The first BOOM Library plug-in – An interview with Axel Rohrbach talking about TURBINE.
After four years of intensive work and research, we have succeeded in bringing our first BOOM Library plug-in on the market. Axel Rohrbach, who was significantly involved in the development process, gives us some exclusive insights into the history of TURBINE.
Enjoy reading the interview and find out why TURBINE is an exceptional plug-in that revolutionizes the way we do sound design.
How did the idea for this new plug-in come about?
The idea to have the possibility to interactively control a turbine sound actually came up some years ago. Turbine sounds in general can be used on several applications. The most obvious is to do sound for turbines, fans, airplanes etc. but also and especially for science fiction spaceship engines, robots or other fictional machinery. I’ve always had trouble finding enough material for that in the libraries I own.
What was the development process like?
First of all I tried several things without a lot of success. It was mostly analyzing the sound and ways to reproduce them. However at a certain point Ramón joined the team and he actually did a lot of rather scientific, technical and physical research to create a Max MSP prototype. During this time we searched for a lot of physical data of how specific turbines are exactly built and Jan, the programmer joined the process to translate the Max MSP prototype into a usable VST / AAX / AU plug-in.
What does it mean for the BOOM Library to launch a new product type on the market?
It has been a long and hard road to go, but also a very interesting one. It was the first time we had to think about compatibility, user interfaces that make sense and still looks nice. We had to think about ways to not only being able to control the sound within the plug-in, but of course also to be able to record these input data so that flight paths, thrust levels and all sorts of other parameters can be reproduced in a DAW.
What’s so special about Turbine?
For me the special thing is that the Turbine is really based on real world engines. So we did not try to “simply” create imaginary Turbine sounds, but to recreate the sound of specific turbojet engines by using physical values of the actual real world thing. Also of course it is special to be able to “perform” or “play” a Turbine sound, without the need of editing audio material, trying to create loops or a different pitch envelope.
What range of sounds can the Turbine produce?
In fact the more we use it the more use cases we find. Before we did the trailer for the Turbine we focused mostly on airplane sounds. But for the trailer we wanted to check how easy it is to translate these into other genres or abstract acoustic pictures. For example creating a sound for the futuristic car in the video. It would have been hard to find the right sources in the right speed and movement I envisioned. Using the Turbine plug-in it took me less than one hour to combine the four Turbine plug-ins into what I had in mind. There are several other use cases we came across by chance, for example creating the sound of a siren. The servo in the trailer of the Turbine was just another thing I stumbled upon by chance. It took me 2 minutes to do the sound for that using the Turbine, because following the movement is so super easy.
What do I need as a sound designer to work with this product?
You need a DAW like Pro Tools, Reaper, Cubase, Logic, Nuendo etc. + an iLok 2nd generation (or newer). Then you will need to install the Turbine and you are ready to go.
What is the advantage over “conventional” sound design?
The major thing is that you can control diverse Turbine sounds in real-time instead of looking for suitable audio material that already has the right movement baked in or at least is similar to what you need. Of course the other thing is, that you can create a turbine startup or the sound of a passing rocket to a picture or simply to your taste, but then still be able to alter and tweak all sort of parameters from there.
How was it like to design turbine presets for weeks? 😉
At the very beginning it was very convenient, because Jan provided a running version of the plug-in at very early stages. It was cool to finally be able to listen to what we had in mind for a long time and to comb the internet or contact turbine experts or manufactures to collect all the data needed to create the presets. But at some point, especially with the military machines, it was extremely hard to find data at all which was rather frustrating. Also somewhere in between I was getting a bit aggressive. I basically listened and shaped noise one full year long and when I went out of the studio for some fresh air or to go home, there were planes flying by – so I wasn’t even able to take a break outdoors… But in the end when the product finally started into the final stages and after showing it around to some friends it pushed a lot and all of a sudden I had a lot of fun again. During the time of development all three of us, Ramón, Jan and me had these up and downs working on this project. But I really am extremely glad everyone pushed through and I am proud that we were able to create such a product.
Thank you so much for those insights Axel!
Check out the tutorials to learn how to work with TURBINE:
