Creating the Extraordinary ‘Animal Hyperrealism’ Collections – with Mattia Cellotto and Ash Read

The trailer for Animal Hyperrealism Vol 3

How do you approach noise reduction to achieve the clean takes you end up with, whilst maintaining fidelity?

Mattia Cellotto (MC): Since what I aim to deliver with my collections is a hyperrealistic take on animal vocalizations, my first concern when recording is proximity, which comes before any other technical concern and greatly affects the way I deal with noise.

Proximity to the source plays two roles: it enables me to make the best use of my ultrasonic-focused setup and at the same time it provides me with a better SNR (sound-to-noise ratio) starting point, making up for the fact that some of these ultrasonic mics (e.g. Sanken CO-100K) have an omni pattern, which would otherwise pick too much external content (i.e., anything that isn’t the animal).

…my first concern when recording is proximity, which comes before any other technical concern and greatly affects the way I deal with noise.

Of course, the same mics may also have a low max SPL tolerance, so depending on the source’s loudness, I may at times decide to limit my proximity if necessary, but this rarely happens with animals.

Trying to figure out how not to disturb the animals’ behavior when trying to get as close as possible to them is often a gamble though. With certain animals, this can be achieved easily – for example, if the animal is trained to perform, or if it’s a hungry farm animal such as a pig – but the same can’t be said for small monkeys, for example, which in my experience tend to be a lot more erratic.

Using at least five microphones when recording (as I do) is a double-edged sword when it comes to noise…

Using at least five microphones when recording (as I do) is a double-edged sword when it comes to noise: since every microphone has a different purpose, one can be more deliberate or destructive when denoising. For example, I tend to denoise my Avisoft CMPA and Sanken CO-100k more heavily than my Sennheiser MKH 8050 since the former are omni.

I also tend to have different fade shapes for these two mics to contain environmental reflections by using less of the omni mics on the tail of the files.

Another factor to consider for omni microphones is their tendency to blur dynamic range a little when the environment provides loud early reflections. I noticed directional mics tend to give a sharper waveform, so I often end up trying to replicate that kind of envelope by hand-drawing volume automation on the omni mic takes. To better explain this, imagine the sound of a rolling R with all of its dips and crests; even better, try to perform a rolling R as you read. The choppy nature of the vocalization is very dynamically defined, but as the sound bounces off surfaces, this definition may get blurred when picked up by a microphone two meters away.

At times this blurring may affect only the lower end of the spectrum since higher frequencies are generally more easily absorbed. When that happens, I may either sculpt the low end in function of the high end in iZotope RX or resort to transient shaping plugins, having them create low to low-mid frequency transients based on the existing high-frequency ones.

…when editing I almost always divide the denoising phase into two RX passes – one full range pass which is optional, and one “ultrasonic only” pass which is mandatory.

This specific part of the process is not so much about denoising as it’s about maintaining and enhancing signal definition and delivering the most precise sound I can deliver.

Finally (but also most importantly), when editing I almost always divide the denoising phase into two RX passes – one full range pass which is optional, and one “ultrasonic only” pass which is mandatory.

The former is a standard, spectrum-wide “train and denoise” aimed at removing any broadband issue. The latter features a curve that skews the denoiser to only act in the ultrasonic domain. Depending on the recording and the issue I am trying to solve, I will set the curve to kick in from 10KHz to 50KHz onwards. I consider this pass mandatory since most microphones’ self-noise is much worse in the ultrasonic domain, causing even the most pristine capture to sound slightly noisy when slowed down to one quarter of its original speed.

How have you managed to stay inspired during lockdown?

MC: That’s a very interesting question! I guess that when working on this kind of library, I tend to develop a number of routines. I like to randomly search for weird animal sounds online. That often leads me down a rabbit hole that ultimately ends in a recording session. Randomly browsing for animal sounds not only is sometimes directly connected to the planning of a recording session; it also keeps me motivated since I can’t help but notice the incredible variety of sounds animals are capable of making.

Two seemingly identical birds can often produce vastly different sounds, so in the planning phase, I have stopped crossing off animal parks based on my past libraries since I have rarely heard the same animal make the exact same sound.

…I can’t help but notice the incredible variety of sounds animals are capable of making

Watching Planet Earth or listening to George Vlad’s work is also greatly motivating; it gives me an appreciation for professionals that don’t limit themselves to capturing footage or audio in less natural conditions, but who spend time raising awareness of the biodiversity our planet hosts, directly immersed in the wilderness we still have.

I ended up commissioning the cover art roughly four months before I finished editing the content just to hype myself up!

