Voice Acting Mixers, Mastering Engineers, Dialogue Editors... No matter what we're called, our job is to make Skywind's voices sound great.

Voice actor recordings arrive to us as mono, 44.1 kHz, 16-bit files. The audio is typically raw and unaltered (though there are exceptions). Our "filecutter" volunteers have already reviewed these recordings and picked out the best takes for each line. Our job is to make them sound as good as possible.

1. Ready for Mixing

There are currently three columns from which you can grab mixing/mastering tasks:

1. Ready/Batch: Batch processing these cards is recommended, as they are for minor characters/townsfolk where it's not as important to clean up the audio file-by-file.

2. Ready/Creature: These cards are for unusual characters which will require some special effects treatment. Not recommended for newcomers to the team.

3. Ready/Loudness: These cards were mastered in the early days of Skywind, before we standardized our mixing process. They could use a quick check for making sure the loudness levels match our current targets.

4. Ready for Mixing: Major characters where it's important for the audio to be fully mastered. Cards at the top are most important, cards at the bottom are less important.

3. Mix In Progress

The other mixers have heard your sample audio and approved it -- you are good to go! Drag your card into this column and start working on the entire card.

Your final target is:

• WAV

• Same filenames as what you received

• Similar audio length as what you received*

• 16 bit

• 44100 Hz

• Mono

• True peaks should not exceed -1 DBFS

• Loudness of approximately -20 LUFS. Shoot for a range between -22 LUFS and -15 LUFS.

About Audio Length

The audio files that you received should already be trimmed to have an appropriate amount of silence before and after the line. You should generally leave the amount of silence alone and you won't have any issues. If you're curious to learn more, the amount of silence needed is driven by two factors:

1. The game engine. If an audio file has too little silence at the beginning, the lip sync animations will get confused and look strange for the duration of the line.

2. Pacing. If an audio file's silence is too long, the dialogue feels awkwardly slow and robotic.

For these reasons, the silence surrounding a typical line should be about 0.25" long, but can be as short as 0.1" for combat lines where perfect lip sync isn't as important.