Some of you indie game dev folks may be familiar with a cool little utility, SFXR.
It allows you to create a number of 8-bit sound effects, organized into various categories, like pickups, weapon shots, explosions, powerups, hit reactions, jumps and blip/select noises.
You can randomize until you hear something you like, then tweak the sliders for the perfect sound, even saving the preset to tweak later.
the original sfxr can be found here
https://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html
it's been ported and remixed in all sorts of ways. here's a version that runs in your browser:
even if you're not making a video game it's pretty useful. Just want a short 'tick' sound to play when the user selects a menu item?
this'll do ya
this utility got me thinking. a few people had suggested algorithmically generating floppy and hdd noises instead of using samples.
in theory, this proposition isn't totally off the wall, the main sounds involved are servo motors, they're mechanical and repetitive. It's not like you're trying to synthesize something incredibly complex like the human voice.
You'd definitely need to build a tool like this with a bunch of sliders to tweak various parameters to get good floppy and hard drive noises out of it.
I might need to collaborate with a sound designer on this one, because I think attack and sustain are moves in street fighter