Drawings of nature are also something I love thinking about while recording a library. In fact, for this collection – Animal Hyperrealism Vol. III – I ended up commissioning the cover art roughly four months before I finished editing the content just to hype myself up! It helped me realize that the collection was almost done, it was real. It also motivated me to give justice to the amazing visuals by pushing even further the quality of my assets.

The credit for the cover goes to the amazingly talented concept artist Felix Bauer-Schlichtegroll.

How do you research animals to record?

MC: If by research you mean identifying animals, I want to record and ultimately, find a place where I can record them.

I tend to look at what is available around me more so than what I would ideally like to record. I do have a bucket list of animal vocalizations I would love to capture, but I’d rather “go local” and make the best of the region I find myself in for sourcing most of the content.

I tend to look at what is available around me more so than what I would ideally like to record.

That has not always been the case, I have the memory of traveling from the UK to the US with the intention of recording a grizzly bear for Animal Hyperrealism Vol. II.

Ultimately, that turned out to be impossible during that session, though luckily, in that instance, the bear was only one of the animals I traveled to record.

Weirdly enough, this year I recorded a bear during a session originally organized for capturing deer sounds. I really think it is important to go with the flow and to be open to pleasant surprises, without getting stuck when things inevitably don’t go as planned.

…it is important to go with the flow and to be open to pleasant surprises, without getting stuck when things inevitably don’t go as planned.

Because of this philosophy, the planning itself is quite simple – I often start by looking for animal parks in my area, noting down the most interesting sounding animals, and then prioritizing zoos based on their overall potential.

If the area doesn’t have much to offer, or if I am about to travel for a holiday, I extend or move the search radius, rinse and repeat.

When I find interesting animals, I will research their seasonal behaviors, food preferences, daily routines, and so on, keeping in mind that this effort gives me an extra chance of getting better results. Ultimately, though, if it’s not meant to be then it’s not meant to be. I believe expectation management is crucially important when recording animals; patience will also get you a long way. Whenever I go to record in an animal park, I enter the park as early as possible and often don’t leave until after closing hours for multiple days in a row.

Since you used the CMPA Avisoft mic on Metamorphosis, do you think it’s useful for recording beyond instruments/animals? Are there any special considerations when using it?

MC: I started using Avisoft’s CMPA16 for the second volume of Animal Hyperrealism in conjunction with a 384KHz soundcard. The most important thing to know about this microphone is that it cannot be considered a replacement for a Sanken CO-100K since the signal it provides below 1KHz is unusable – by design (or limitation of). It features tons of transient-based self-noise in this spectral region and its sensitivity to this range is very low, so the signal below 500 Hz is often not represented at all, regardless of its loudness.

This is, of course, a very big limitation. At the same time, this also makes the microphone is quite indifferent to strong wind conditions and thumps.

…this microphone is that it cannot be considered a replacement for a Sanken CO-100K…

One last important limitation I discovered at my own cost is that the CMPA has a relatively high current draw (10 mA) and can cause phantom power supply units to either shut down, overheat, or break over the course of long recording sessions if these cannot provide such current. If you intend to buy this microphone, you will want to check your recorder’s specs before you pull the trigger on the purchase!

In terms of applications, using it on animals helps me gain an additional level of perceived proximity. To me, this mic seems particularly good at preserving the dynamic range of smaller high-frequency transients like the warble of a bird or the chirping of crickets.

…you will want to check your recorder’s specs before you pull the trigger on the purchase!

The best use I can think of though would be on electrical sources, like welders or circuit breakers. This microphone, coupled with a 384KHz recorder, would likely deliver a solid image up to 192KHz without the usual dip near the Nyquist frequency, which would enable sound designers to slow down the signal to unprecedented levels.
I have been invested in ultrasonic sound recording for a long time, though I am not sure whether this microphone is an objectively good investment for field recording since it requires a lot of post-production work to squeeze the juice out of it and can only be used to its full potential when coupled with a 384KHz recorder. Yet, I have grown to like the options it gives me, which my other mics can’t.

The trailer for Animal Hyperrealism Vol 2

Do you always work with a handler? Or have you honed your Dr. Doolittle skills?

MC: Good question! Over time I think I have come to understand the behavior of certain animals and can – now more or less – tell if one is going to make a sound or not. This, though, only applies to species I have met multiple times like donkeys, birds, horses, farm and domestic animals in general, and perhaps monkeys to an extent.

