SVG Sit-Down: EA Sports' Audio Director Eric Paul Talks Sound for NHL 22 2021 edition of the venerable videogame puts authentic, immersive hockey sound on ice By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thursday, October 28, 2021 - 12:42 pm
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It's October, and the NHL is back on the ice and the air. And so is NHL 22, EA Sports' sim version of the game. Powered by the Frostbite game engine, NHL 22 aims to bring gamers closer to the ice than ever before, this year with its most visually distinct upgrade to date, along with improved environments, overhauled player likenesses, and cool micro-details like improved skate spray.
What's also startlingly realistic, though, is NHL 22's newly immersive audio, and EA Sports Audio Director Eric Paul sat down with SVG to discuss how it came about.
How did EA source SFX for the game? The league? NHL Studios? Field-capture your own?
For the yearly title, the NHL audio team has generated and sourced audio in many different ways, with the focus generally being on the current feature set. In the past, we have had sessions where we would record players on ice with a couple of Sanken COS-11D's, one at ice level and one from players' POV. We bolster in-game sounds with broadcast recordings and our large central sound library. UI and broadcast sounds are individually designed by our audio artists using samples, synthesizers, and modern design tools and plugins like Ableton Live, Native Instruments, and Serum.
As you navigate around our game this year, you'll hear contemporary UI sounds that often have layers of modified hockey samples blended in to maintain that feeling of a unified sound world. A few examples of this: the ambient sounds of the boot[-up] screen mix hockey organs with washed-out skating, carves, and player call-outs. When you press start, the transition sound is a mix of modulated whooshes, board checks, and a puck hitting the crossbar. These are mixed to be impressionistic, but you'll hear these easter eggs through the title.
Of course, the big issue these past few cycles has been that our team is working from home and have had restrictions on field recording. Nowhere was this more challenging than recording our commentary team Ray Ferraro, James Cybulski, and Carrlyn Bathe. Our solution was to provide our talent at home with the equipment we would use in the studio: Neumann U87, Sennheiser HMD 300 PRO XQ 2 (for that sideline reporter sound), studio headphones, portable booths and laptops with Pro Tools.
During the session, which we run through a combination of Zoom and CleanFeed, our recordist logs into the talent's PC and runs the Pro Tools session: recording, playback, and dropping in markers. Assistant Producer Danny Lopes will work with the talent on their performance, and another audio artist will listen for technical issues.
We take a break every few cues to output the audio and check that the lines are consistent and that they will stitch well in runtime. We run the whole pipeline in-house, from pre-databasing, recording, editing, mastering through to logic writing, implementation, and final mix. During NHL 22 [production], we were able to record 59 sessions this way, and we're very happy with how it went and how well the new lines are stitching with legacy content.
EA Sports' Eric Paul: We work towards reality, but our games play out more like a highlight reel, so more-pronounced swings in crowd excitement levels and stadium atmosphere make sense.
Are they processed/enhanced in any way? Hi-res 24/96?
NHL Audio uses all the modern audio tools and techniques depending on the requirements of each particular task. Especially when it comes to sound design, anything goes. We love to grab new plugins and audio toys and try to innovate where we can. This year UI, broadcast wipes, and X-Factors got a lot of love in this area.
We also did a complete remaster of all our goal horns for NHL 22 to increase the hype and push us closer to the feeling you get from hearing those live. We did this by A/B-ing our horns with live recordings and using frequency analysis and our ears along with EQ, saturation, and spatial tools to get as close a match as we could.
Additionally, our commentary and music are mastered in-house to maintain a standard LUFs level. Last year, we had a big push to migrate to EA's Frostbite engine, and that has opened up a number of tools (filtering, compression, delays, distortion, etc.) so we can perform more of our processing and enhancements during runtime.
This allows us to be more flexible and customize our processing to the needs of a particular game moment. A common example of this is sweeping down a low-pass filter in [the] Be a Pro [feature] on background sounds to draw attention to a decision your player needs to make. But this also goes deep into how the game is mixed every frame. Currently, we design with high-resolution sound up to 96 kHz and 24 bit, but, due to the limitations of game consoles, we implement at 48 kHz and 16 bit.
Are any NHL player/coach/ref voices included? Any vocalizations?
Vocalizations come from a number of different sources. You will hear player calls throughout gameplay that were sourced through broadcast recordings for verisimilitude. Coaches and refs are hired talent that we use for to further the depth and authenticity of what you hear.
This year, with the move to Gen 5, we've added a number of our in-game voices to the PS5-controller speaker along with hits, shots, goal music, and goal horns. We're loving the feeling this gives to players of being more in the game and will continue to evolve that interface.
Where did you get crowd sounds, and how are they mixed for reaction to play?
[EA Sports' NHL gaming franchise] has a very deep crowd system that leverages Context
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SVG Sit-Down: EA Sports' Audio Director Eric Paul Talks Sound for NHL 22 2021 edition of the venerable videogame puts authentic, immersive hockey sound on ice By Dan Daley, Audio Editor 
