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How to make thin red line lasersounds? 

Justin: 
I'm working on a game (Alien Resurrection) that requires a looping laser sound. This is for a weapon that fires a beam that is continuous until the gun runs out of ammo. The graphic looks like a thin red line (say from a laser pen) so its actually not a 'big' sound. However its a very unique one. 

The closest example to what I can imagine the sound should be is like the laser in the Bond film that starts cutting the table as he lies tied to it. But this is a bit of an old sound and the game is set in a futuristic sci-fi environment so I'm not keen for this sound. 

The sound will have to play at a sample rate of 22K and will be no longer than a 0.5 second file. 

Have anyone created anything similiar that might point me in the right direction ? 


Mark G. Reis: 
I find that Metasynth is ideal for sounds of this sort. Don't worry about trying to create a 5 second sound. The audio generated by Metasynth tends to loop very easily. 
Edited excepts from http://www.egroups.com/list/sound_design Message thread: Laser sound  

MetaSynth is a Mac-only sound design program which offers the capability of transforming any picture into a sound, or any sound into a picture, and permits manipulation of audio elements entirely in the graphic domain, manipulating MIDI files, sound and music as images in any Mac based paint or graphics application. The program allows the user to paint with sound, or compose with color and light.  

MetaSynth generated sounds and MIDI music samples are heard daily on MTV commercials, on dozens of electronic, dance and underground CDs, and in new computer game soundtracks. http://www.metasynth.com/ 

MetaSynth was used in Matrix:
"Another program that I used was MetaSynth, and that really defined the sound quality of a lot of things, giving them an extremely clean and distinct timbre while doing digital processing. I used it on anything that had to feel
digital, not wanting to get grainy in an ugly way.."
http://www.prostudio.com/studiosound/june99/post_matrix.html



Read also Sound Design of Star Wars www.filmsound.org/starwars 


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