Any time I have the chance to record an animal I have not recorded before, I will consult with the person that spends the most time with that animal at that given location. The first thing I always ask is whether the animal could be scared of my microphones or myself. At times, I have had to remove my windjammer and blimp to ensure an animal wouldn’t be spooked by its appearance and size; though the first time I recorded lions for the first volume of the collection, I sent my blimp to the trainer before my visit, which allowed him to get the animals used to its shape before I showed up with it.

… I sent my blimp to the trainer before my visit, which allowed him to get the animals used to its shape before I showed up with it.

If the animal is comfortable with my presence, I will ask about how long I could spend recording it before it may get stressed. When I am visiting a park and no keeper is around, my standard approach is to spend only a few minutes at a time with an animal and then move on. I’ll come back after at least two hours; this is good for giving the animal a break, and for myself, a chance to record a larger variety of vocalizations.

If the animal is comfortable with my presence, I will ask about how long I could spend recording it before it may get stressed.

There have been certain moments where, even with an animal I have never recorded before, some form of “conversation” has taken place naturally. I recall spending quite some time having some form of exchange with a monkey for this library, where I would make a squeaky sound and the monkey would squeak back to me in a calm and curious tone. Verbal agreements were probably made; I wouldn’t be able to tell you which ones though So we are far from a Doolittle situation :D.

With this library, have you learned any new tricks you’d like to share?

MC: Yes! Not really a groundbreaking trick but I was recommended a plugin at work called Unfilter made by Zynaptiq, which is quite good for spectral reconstruction.

After testing it on a few libraries originally recorded on tape, I started using it on Animal Hyperrealism whenever I would slow down a sample to less than 25% of its original speed, mainly for creating the cheats section.

I think this particular plugin works great in conjunction with high sample rate content recorded with ultrasonic mics.

The results really surprised me. I think this particular plugin works great in conjunction with high sample rate content recorded with ultrasonic mics. I will definitely be using more and more of it in the future to help me in the archaeological task of retrieving the greatest possible amount of clarity from my recordings.

Full disclosure, I have no relation to Zynaptiq and this is not an ad. I am just happy to have found this new tool for my sound design work.

Have there been more challenges since lockdown in organizing these trips?

MC: For this particular library, I haven’t had to organize many recording sessions but, based on the ones I did organize, I would say “yes and no.”

Yes, in the sense that a lot of animal parks have been temporarily closed to the public to limit the spreading of the pandemic. When this happens, generally, staff presence in the park is strongly limited and the employees present cannot tend to a single visitor given their duties as keepers. In these cases, the answer to my inquiry would often be negative. But in the few cases where it was positive, I ended up scouting the parks as the sole visitor.

In short, sessions have been harder to plan but much easier to carry out, since public presence in the animal parks has been shrinking in the last year. I believe this helped in keeping human noise down in the recordings, but it also resulted in more interesting reactions from animals like monkeys, which react to the first daily visitors in a more curious way.

Ash, this is your first collaboration on a library, how did you find it? Any particular difference from working in game audio?

Ash Read (AR): It was a different process to how I usually work, not having a creature concept or video or animation to work to and only my imagination. With the goal of creating a set of creatures with the rule of only using only source from Hyperrealism, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a nice change to the creative challenges I usually face! Especially with the delivery needing to be long vocalizations instead of the various vocal sets you need for a game delivery (grunts, pain, attack, etc.), it was a nice challenge to try to make long, evolving cries/howls/screams for each creature. I would happily do it again.

Can you share some tricks or philosophies you employed while working on the designed section of the library?

AR: I think the main philosophy I stand by is to try to keep your life as simple as possible. Get familiar with the source material available and don’t overcomplicate things with source selection and processing chains.

Get familiar with the source material available and don’t overcomplicate things with source selection and processing chains.

For creature design, I’m quite old-school with source being manipulated (or previewed) with time stretch, pitch shift, and reversing. For me, if you go too crazy with effects, you can fall down a rabbit hole quite quickly.

The parent chain I use 70% of the time is EQ, Brainworx Subfilter (if needed for a larger creature and on child tracks), an exciter to bring out all high-frequency content and a limiter.

With source selection, it’s a simple case of finding something that stands out to you and checking how crazy it can sound with the methods mentioned. Thanks to the source being captured in such high resolution, you can get some absolutely bonkers results with things as simple as time stretch.

Thanks to the source being captured in such high resolution, you can get some absolutely bonkers results with things as simple as time stretch.

Seeing as you are designing sounds for a living creature it makes sense to not process raw source too much; you just need to pick the right tones, notes, and textures that complement each other. If you’re working on something more ethereal and alien/space/ghostly then by all means go crazy with effects processing. Sometimes it is easy to get too many layers involved and it’s another case of stepping back and removing/decluttering the design into one coherent being.

