[@johnviera3884]

especially in claps. flam claps are exponentially greater than flat claps. look up 50 Cent - In Da Club

[@ХЕЙТЕРЫ-ы2б]

Thanks for the video! ps: background music in sound design videos is not a friend. Especially in headphones.

[@ramalshebl60]

facts

[@Phantom_Aspekt]

This technique can work great but can also sound awful, I think the worst one I've heard would have to be one of the shotguns from CS:GO, BaDoof BaDoof BaDoof... One of the best is 100% the sound of the Sniper from the original Medal of Honor game on the PS1, that sound has stuck with me since my childhood. 👌

[@rolardnb]

;-) Do that every time

[@olekXDDDD]

i love your videos. One thought i had when watching this video. does a real explosion or any reallife sound has a double transient? i would say no. is it only digital? so, are we just so used to those styles and concepts in sounddesign that we think that this is how its supposed to sound? a real explosion does sound diffrent then in e.g battlefield etc. just like most applejuice completely doesnt taste like apple :P, but we are trained to assocate this taste with a certain fruit. an effect i really like in movies is when the explosion oversteers. but this effect cant be used more then once or twice because it would get anoying.

[@LAxemann]

Heya mate, thanks a lot for the kind words! And the short answer is: Yes, you're spot on. Shots/explosions are short, aprupt discharges of large amounts of energy. These classical "kaboom"-sorta sounds are a sound design thing. The LONG answer... ahem, let me shift my non-existing glasses. There are multiple factors that can make double transients for these sort of sounds "a thing". - Sound travels at different speeds through different mediums. Air happens to be one of the slower ones. A "faster" one is the ground. Which leads to the following: In recordings of REALLY huge explosions that are far away, you can first hear some sort of "wooshy", rumbly impact, followed by the actual large bang of the explosion. This first rumbly impact is the sound/shockwave of the explosion travelling through the ground reaching the listener before the one travelling through the air does. - Far away explosions can get a double-transienty sound because it reflects from many different places. The sound may travel through areas with different air pressures and temperatures or even humidty in different areas, resulting in all these tiny reflections reaching the listener at different times. An early reflection travelling through hotter air might reach the listener before the "actual" sound, resulting in this "krrrBOOM" sound you might have heard in combat footage. - And sometimes the explanation is very simple: It might actually just be two explosions going off in short succession, resulting in this rhythmic "kaboom" characteristic.