Pro Tools 10 for Game Audio [Paperback]

This book does a good job of explaining the various elements of audio that go into a typical game as well as efficient ways of working with that audio. The book is particularly good at pointing out useful audio editing tools in Pro Tools and how to access them quickly with hotkeys. If you are a Pro Tools novice, you will find this book very useful in its ability to show you how to use many of the general editing tools at your disposal (though not all of them, mind you). If you're also new to the game audio world, this book will do a great job of breaking down and explaining what all of the primary elements of audio that go into most games are.

However, if you are a gamer/audio enthusiast/intermediate pro tools user, then you are already aware of what things like "spell effects," "NPC dialogue," and "Cinematics" are, so the pages devoted to explaining these assets will be of little use to you. The book gets pretty redundant in the exercises and walkthroughs. First, the exercises and walkthroughs are really just carbon copies of each other, effectively doubling the size of the book without doubling the information being given, with the only difference being that the audio generated for the walkthroughs is used for one demo game (an RPG type game), and the audio for the exercises is used for a different demo game (an FPS game). Second, every chapter is essentially the same sequence of steps with little variation from chapter to chapter. This book could have been a quarter of its current size and simply asked the reader at the end to just repeat everything 10 more times. I understand the author is trying to reinforce the lessons learned through repetition, but this gets pretty old real quick. I would have liked to have seen a deeper explanation of things like how to use the most used plugins for creating various sound effects. Instead, the author simply gives you a sequence of steps to follow like a cookbook, including specifically what settings to input on a particular plugin for a clip, rather than giving a detailed explanation of how the various settings on the plugins can be used to create different effects. Mr. deBeer does include some dictionary definitions for the settings for a couple of base plug-ins, but this is as far as the explanation goes.

I was hoping I would be able to finish this book with a solid foundation of both audio editing knowledge as well as unique sound effect generation via virtual instruments and plugins. What I ended up with was only a small amount of new knowledge regarding how to master individual audio clips and implement them into a game via a game editor. I gained very little experience or information about how to effectively use some widely used virtual instruments or plugins to create my own sound effects. I honestly feel as though all I did was read an extension of "Introduction to Pro Tools 101."

This book is fantastic. If you have no prior pro tools experience I would recommend at least working through the 101 book first.