When Valve Software lead sound designer Dave Feise needed to capture the dynamic sound effects for Portal 2, the most anticipated video game of 2011, he turned to Sound Devices 788T digital audio recorder. Effects for the game were compiled at multiple locations for more than a year, and included such sights and sounds as water balloons in the Valve parking garage, birds at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, and wave sounds and whale songs in Hawaii.
To record the audio effects for the game, the Valve audio team used three main setups with the 788T, including an Aquarian Audio hydrophone, a Schoeps M-S setup with the Schoeps CMIT 5U as the mid mic and CMC68 as the figure eight, and a Core Sound TetraMic. The M-S setup and the TetraMic are in Rycote windscreens and though usually mounted on a boom pole, were used instead as handhelds and also on a regular mic stand. Feise ran all of these straight into the mic inputs on the 788T, while usually recording at 24/96. The 788T proved to be a huge help for the M-S and TetraMic setups, providing multiple monitoring modes and the ability to link the gains of several channels together.
The Valve audio team, which includes Feise, senior sound designers Tobin Buttram and Tim Larkin, sound designers Marcus Egan and Kelly Thornton, composers Mike Morasky and Jason Hayes, and voiceover recordist/editor Bill Van Buren, is currently using the 788T for sound effects gathering for the upcoming action fantasy strategy video game, Dota 2. Feise added the Sound Devices CL-WIFI iOS software app to his rig for locations that are in the field but don’t require a rig to be worn while recording. The CL-WIFI works together with its companion iOS software app to allow iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches to control a connected 788T. The CL-WIFI turns an iOS device into a simple, portable control surface that allows a sound mixer to move around on set, away from the sound cart, yet still have extensive control and monitoring of their 788T recording system.