How do I make 8bit 22khz samples sound good

[garethv]

Hi, I am trying to make decent 8bit 22khz samples for video games particulary the nintendo DS. So far I have composed a couple of decent tunes, but they are too big to play in the DS. I need to resample the instruments that i have used, to be 8bit and 22hz. when i do this they sound terrible and so far away from the professional sounds. The process I go through is as follows

1) take a 1 note or bar sample of a string instruments, played in midi, recorded at 32bit 96Khz

2) bounce that down to an audio wav. file. export at 32bit 96khz

3) open it in soundforge, turn it into a mono sample, add compression, to boost the volume, bit convert ir to 8bit and resample at 22khz.

4) listen to new wav file and feel very disappointed.

does any one have any ideas or extra proeccesses that I could go through, i have tried to mix it in Sonar, with EQ and compression to polish it, but as they say you can't really polish a turd!!!!!!!

all help gratefully appreciated.
G

[audiojacker.net]

For a start I think your recording rates are complete overkill.

Your DAW may be saying 32 bit, but thats floating bit and internal only, I cant think of a single interface that records at 32 bit, so somethings wrong there for a start. (Edit: I just read your bouncing the track from midi)

With game sound design you would be hard pressed to find a professional who even records at 24 bit, as it just isnt necessary (I actually got that from John Broomhall shortly after he finished work on Heavenly Sword, so im going with that). Even in pro ADR session for film and general film dialogue is all recorded at 16 bit.

So try just starting at 16 bit.

Your samplerate is complete overkill also, stick with 48khz, youll never find recordings at 96k rate for film or game. (well maybe now with HD but thats another story).

I've never bounced to 8bit, and dont know if your using a bitcrusher plugin, but you dont mention any kind of dither being used, which is a neccesity if your reducing your bit depths, and lack of dither may be an instant cause of artefacts in your audio.

I dont have any experience in working with 8-bit, and I may be talking shit, but these are the areas I would look at first for any bitdepth/samplerate related problems.

[garethv]

hi, audiojacker, thank you for getting back to me and offering an answer. I chose to work in the bit rates and khz to try and get the best sound I could before bouncing it to 8bit and 22khz. I understand what you are saying and too be honest I was using 16bit and 44hz to record in. I do think that the bounced samples do sound a bit better in the higher rates though.

to bounce the audio I use soundforge to convert the bit rate and samples rate. I use sonar 7 PE to record and mix the original sample. This doesn't support 8bit as far as I am aware, so I use soundforge.

I wasn't sure if I should be using different techniques when recording the sample, and compressing and EQing etc.

many thanks
Gareth

[Bokonon]

Have you monitored it through the DS speakers to check what it sounds like on there? mixing for a platform like that is easy because you have a really good idea what the primary playback system is going to be. If the DS will only playback wav's of that format, then that's what other people must be using. I would do some analysis of the resulting files and see where the file can reproduce audio well, and where it cannot, then focus on writing songs which are based in that range.