# 61: David Thiel Audio Party **Source:** Pinball Party Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2024-01-31 **Duration:** 66m 21s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://pinballparty.podbean.com/e/david-thiel-audio-party/ --- ## Analysis David Thiel, a legendary pinball sound designer, discusses his extensive career spanning video games, Microsoft Research, and nearly 30 pinball machines since 2006. He covers audio system evolution, the constraints of pinball audio hardware across manufacturers (particularly Stern vs. Jersey Jack Pinball), technical challenges in EQing and speaker design, and his creative philosophy for composing under licensing restrictions. Thiel reveals emotional investment in his work, particularly Star Trek, and how manufacturer support and hardware capabilities fundamentally shape audio quality. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] David Thiel's first video game audio work was Reactor in 1981 for Tim Skelly, writing six guitar riffs using a synthesized nasty guitar and bass drum sound. — _David Thiel directly stating his earliest work; confirmed by later discovery at Pinball Expo that Punk used one of his Reactor riffs_ - [HIGH] When Thiel restarted pinball work in 2006, Stern had a monopoly on pinball audio work—'they were the only pinball client that you could have.' — _David Thiel's direct statement about market conditions when he re-entered pinball_ - [HIGH] Approximately 60-75% of a Stern SAM system's ROM image is dedicated to sound because of CPU and memory constraints, with only mono audio, compressed. — _David Thiel explaining technical architecture of Stern SAM systems_ - [HIGH] Jersey Jack Pinball provides dramatically more audio freedom and resources compared to Stern ('you get the world is your oyster'). — _David Thiel's direct comparison of Jersey Jack Pinball vs. Stern capabilities_ - [HIGH] Stern's AC/DC (Premium) represented a turning point in speaker design quality, prompted by customer complaints about poor sound, leading to improvements in speaker mounting. — _David Thiel recounting Lyman calling him to address AC/DC audio issues and subsequent cabinet redesign_ - [HIGH] Almost all Williams pinball games, even DCS-era machines, were mono because Williams didn't believe stereo was worth the effort and data requirements. — _David Thiel's historical observation about Williams manufacturing philosophy_ - [HIGH] Thiel has worked on approximately 30 pinball machines since 2006. — _David Thiel stating 'almost 30 some machines I've done since 2016' (likely meant since 2006 based on context)_ - [HIGH] Stern's 12-inch Avatar speaker upgrade was a poor decision because Stern bought guitar speakers without consulting audio experts and didn't upgrade the 7-watt amplifier. — _David Thiel recounting the Avatar speaker upgrade experience and its technical shortcomings_ ### Notable Quotes > "I do what I call spade work, right. I get a contract, I know it's going to be this theme and that means I'm going to do some research because maybe I know how to write that kind of orchestral stuff or that kind of daft punk stuff or that kind of whatever thing I need to cover." > — **David Thiel**, early conversation > _Reveals his deliberate research and preparation methodology for audio composition, showing he invests time before formal development starts_ > "Particularly Star Trek. It's a knife in my heart. Oh, shit. Okay. So good to know." > — **David Thiel**, mid-conversation > _Demonstrates deep emotional investment in his work, especially after discussing replacing his Star Trek music with licensed versions_ > "Every one of these things, I work on them for typically like a year, you know, and I get very involved emotionally with these because I'm trying to produce an emotional response and so you can't be casual." > — **David Thiel**, mid-conversation > _Explains his approach to composition and emotional engagement with each project_ > "You can't be creative if you're spending half your time with the mechanics of actually getting it into the computer." > — **David Thiel**, early-mid conversation > _Explains why he prioritizes Cakewalk despite newer DAWs available_ > "I stopped being passive about the sound systems. And as soon as I get a new client like Jersey Jack Pinball or whoever, when I get the new system in my studio, I don't make any sound for it. I start throwing pink noise at it and measuring the response." > — **David Thiel**, late-mid conversation > _Reveals his proactive approach to hardware evaluation and system optimization after the Avatar speaker debacle_ > "If you try to do anything that's stereo for a pin and actually, you know, make it noticeable in the chaos—arcade, which is pinball audio—it has to be slammed hard left and hard right. Right. No subtle mixing." > — **David Thiel**, late conversation > _Explains technical constraints of stereo audio in pinball machines and the design philosophy required_ > "The only thing that matters is what comes out of the speaker." > — **David Thiel**, mid conversation > _Core principle of his audio philosophy—judging by actual output rather than technical specs_ > "It's a pure, well, it's both a CPU and a memory issue...60 to, you know, 75% of the bits on a SAM system is audio, mono, it's compressed." > — **David Thiel**, mid-late conversation > _Technical explanation of why Stern's audio quality is constrained by hardware architecture_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | David Thiel | person | Legendary pinball sound designer with 40+ year career spanning video games (Qbert, Reactor), Microsoft Research (interactive audio), and ~30 Stern and Jersey Jack Pinball titles since 2006 | | Jason | person | Host of Pinball Party Podcast, mentioned as host of 'Tee'd Off' episode and former content creator for Straight Down the Middle | | Stern Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer; had audio monopoly in 2006; subject of extensive technical discussion regarding speaker design, CPU/memory constraints, and audio system evolution | | Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Premium pinball manufacturer compared favorably to Stern for audio capabilities and freedom; described as providing superior resources and flexibility for sound design | | Tim Skelly | person | Video game designer for whom Thiel created audio