Soundproofing continues to be an issue in Gom studio - Pag…

On February 06 2014 13:38 rkshox wrote:
Is this the first time the problem has appeared? I never heard of any of the esF teams complaining about them during GSTL or previous GSL seasons?

There doesn't seem to be any convincing reason to believe that herO used outside sounds as a tell. It's likely that he was not looking at his phoenix at the exact moment it discovered the dark shrine, but saw the spot on his minimap a few seconds later and doubled back with his phoenix to confirm what was warping in.

On February 06 2014 13:38 rkshox wrote:
Is this the first time the problem has appeared? I never heard of any of the esF teams complaining about them during GSTL or previous GSL seasons?

On February 06 2014 14:20 Liquid`Snute wrote:
Player booths need to have proper isolation and should definitely have background noise generators, Red Bull Battle Grounds New York City did this by using in-ears combined with a headset playing white noise on top and it worked out great.

If it is desirable to use 'noise' speakers in the booth + isolation ear-thingies + in-ears, i would definitely not recommend using just any dynamic soundtrack looped on top itself. Dunno what it's like in modern GSL right now, but: My worst experience with sound booths was from Proleague in Korea. I later heard that it was the same for WCS Season 1 Global Finals that were played in KR as it was the host region.

The way of doing noise isolation in Proleague was distracting, but for the sake of concealment it worked. For those that haven't been in a Proleague booth or attended the 2013 WCS Season 1 Global Finals, it kinda goes like this:

You wear in-ears, music is not allowed except for in-game music. If you choose not to listen to in-game music at a blasting loud volume, you hear this:

The WoL sound-track, orchestra theme, not just one track, but a COPY of itself with some seconds delay at the same time being played from loudspeakers behind or in the booth. This thing playing at really high volume with its crazy fanfares at 4:07. However, there was a twist. You didn't hear this track one time, but two. They had copied it and layered it on top of itself. Think of opening this youtube link twice with a short gap in between.

It was a total mess and extremely distracting, but it did work in terms of hiding what commentators were saying and blending in with game sounds. However, there were also times that despite the track being double-layered with itself, it would be awfully silent. There was a change in dynamics, which was also distracting.

YES, as a pro-gamer you have to adapt to your surroundings, sc2-followers love to say this all the time. But feel free to open up the link above in TWO tabs in ur browser with some seconds in between with loud volume and try to focus on an attention demanding task with no prior practice. If you can do this, congratulations, you could do really well there



On the non-distracting side of things, white noise is great as a background noise since it covers the entire human auditory spectrum. However, sharp sounds (think of trumpets, human voices screaming, girls screaming) and sub-bass (like TB said u can feel vibrations too) can easily pierce through a white noise carpet given enough amplitude. I think the the king of all background noises would probably be a synthesized/composed low-dynamic mix consisting of:
- white noise with very slight variations in the spectrum (think of sparkly and deeper ocean-waves, kinda like clapping),
- random sine waves in the human voice spectrum to emulate commentators in a comfortable way
- random bass/rumble, obviously not so much that its felt in a distracting way but certainly something that will mask the game bass. kinda like this but not as disturbing and in different tones. Because we shouldn't hear a mothership core popping and we shouldn't hear deep-voiced commentators saying o-ooooh 6pool.

or u could do something cool like mixing in some recordings from the audience of previous events, add some reverb to make it a bit more mushy and less distracting and blast that on a speaker

i know i probably didn't contribute anything to the situation in GSL with this post but it seems pretty sad that there are issues with something that's as simple as this. some research and dedication to the craft will solve it. proleague's way seemed more like a duct-tape than anything to me, but it was way way better than having audible casters.

maybe not everyone take this seriously but i don't see a reason for it not to be a clear, set in stone type of thing with tested minimums that you know actually work.

On February 06 2014 12:50 bokchoi wrote:


i think the players might care.. maybe just a little..

obviously both are problems tho

They should just use noise-cancelling headphones, like Bose! : False. Active noise-cancellation works to lower the effective volume of certain frequencies sounds. It works well against sounds which are constant, such as airplane engines or air conditioning. It works very poorly against unpredictable sounds with a high range of frequencies such as human speech (or screaming).