Like all creative collaborations, it is also always important to get feedback and Mattia certainly helped steer the ship in the right direction! I’m happy with how the designed section turned out.

Last tip: if you get stuck or uninspired when creating creature sounds, just get weird with it! Make noises yourself, process source you wouldn’t think of checking previously and you’ll make some interesting discoveries.

The trailer for Animal Hyperrealism Vol 1

What inspired you to embrace UCS?

MC: To be honest, I thought this was overdue, yet I was originally dreading the task since I didn’t know how much time it would take to add this step to my library creation process. It turns out, it doesn’t take much time at all. In fact, not wanting to invest time in researching metadata editing, fearing this would take time, ended up costing me even more time.

For all my past libraries, I have been developing convoluted macro-based solutions which would, for example, copy the name of a file, paste the result in an external document, remove numbers, etc. and ultimately paste the result back into the “description” field of the file in my metadata editing tool.

In less than one day, all metadata was in place. I’m very happy to have made the move.

Long story short, after seeing a number of UCS tutorials from Tim Nielsen, I received a quick hands-on Soundminer class by Kai Paquin, who very generously offered to help. In less than one day, all metadata was in place. I’m very happy to have made the move. I will definitely keep using UCS in my future libraries (thanks Tim and Kai!).

How did the Ash Read collaboration come about?

MC: Good question! The collaboration emerged out of two thoughts I had in my mind a few months ago. The first one was that, since my libraries’ brand is my name and surname, I never really considered collaborations, feeling it would be weird to have a library released under my name featuring someone else’s work. Yet, I had a strong desire for collaboration since it is one of the things I enjoy the most in my full-time job in game development.

Secondly, my experience in creature sound design is limited. I have never really worked on a project that required me to really master this specific craft, hence I felt I could learn a lot if I could let go of having complete control over this section of the library by giving it to someone I could trust to do a much better job than me.
While I was having these thoughts, I realized that Ash was the perfect candidate for this; I loved his work on Returnal. We were somehow already virtually connected and he was keen to collaborate!

… it was Ash who helped me let go of the worry of releasing a library with another artist’s contribution under my name.

I broke the ice but it was Ash who helped me let go of the worry of releasing a library with another artist’s contribution under my name. Looking back, I can see how my previous outlook on this was flawed and would have, sooner or later, led to a stagnation of my sound design skills and my libraries’ potential.

I am also thankful to Ash for sharing some of the sessions he created with me so I could understand his process and learn from someone a lot stronger than me on creature sound design. I’m very happy with every aspect of the outcome of this collaboration!

Can we look forward to another volume of Animal Hyperrealism? What else is next?

MC: Yes, but not any time within the next two years, I would say. Whenever that will happen, I would love to travel a lot more than I did for the past libraries, but the present doesn’t seem like the best time to do so.

I have already recorded a lot of material for a different library, though I am not sure yet where this will lead. I am deliberately trying to take it very slowly since I have just been through what I call “the emotional roller coaster of field recording.” (Please see the graph for more info):

Jokes aside, I already have a list of animals I want to record and places I would love to visit, but for now, I shall let my “animals recordist batteries” recharge. I will go back to animal recording when I will feel re-energized and anxious to do more!

With Animal Hyperrealism Vol III, you have also released a new project called “A Sound Planet.” Can you tell us what it is about and what your role is?

MC: Of course! Over the years, I had the chance to collaborate with great artists who created covers for my libraries. With this library, I wanted an excuse to get more than just a cover for the occasion. I thought it would be cool to produce a collection of drawings with animals and field recording themes mixed in a fun way.

I thought it would be cool to produce a collection of drawings with animals and field recording themes mixed in a fun way.

I also wanted this project to be about animal welfare, so I could give something back to the protagonists of my libraries, in a way. This led to a collection of 3 shirts designed by Elisa Vallardi under a brand we decided to call A Sound Planet.

For each sale made by A Sound Planet, 80% of the profits go to animal welfare charities, while the remaining 20% goes to Elisa, the artist, so she can make more of this wonderful art :)

For each sale made by A Sound Planet, 80% of the profits go to animal welfare charities, while the remaining 20% goes to Elisa, the artist…

My role for this project has been to fund the artist and provide some rough ideas of what the drawings could portray, but that’s it :D…I cannot take any credit for the art you see on the website, that is all Elisa’s work!

If you are interested in supporting A Sound Planet, please visit our small shop!

A big thanks to Mattia Cellotto and Ash Read for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the Animal Hyperrealism collections, and to Tim Atkins for the interview!

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