for Reactor (1981); later went to Microsoft Research in 1992 | | Chris Granner | person | Gave seminar at Pinball Expo where Thiel discovered his Reactor riffs were reused in Punk (1985) | | John Borg | person | Stern Pinball designer; collaborated with Thiel on multiple games including Iron Man; actively involved in sound direction and licensing negotiations | | Steve Ritchie | person | Designer with strong imprint on sound and programming; collaborated with Thiel on Star Trek; communicated clear design intent regarding music licensing | | Ramin Djawadi | person | Composer of Iron Man film score; music licensed and used in Iron Man pinball machine | | Pat Lawlor | person | Worked with Thiel on redesigning Jersey Jack Pinball audio system; contributed to technical improvements in speaker/audio design | | Lyman | person | Stern Pinball representative who contacted Thiel about AC/DC (Premium) audio quality issues | | Alvin Gottlieb | company | Early video game and pinball company where Thiel worked as sound designer in early 1980s; owned video division; later referenced in context of hex entry audio composition | | Incredible Technologies | company | Video game company founded by Thiel and others; known for Golden Tee Golf; Thiel left when Tim Skelly joined Microsoft in 1992 | | Microsoft Research | company | Employer of Thiel for seven years (1993 onward); worked on interactive audio and personified user interfaces; influenced his research methodology | | Daft Punk | person/group | Electronic music group; composed most or all of the music for Tron Legacy pinball machine | | Reactor | game | 1981 video game by Tim Skelly; Thiel's first audio work, creating six synthesized guitar riffs and bass drum sounds; riffs later reused in Punk (1985) | | Qbert | game | Video game for which Thiel created original sound assets; also worked on Qbert's Quest pinball machine for John Trudeau | | Pirates of the Caribbean | game | Stern Pinball title worked on by Thiel; mentioned in list of games since 2006 | | Iron Man | game | Stern Pinball machine featuring licensed music by Ramin Djawadi; Thiel initially underestimated the score but later appreciated its quality; worked with John Borg on track selection | | Tron Legacy | game | Stern Pinball machine; features Daft Punk music; cited by Thiel as example of licensed music game | | Star Trek | game | Stern Pinball machine; designed by Steve Ritchie based on Star Trek reboot films; Thiel composed original Star Trek-themed music rather than licensing film score; deeply emotionally significant to him as a lifelong Trekkie | | Wizard of Oz | game | Jersey Jack Pinball title; early example of JJP's audio system; mentioned as first system that was difficult to get good frequency response from | | The Hobbit | game | Jersey Jack Pinball Standard Edition; early game using early JJP audio system; redesigned later with Pat Lawlor | | Cakewalk | product | DOS-based digital audio workstation (DAW) from early 1990s; Thiel's primary composition tool for 17+ years; purchased by Gibson, later became free, now reverting to paid model | | Flippino Pinball | company | Sponsor of Pinball Party Podcast; pinball retail/trading business | ### Topics - **Primary:** Audio system architecture and hardware constraints, Speaker design and physical installation in pinball cabinets, Comparison of audio capabilities: Stern vs. Jersey Jack Pinball, Music composition methodology and creative process, Licensed music vs. original composition in pinball games, Stereo vs. mono audio in pinball machines - **Secondary:** Digital audio workstations (DAWs) and production tools, Career history spanning video games, Microsoft Research, and pinball ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.72) — Thiel is generally reflective and positive about his career, expressing pride in his work and appreciation for technical improvements. However, there is clear frustration about past hardware limitations (early Stern systems, Avatar speaker debacle) and emotional pain regarding music replacement (Star Trek). The overall tone is knowledgeable, candid, and appreciative of manufacturer evolution. ### Signals - **[technology_signal]** Jersey Jack Pinball uses superior audio hardware architecture compared to Stern, with significantly more ROM space (not constrained to 60-75% audio like SAM), enabling higher fidelity and creative freedom. (confidence: high) — David Thiel: 'You go to Jersey Jack Pinball and you get the world is your oyster' and technical explanation of SAM system constraints - **[design_innovation]** After AC/DC (Premium) quality issues, Thiel adopted proactive pink noise testing and measurement of audio system response before composing, becoming active rather than passive about hardware optimization. (confidence: high) — Thiel explaining his methodology change: 'I stopped being passive about the sound systems. And as soon as I get a new client like Jersey Jack Pinball or whoever, when I get the new system in my studio, I don't make any sound for it. I start throwing pink noise at it' - **[product_concern]** Stern's pre-AC/DC cabinet speaker mounting through a half-inch to three-quarter inch curved slot severely degraded audio quality. Thiel recommended cutting a circular hole with router/jigsaw to improve sound. (confidence: high) — Thiel: 'It's mounted obviously on the inside of the cabinet, but it's pointed through a half inch curved slot—three quarter inch slot...So I first went ballistic on this. I said, Take a router, take a jigsaw, cut a circular hole.' - **[product_concern]** Stern's purchase of 12-inch Avatar speakers without audio expert consultation resulted in guitar speakers rather than bass speakers, underpowered by 7-watt amplifier, degrading audio quality. (confidence: high) — Thiel: 'They didn't ask any audio guys about this 12-inch speaker. They just bought a thousand of them, right? And they were guitar speakers...The little dinky 7-watt amplifier up in the backbox trying to drive this 12-inch cone. It was not good.' - **[manufacturing_signal]** Stern's audio capabilities improved significantly from pre-AC/DC era (mono, poor speaker mounting) through AC/DC (Premium) redesign (circular speaker hole, improved hardware) through modern era. (confidence: high) — Thiel's chronological narrative of improvements from Tron/Iron Man era through AC/DC