Electronic Arts looks to DPA miniatures for Battlefield 3

Games developer Electronic Arts (EA) has utilised DPA’s 4061 miniature omnidirectional microphones for foreign dialogue recordings on its Battlefield 3 title.

“Part of our job consists of taking over and overseeing the foreign dialogue recordings for most of the games published by EA,” explained Fernando San Nicolas Serrano, from EA’s Central Development Services in Madrid. “We’ve recently been using the DPA 4061 on dialogue recordings for Battlefield 3 in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Russian and Japanese.

“The DPA 4061 was our first choice for the motion capture scenes dubbing, recreating as much as possible what was done on the mocap stage in the original version, with the 4061 mounted on the talent’s forehead. We were striving to improve the quality of the actors’ performances by allowing them to move more freely, instead of the accepted convention of staying perfectly still, at a certain fixed distance away from the microphone.”

Serrano and his team were also impressed with the overall sound quality and convenience of the 4061s, citing them as a key solution in overcoming some of the major challenges faced throughout the recording process.

“We are always looking for a compromise between a natural and smooth sound quality while minimizing voice projection inconsistencies, noticeable room reflections and avoiding any excessive proximity effect,” he explained. “These are some of the endemic issues we usually find in the pursuit of sound consistency when working with as many different languages and recording studios as we faced on Battlefield 3. The DPA 4061 met these challenges admirably.”