PLANETARIUM SOUNDSCAPE: Supernova
Featuring title track, “Light of a Thousand Days”
A high-impact retro-planetarium audio experience. This sonic supernova is a sound design experiment in outer space ambience with all-new visualizations and a special bonus space music overture at the end.
Featuring the Hollow Sun Advanced Noise Generator, the Ensoniq ESQ1, Hydrasynth Deluxe, and 4-channel cues matrixed into the audio mix for surround systems such as Dolby Atmos or the Involve Audio Surround Master.
About this video
(Plays entire video)
Jump to Supernova Soundscape
A Listener’s Guide:
At the boundary of music and sound design exists a zone of…uncertainty..
The traditional approach was to throw together some existing recordings of sound effects and call it a day.
But in the 1970s, pioneers like Suzanne Ciani demonstrated that vast, imaginative soundscapes could be created from the ground up, using synthesizers to generate the raw elements, and playing the recording studio like an instrument.
The cosmic soundscape you’re about to hear was generated directly from circuit-to-tape and waveform-to-workstation.
It never existed as audio until it strikes your eardrums after being rendered by speakers or headphones.
No microphones were used, and modern equipment was only sparsely employed to manipulate raw waveforms Musique Concrète-style.
A new kind of noise
In the spirit of analog 1970s planetariums, this sketch depicts the death and afterlife of a massive star, featuring a sound you may never have heard before:
–The highly detailed bone-rattling explosion is realized with the Advanced Noise Generator, built by the world’s leading KSP developer Mario Krušelj and the late Stephen Howell, a legendary figure in the world of sound design.
No demos of the Advanced Noise Generator seem to exist on YouTube, but it allows programming of tremendous detail of white noise sources. It is employed both in the cataclysmic stellar explosion and the cosmic winds heard throughout the composition.
A timeline at the bottom of the screen indicates all the “story points”. The astrophysical information is accurate both today, and relative to what was known in the 1970s.
Watch until the end of the video to hear a special “no talking” album version of the planetarium music that underscored the introduction.
3D Sound
If you have an “ambience head” (a brain that is particularly responsive to spatial cues), you may also enjoy closing your eyes and listening to this sonic sketch through headphones or a home theater surround system. 4-channel cues have been matrixed into the audio mix.
If that last statement makes no sense, but you are intrigued, try it anyhow. You may discover a new area of stereo enjoyment.
If that last statement makes no sense (but you are intrigued), try it anyhow.
You may discover a new and satisfying area of sonic enjoyment.
No AI, loops, or “production libraries”
This video, the audio elements, and the space music soundtrack were all constructed from the ground up as an original creation. No templates or AI were employed.
No stock footage was used except for some brief background clips and a MOGRT from Pixabay, which were used as a base to animate over.
The astronomical reference was based on NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory imagery, particularly the “pulsar wind” sequence.
The only sound not created specifically for this video was a brief snippet of the Outer Limits Control Tone, which seemed particularly salient to the sequence.
The visual effects were generated using Cinema 4D, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere. The multitrack studio was Reaper digital audio workstation.
Instruments used:
- Alesis Fusion
- ASM Hydrasynth Deluxe
- Behringer Neutron
- Ensoniq ESQ1
- Ensoniq SQ-80