and beyond - **[design_philosophy]** Pinball stereo audio requires extreme panning (80-20 hard left/right) and broad gestures due to player proximity (5 feet from speakers 16 inches apart); subtle mixing is ineffective. (confidence: high) — Thiel: 'If you try to do anything that's stereo for a pin and actually, you know, make it noticeable in the chaos—arcade, which is pinball audio—it has to be slammed hard left and hard right. No subtle mixing.' - **[historical_signal]** Almost all Williams pinball games, even DCS-era machines, were mono because Williams didn't believe stereo was worth the effort and doubled data/bandwidth requirements. (confidence: high) — Thiel: 'Stereo is a hard sell. Almost all the Williams games, even the DCS ones were mono. Because while they had two speakers in the backbox, they just didn't believe that the effect was worth the effort.' - **[business_signal]** In 2006 when Thiel re-entered pinball, Stern had exclusive monopoly on pinball audio work; no other manufacturers provided audio work opportunities. (confidence: high) — Thiel: 'When I restarted in 2006, they had a monopoly, right? I mean, they were the only pinball client that you could have.' - **[personnel_signal]** Designer involvement in audio decisions varies significantly; John Borg and Steve Ritchie actively shaped sound direction and licensing negotiations, while other designers are less involved. (confidence: high) — Thiel: 'When you work with Steve Ritchie, he has he puts a stronger imprint on the sound and the programming than a lot of game designers do. Some game designers do their job, right...Steve is not one of those.' - **[design_innovation]** Thiel learned to use aliasing artifacts and synthesized distortion as intentional audio components rather than flaws, particularly in Qbert sound design for early low-sample-rate systems. (confidence: high) — Thiel: 'I used to use the aliasing as a component of the effect that I was trying to get because I couldn't get rid of it...What would be considered, you know, nasty distortion somewhere else? No, that's part of the Qbert sound.' - **[content_signal]** Pinball Party Podcast features deep-dive interviews with industry experts on specific topics (e.g., audio design); Jason is host and has background with Straight Down the Middle content creation. (confidence: high) — Episode titled 'David Thiel Audio Party' with host Jason noting 'for fans of Straight Down the Middle: a pinball show, you know that audio is near and dear to my heart' --- ## Transcript Welcome to another episode of the Pinball Party Podcast. My name is Jason, your host, and today we have a fantastic conversation with David Thiel or Thiel about all things audio that I could remember to ask him and yeah, let's go. Figure it out. For fans of the show, you know that audio is near and dear to my heart, so enjoy as As we have an uninterrupted chat with one of the best sound designers in pinball. We're going to talk about everything from his favorite games that he's worked on, some stuff he is working on, details about EQing pinball machine audio, how the speakers are evolving over the years, which pinball company has the best audio stuff to work with, the best technology, what has the worst, how it used to be worse than it is now, and all sorts of other little details. Before we get to that, let me thank our favorite sponsor, Flippino Pinball. When I buy my pinball, shit I buy from Flippino. From Topper, Sharp, Blaze, Chameleons, I've got it figured out. Flippino out, figured out. When I take a pinball, I think Flippino out. Flippino out, figured out. When I buy, buy, buy, I buy from Flippino. Buy, buy, buy. You can buy, buy, buy games, trade in games, get all the accessories you need, and work with people who are actually great to work with. Subtitles by the Amara.org community I'm curious, when do you start with a company in a game? Is it Stern comes to you and says, hey, we have a license for XYZ or JJP says, hey, we're thinking of making a game next year. You know, you join a team and you don't know what the game is. When are you approached? Everyone is like a snowflake and I'll say this about everything. There's never any generalities other than I do work and I get paid sometimes. Well, that's nice. Because it's always different. Sometimes, you know, I get contacted before they've started and that's not a bad thing. I mean, I can't seriously do the work that I want to do till I have a game and I'm flipping it. But in recent times, I've worked on games. Well, I've worked on a game now for a year, and I only started flipping it in December. You know, and I had worked on it for 10 months prior to that. Now that's suboptimal at best. Because, you know, I do what I call spade work, right? I get a contract, I know it's going to be this theme and that means I'm going to do some research because maybe I know how to write that kind of orchestral stuff or that kind of daft punk stuff or that kind of whatever thing I need to cover. And maybe it's mother's milk to me and I've been doing it all my life or maybe I just have to figure out how to do it. So I use that time between the time I start the project and get a first payment to do the research I'm going off the pin side history of your work. It could go back farther. I'm not sure how accurate all of this is, but it says that your first game that you officially worked on was Gottlieb's Punk in 1982. Is that right or was there one before that? Well, okay, that's that's slightly inaccurate. Okay. Um, what the punk thing I only found out about when I went to Expo a few years ago and sat through a Chris Granner seminar that he gave. And punk was really one of the very first music games. And when you press the start button on punk, it plays the tune one of the I wrote the six tunes that I wrote for reactor which was the very first video game I ever did. Okay. Like 1981 for Tim Skelly and I wrote six of these riffs. It was you know the technology was so marginal I figured out how to write a some code that sounded like a nasty guitar and a bass drum and then I wrote six riffs that played through that and people liked it and it was unique right in that time nobody was making Just like I was saying, I'm not making anything like that. I mean, you think about Pac-Man music, it sounds like mall organ, you know, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do do. And this thing was pretty gnarly and I thought that's what the audience wanted. I had a hard time understanding why 13-year-old sweaty boys were really embracing Pac-Man. I thought they really wanted dun dun dun dun dun. I think they wanted something that, you know, reached their, as their glands were coming online. I'm sitting in this seminar with Chris Granner and then he plays the beginning of this and it's playing my riff. I had no idea because I left Gottlieb about 83. Okay. And I think Rock is a little later. I would be surprised if Rock came out in 82 because I was still at the company then. Looking at the list, it was 85. Unrepresented The next point is Qbert's Quest, John Trudeau's pin. Right. Again, I gave a talk in Las Vegas at some retro gaming conference and while in Vegas, you go to the pinball museum and I played Qbert'sQuest for the first time. So this is 10 years after it was out and I discovered that they used all the Qbert sound This Week in Pinball, Game of Thrones uninticipated by Tom Cooke, Black Water, Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, Twippies Awards, transliteelectronic and did you do Qbert sound assets on the video game as well or just the pinball? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. That was that was my third game ever. Did you do all the audio on the original Qbert? Yeah. Wow, man. How far back does it go like video game wise, which I assume was before pinball for you? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. I was the sound. I was the sound guy for the Gottlieb video division. Okay- Carlos Rest in Port Alex in Moraine andiguite- mistake. I did it like the other days though. Max, I got harm as a red豆 aren't you? Max? I think so. Max. What's the last season probably? Max? That's the last season that we have. So volesterolalu. Max? correalles misterNves are famous ion. I am. Max is famousion. Max is famousion. Max is famous in technology and the But in any case, yeah, I was that guy. And so I do I do list Qbert's Quest on my CV because the great pinball sound guy Craig Byerwaltus who while I was doing video games he had already for two years three years before me had been doing pinball machines on pretty on the same exact hardware. Um your last name sorry to Clarity, is it feel or teal? In America, it's feel because we pronounce the diphthong in Germany where it comes from it's teal because right well So my ancestors half of my ancestors are teal so I've heard people pronounce your last name feel like I have My heritage is teal so I'm like I wonder if he because they're German. I am either way I you know I said I think it's context when I was I've been in Germany once and음댐댐댐댐댐댐댐댐댐댐댐 I was one of the founding fathers of Incredible Technologies, which is known for Golden Tee Golf and all that stuff. But Tim Skelly in 92 left us and went to Microsoft in Microsoft Research Group. And in 93 they needed an audio guy and so Tim hooked me up. So Microsoft relocated me from Chicago and I was in research. A very bizarre transition from video game sound guy to researcher. Researcher in sound or in like. Yeah, well, in interactive audio. I mean, you know, if you're in the position Microsoft research was at the time and you're trying to break new ground on computer human interfaces, you'd really like sound to be part of that. Yeah. I'm at that time, you couldn't go to university and hire somebody with PhD in audio computer audio, nobody, they just had nothing. They had nothing. So we and go ahead. And so they hired me. And over the seven years that I was there, I sort of learned, I mean, I have a bachelor's degree in in theater. I learned on feet on the ground, I learned how to be a I'm a researcher. In my time at Microsoft, I became a PhD without getting one because the activity of doing research is very specific. You write papers, you read papers, you know the literature, and research is more about your method than your results. You have a result, but you publish your method so other people can confirm your result or Officer Pinball, playapplauseойдщееaching действительно yet hold up Usans Next Worther Walkianacamp.com �ентиamo Valve Thingsales NatomiastTan지만ό No, you know, Microsoft is such a huge place. And it's like, research was a little bizarre cul-de-sac amidst all the different areas in Microsoft. And they would consult with us from time to time. I mean, unfortunately, our group was doing personified user interfaces. And that's a fancy, you know, we had, who back in 93, we had a fully articulated 3d character that you could talk to. Tanyo Klyce Klaue, silver lackpad, Tanyo P najbardziej construir, Raiffe instructor, I understand why that was such a horrible failure because the research showed people really would like to have a more personal interface with their computer than just pointing and clicking objects and stuff. The problem with that is they want them to be like they can have a conversation. The AI that was required to make Clippy work just didn't exist in that time. So you can put a face on it, but you're just feeding bone stupid dialogue boxes through the clip. So people's you know, oh they see the clip they have all these expectations. They're going to have a relationship, right? Yeah. No, not so much. So we yeah, we go to Well, this is 2006 where you come back in, or at least from what I'm looking at, a lot of Stern work here, Pirates of the Caribbean, Family Guy, Spider-Man, Wheel of Fortune. When I restarted in 2006, they had a monopoly, right? I mean, they were the only pinball client that you could have. And if you didn't work for Stern, you didn't do pinball. So when you get to, yeah, and these are all astern. So you get to Ironman, the one where I'm like, whoa. And then soon after that, well, a couple more, Tron Legacy, which, man, people love, including myself. And I'm trying to actually personally get to Star Trek because Star Trek for me, although growing up as a Trekkie and my parents raised me on Star Trek Next Generation and my first pinball machine that I bought was a Star Trek Pro and equally admired the sound effects and music. Hey guys, say hi to your larger friends. We wish you the best. If you have questions and ideas about Pinballonya, these kinds of questions will help though. Fun things No Whos parts? See if you