We came across Sound Particles when Mike was at AES 2018 in New York in October this year. More recently we came across an excellent video from René Coronado from the Tonebenders podcast. He starts with an overview of the Sound Particles software and then works his way through 5 increasingly sophisticated examples of how you could use Sound Particles.
What Is Sound Particles?
If you haven’t heard of Sound Particles, it is a CGI-like software for Sound Design, capable of using particle systems to generate thousands of sounds in a virtual 3D world.
Particle Systems are a common tool used in computer graphics and VFX to create fuzzy/shapeless objects like fire, rain, dust or smoke. Instead of animating all individual points (water drops, grains of dust or smoke), the user creates a particle system, an entity that is responsible for the creation and management of thousands of small objects. Sound Particles uses the same concept, but for audio: each particle represents a sound source (instead of a 3D object) and a virtual microphone captures the virtual sound of the particles (instead of the virtual CGI camera).
Main Features
Huge Sound - Up to millions of sound sources playing at the same time.
Immersive Formats - Support for several multichannel formats, including immersive audio.
Audio Modifiers - Use random effects to make sure each particle sounds different from any other particle (gain, delay, EQ, pitch/speed, granular).
Movement - Use automation or movement modifiers to move sound sources and microphones.
Video - Import reference clips and see the particles moving on top of the image, obtaining a perfect time and space coherence.
Sound Propagation - Control the propagation of air (speed of sound, air attenuation, Doppler).
3D Views - See what is happening, using the fantastic 3D views (top, front, perspective, etc.).
Granular Synthesis - Use our optional granular audio modifier, and use particles to reproduce small audio fragments of original audio files.