happen to be familiar with this Spikey, right, or Any likes? This is the Spikey myself. I could go on a appointment with your master selecting a store called Thor. And do it with one leg, I prefer B cara to the other. From here, this is the simplified version if we change the game. Oh wow. That's an interesting one. No one thinks that, right? The game itself is called Star Trek Games. The idea is in the game you have to be able to get this robot to love and drive it model to those who owned the store or whatever the money, this thing. Sure. How are you allowed to kill them? Basically the rules of engagement are what you're asking about and they vary wildly in terms of what you're going to get from a particular license. You never know or when you're working with Steve Ritchie, he has he puts a stronger imprint on the The sound and the programming than a lot of game designers do. Some game designers do their job, right? Make a terrific playfield and kind of walk away. Steve is not one of those. So Steve looms large in the rules of engagement. And at that time, this Star Trek was based kind of on the on the reboots, right? And he, he told me right up front that he be that nuts about the music from the new ones and that they were not going to try to license any of it. Oh, so that actually is leads me to a question i had. we. The mode music your created Turn everything off. Yeah I and I was thrilled with that quite frankly because I wasn that nuts about it either And I a Trekkie from way back Okay I old enough that you know in 66 I was 16 And so I in high school And on Friday nights I think that was the original night Star Trek played They moved it around right Yeah But on Friday nights I was in the I a black band sitting on cold bleachers in front of the Calumet High School marching band playing for the football game What were you playing? Oh, let's see. At that time I was probably playing. I started on clarinet but I ended up playing trombone. Okay. It's a long story. In any case, it was like a knife through my heart because I wanted to see Star Trek and I'm out there freezing my ass off on the I'm a fan of the Bleachers trying to play, you know, these pep band things for a football game. I absolutely did not care about. So, but still I did have a chance to see some of the Star Trek episodes and then later on years later when it went into syndication, you know, I got to see The Wall and I was a huge huge Trekkie. Star Trek 1 came out, the movie, and that was dreadful. Then Wrath of Khan happened. Oh my god. I'm a very- And the music is to die for in Star Trek II. Oh yeah, in a lot of that series. I agree that the music in Star Trek, you know, the game you were talking about, that you worked on, didn't have a lot of, not as iconic as like Next Gen or Original Series or even, I mean Voyager, I mean even all those, like Cartoon Tschalke, I'm a fan of the movie stuff in there because although it is not as memorable, it's still kind of the game is based around that movie. So like even hearing some of it. So and I've done that and it is no knock against your work because I've switched back and forth when you get used to something. It gets old and you get to go to something else. How do you feel? Maybe it doesn't affect you at all. Maybe it does very deeply when people replace your music in a game. Oh, particularly Star Trek. It's a knife in my heart. Oh, shit. Okay. So Good to know. Well, and let me say, you know, you work, every one of these things, I work on them for typically like a year, you know, and I get very involved emotionally with these because I'm trying to produce an emotional response and so you can't be casual. You can't treat this like, well, I'll go out and work for six and a half hours today and then I did my job and I'll go back in and have dinner with the wife. It's a 24 hours, I wake up To be on air, but often at spies saying it all... Some, and others, when we show up and I can say to you... -"Thank you so much, thank you, thank you and bones and muscles and hordes of theater, predicting to the more important I'm a Star Trek composer, but then you also have, oh, I can't think of his name. Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh, he wrote for Twilight Zone. I can't think of it. He did the first Alien movie, whatever. There are great composers who have composed for Star Trek and taken across the movies and the TV show, the body of work is just, there's some of the best I'm a fan of the science fiction music and it's so functional and just sets up that world. So to be dumped into that position where I have the opportunity but the challenge to do something that works. It's Star Trek but it's also pinball music. That was a terrific challenge for me and I thought I was happy with the results. I thought yeah, some of these themes were really Star Trek-y. I'm a fan of the Star Trek theme. I had to take that apart to reproduce it. That's not a recording. That's a MIDI rendition of it. It's not something I licensed. I produced that whole cloth using my own orchestration and notes and stuff. And that's one of the oddest set of changes you'll ever run into. What is your DAW of choice? For me personally, for all those out there, digital audio workstation, basically the software one would use to create music. Do you have a, maybe you have to work with all of them? Are you a Pro Tools guy? No, no, no. Well, you know, when I, I got into using a keyboard with a computer as soon as I could because the stuff I did at Gottlieb, you know, I entered in as hex tables on paper. I wrote the notes on staff and then I translated that into hex and the computer played it. And I wanted to stop doing that as soon as possible because that really slows you down. You can't be creative if you're spending half your time with the mechanics of actually getting it into the computer. Yeah. So as soon as I could, I had some kind of sequencer where I could take my DX7 and play that into the computer and it could be recorded. And all those gestures and the note choices and lengths and all that stuff, I could just play it. It's a musical typewriter, right? Sure. And the only, one of the only things available at that time was a DOS program called Cakewalk. Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay? And that's where I started. I still use Cakewalk. It's, you know, there's so many different ways to skin a cat. Where I've heard some garage band recordings that are just out of this world. Yeah. Or people who have the best pro tools and like $10,000 in plugins and it sounds like shit. Yeah, yeah, it really doesn't matter. I mean, for cakewalk for me is I mean, I've been using it so many years, I've probably given them $2,000 and in upgrades, all the different versions, and then the program was dumped, because Gibson, the company that purchased them went out of business. And for a while they were unsupported. And now this company in Asia owns them. And so they're now new versions, but it's free. Right now cakewalk is stone free. Part 1aken I'm functional in Cubase, but I'm crippled, right? I find the Cubase interface very odd. Same. And I could learn it, but I would have to spend quite a while to get anywhere near the proficiency that I have with Cakewalk. So now Cakewalk is switching from a free program back into a paid thing, and I'm very happy about that because I'm gladly giving them I'm a few hundred dollars a year to keep working on it and adapting it and making it better. So yeah, Cakewalk is the answer and I do over 17 years I have acquired just a ridiculous number of synthesizers and presets and instruments. Every project every year I buy some more. You can imagine 17 years of accretion and I have a collection that's just, the challenge is to figure out what I've got and how to use it. Hey, everybody. Yeah. When you're looking for a compressor and you're like, well, I have 75 compressors. Which one am I going to use? Yeah. Right. I'll just use the 76. I pick one. I'm really into fab tools. I use the fab tools stuff because I know how to drive it. It's very good quality and I can go directly to what I need. Almost everything I do is limited through their limiter because I need everything loud all the time. Okay. So talking about a game like Star Trek worth. You're like do all the music yourself write it Going to a game like Tron which from what I can see or tell and hear Daft Punk kind of did most if not all the music that's in the game and at those times Are you more of just hey take the sound pieces? Put them in a package and deliver them to someone or when most most of the music I know you didn't work on Star Wars, but something like that where they just say you're using this music period What is your role at that point? You're kind of just putting it together Motivational I did a bunch of games with John Borg. John is a musician kind of guy. He was always in my face. He really always wanted stuff from whatever it was. There were tracks from Iron Man, from Ramin Djawadi, the guy who wrote the music for the movie. Initially, I had seen the movie. I'm going to jump back to Iron Man before I talk about Tron. Yeah, the Iron Man stuff was it was a time when I was completely wrong. And I'd seen the movie and I liked the movie a lot. And I didn't think that the score was necessarily worth, you know, $20 a game 30. I didn't think it was that memorable. Okay, that was my error. John didn't accept that. And so then I started getting a series of these emails where he gave me pointers to YouTube where they had a track from the soundtrack, right? One of those YouTube videos Fuck bass, 5-8, People don't know that a lot of people had their fingers all over the pirates music assets Yeah, yeah, but the stuff in That he wrote for Iron Man was really good And in fact was better pinball music than it was moving music and the reason that I hadn't reacted to it was because the music Was so powerful in the mix the mixtures and directors and stuff sent us to Jay Z atadtalk nimbleby Read more at Gaza.org I'm going to go through a list of 10 possible tracks and we'll negotiate. We'll just, you know, we, John would like this and I agree with him on these three, but I suggest maybe you want this one because this is more energetic and I cut this up into more pieces and make this work for more modes because you'll never get enough, even for those older games that aren't as mode rich, you never get enough to cover everything. So I wrote a few pieces for Iron Man that, that sound like grumming. Link to video item Home Сам I'm a little bit right and they are do not tell them that do they not care is there any of that in the communication Yeah, there's no I don't think they ever they don't go back. I Don't you know there's very little music review There's more call-out review because they want to make sure you're not doing something. You know that disgraces the license they're very very little music review ever in in all the machines that I've done the like almost 30 some machines I've done since 2016 Ble Monsieur or BEN THORNBURG DANUNUNUNUNUNUNUNUN olko The Licensor Thought that was too close right And you could argue you know That that's that's a musicologist Argument, and if you have to defend yourself in court, then you've got to pay for Your musicologist who argues with their musicologist and it's very expensive So you just never do that if anybody objects you say okay. I'll write something else Okay, that's interesting. So you get the music and I'm going to jump to like a Jersey Jack complete antithesis in a second about this, but let's say Sam Arrows, just stick with Iron Man. Sure, sure. You asked about the stereo. Let me say this is a pure, well, it's both a CPU and a memory issue. Yeah. Right? Because when you go to Sam from the previous system, you now have no sound hardware. If you have a constructional computer, it's best to save money. You might easily become a partiesite. In the SAM system, I think the ROM image, probably 60, 65% of a SAM system's ROM image is dedicated to sound. Hmm. Because, you know, you have a dot display, you don't really have images, and code doesn't take much space, and light shows don't take much space, they're all just tables. But at least 60 to, you know, 75% of the bits on a SAM system is audio, mono, it's compressed, Every mekr differentiation Yeah, you go to Jersey Jack and you get the world is your oyster and when you get right there, it's a question Kayla and I both had as people who aside from measuring, you know, rooms for home theaters of frequency response and using, you know, studio monitors. I'm a gentle guy. But, you know, usually for sound people, you're trying to measure flat ish. Are you when you have the ability? Are you once the sound is done? Are you EQing to a certain storyline connecticutrace Because that has a history right When I started back up in 2006 and I have a history of working in Knapp Well let me go all the way back When I worked on a super nominal system my very first video game I got this problem right I've got a $2, 5-inch paper cone speaker pointing down, you know, away from the player. Yeah. And a cheesy amplifier and something. I was creating the sound using an 8-bit processor and my sample rate was a function of how complicated the loop was of the algorithm that I'm running that's creating the bits that go to the speaker. So I'm down around 6 kilohertz, right? So a lot of my sounds folding back is aliasing. I mean it's nasty, nasty stuff. So at some point I insisted that I have the cabinet in my office. I'm a rock and roll guitar player. It doesn't really matter what I'm producing. The only thing that matters is what comes out of the speaker. Yeah. Okay. And so I used to use the aliasing as a component of the effect that I was trying to get because I couldn't get rid of it. So I would arbitrarily make the loop slower or try to produce higher frequencies and I'd get these weird artifacts and I'd say, okay, that's part of the sound. Sure. Yeah. Work with it. What would be considered, you know, nasty distortion somewhere else? No, that's part of the Qbert sound. Sorry. So we jump forward to 2006 and I'm working on this pinball system. And again, it's a mono system. I think they had two speakers, but they're driven by a mono thing. And then we have, you know, the subwoofer. Yeah, it's just ridiculous. Right. We have a an eight inch paper cone speaker. Is there even a crossover? Kinder Pepper Timed for me to drive my signal through the amplifier and speaker of the pin. Right? Because there was no audio input. You would have to hack the board. You'd have to add some op amps and solder and do crazy things. And so I just didn't do it. And so the optimization that you're suggesting the mastering, if you will, for pinball, I would sort of do. But my, my ability to change sounds and hear the results on I'm a stern game. We're severely limited because they didn't provide me with the ability to make local builds. So I couldn't change a table, change a sound, change an EQ, loaded onto the pin and just hear that. Sure. I couldn't do that. I had to send the sound back to Chicago. Then a programmer had to God, this is um.. G gallos That could take, depending on how much they were supporting me, two or three days. So that turnaround made those kinds of adjustments. If you make an adjustment on a waveform to make the music sound better, you may have forgotten what you did three days later when you finally get to hear it. So that was all very grim. Okay. Yeah, right. Then we get to ACDC. And up to that time, I'd been very passive. What how whatever I had in whatever Stern had and chose for drivers and amps and the way everything was just a given and I tried to do my best. Yep. And so my best was kind of crudely, you know, gee, this is too bright. There's no base here I can put some bait I can put up on You can kind of just do high pass filters and low pass and that's kind of it. Yeah, yeah. It was crude. It was very crude. And the story on ACDC is when everything's changed, everything changes for Stern customers because they complained to me. It's their first music game, right? Right. Well, no, that's not true. They did Rolling Stone but— First big one. Yeah, their first big one. It changes everything for Stern. And— I get a call from Lyman and says, David, you got to help us out. This really sounds awful. So I start looking into it. And the first thing I discover is that cabinet speaker. If you look at, well, you can't see under an ACDC game, but all the games, Tron and Iron Man and all the games before ACDC crawl underneath the cabinet and see how the speaker's mounted. It's mounted obviously on the inside of the cabinet, but it's pointed through a half inch curved slots in three ¼ You you use deluxe right? I mean I'm using some the Yamaha Nearfield monitor there the optimum grill is none You're just looking at the cone right? That yes any anything that you do you stick in front of the speaker is going to affect the sound to some degree and This mounting on the stern thing was ridiculous So I first went ballistic on this I said Take a router take a jigsaw cut a circular hole Pete Walsh, The And from that time on there's more to this story. I don't think I want to bore you I mean they also for the le bought a 12-inch speaker to you know, really have monster sound but still a mono at that point We're just getting better at mana Well, it's what yeah, but it's worse because they didn't ask any audio guys about this 12-inch speaker They just bought a thousand of them right and there were guitar speaker. Oh You know, just because it's bigger doesn't mean it's like a bass speaker. It just made midrange. And also, in order to move it, you need a lot more power. They didn't change the amplifier. So we have this little dink 7-watt amplifier up in the backbox trying to drive this 12-inch cone. It was not good. But that experience, from that point forward, I stopped being passive about the sound systems. And as soon as I get a new client like Jersey Jack or whoever I've got, when I get the new system in my studio, I don't make any sound for it. I start throwing a pink noise at it. Nice. And measuring the response and being skeptical about the grill that they've used and whatever it is. I discovered what the function is. You get some systems, you should see a flat line, right? You're an audio guy. You should see in reproduction a flat line that sort of traces off at the very high frequencies. But it should be mostly flat with not a lot of big peaks. I've had one recently. It looks like the Rocky Mountains. Right. How can you do well when you have two speakers pointed at you and right in front of it is a sloping piece of glass? It's like it's just going to bounce everywhere. Well, okay, then basically, you know, pinball audio, I mean, stereo, I mean, stereo is a hard sell. All the Williams, almost all the Williams games, even the DCS ones were mono. Because while they had two speakers in the backbox, they just didn't believe that the effect was worth the money. And DCS, the minute, you know, same for the SAM system, that's twice the data. Yeah. And it's not quite twice the processing, but it's certainly twice the bus bandwidth. And so the resources required to make stereo are, they just don't think it's worth it. And then it comes down to authoring. If you try to do anything that's stereo for a pin and actually, you know, make it noticeable in the chaos, which is pinball audio, it has to be slammed hard left and hard right. Right. No subtle mixing things are going to survive. Nobody's going to notice them. I mean, when I have targets on the left and I want to make that point, you know, you've hit targets on the left. Those things are about 80-20 panned left. Well, especially in your distance, your human distance, what, five feet from two speakers which are like spaced about like 16 inches. giants who are modifyingל qualifying Arsenal support for youngsters You have to design with broad gestures. No subtlety need apply because subtle reverb is not an issue on a pinball machine. Yeah, right. Because you can put beautiful reverb trails on things and then you play it on the machine. It's like, this sounds dry to me. Right. This, you know, in order to get the reverb effect, forget reverb, put on some really honking delay at 200 milliseconds, turn the feedback way up, and then you get sort of the reverb effect where somebody's in a space, you know, a cave or some kind of thing that you're trying to, some kind of spatial location that you're trying to convey. But the effect has to be extremely broad. And, you know, you learn this by doing it, right? I used to put and reverb trails both take up time and they screw up ducking. It's just so yeah, I just I very I don't use much reverb at all except for like music. It makes it kind of you know, more interesting and so that works but for one shots and putting a one shot in an acoustic space, forget it. So you get to Spike 2 and Jersey Jack where they're kind of like I mean Spike 2 I I think that's the first one. I think that's the first one. I think the first one is much more limited, but Jersey Jack stuff. I mean, the fidelity is clear to me. Are you not that this isn't company versus company, but are you more free to do what David Thiel wants to do in a Jersey Jack game because of all the, you know, just the opportunities you have to work with tech? Yeah. Well, I Jersey Jack set up a challenging environment for audio reproduction, because I'm a fan of the big screen. Okay. Sure. Think about it. We have a big screen and then we have a smaller backglass above the big screen. Where does the audio live? I don't even pay attention to where the speakers are on a lot of those games. It's about an inch and a half, inch and three quarters slot at the very top above the backglass. That's where the audio comes out. It still sounds like a million bucks compared to other games. Yeah, they've done a lot. It does. You know, the very first system of the Wizard of Oz and the Hobbit even. That was that was it was hard to get the kind of frequency response and reproduction you wanted out of that. When Pat Lawler showed up, we redesigned it. We tried something that I you know, I think there may be still using it. So I don't want to say anything about it. But it's, it's a trick, right? I mean, we have, they have a I think it's a Mr. So it's not, it's not, it's not, it wouldn't pass an audiophile test by any means, but it's much better because they used to have two, two inch, two two inch drivers on each side. That's like the Wizard of Oz system. I think they had a little Pizzo tweeter and two two inch drivers. And the thing you got to understand, unless you designed it just right, is that two two inch drivers does not equal a four This Week in Pinballelectronic Medien parlamentarianeden The most full range and the most bass and the most stereo and the most everything and it was an accident I think Was the highway system that he bought this off the off the shelf Chinese amplifier that has tone controls on it and stuff But it does have a legitimate low-pass filter on the cab on the cabinet speaker to be fair also TNA I'm not sure if you looked in there that one that Scott did cuz oh, yeah, you know same thing Anson Frye, Matt Runcar, You just say David Thiel, Alien is fucking awesome. So I was supposed to relay that information. Thank you. Thank you. The first time I played that game, aside from like the moody kind of whatever, yeah, the sound effects stood out and man, I played it in a big, actually a big warehouse, the worst place to play it audio wise, in a big warehouse where they were packaging candy for Amazon. Don't ask, it was just a weird place. And it sounded great and it was one I a fan of the game Iron Man where the sound actually stood out I was like whoa who did this Honestly why your name I know I reached out over Facebook Over time I wasn paying attention to sound designers on games or whatever because I was playing pinball and whatever It just didn occur to me until I started Every time I would notice a game that sounded really good or it just caught my attention Your name was like 99 percent of the time when it came up and was like We guess fuck I got talk to this guy because he keeps making all these great sound packages. Acape interactions agree welcome think I mean keep making games and he got alien the Ripley version just kinda came out and pulp fiction coming out soon wastin the Ripley version to give you too do any more with the pinball brothers? I was so thrilled. The Alien was such a troubled thing when Highway was in charge. At some point after we'd worked on this thing for 18 months, two years, and the American team that had done the assets worked really well together. We were proud of it. We were happy with it. We thought it was going to be great. We thought at one point that there might not ever be more than 25 of them ever because Highway was Rodrigo многоci batarello speciale Ikea追 duration is calculated from the check of pris deadline date, and date money represented compared with 14 and 15. Alysandra Wam.الotion communicate The ripley version specifically? No, no, this is the original version with the screen and the playfield. Sure, sure, sure. The highway version. Yeah. And as part of my payment for doing this project, which I didn't get that much, I did get one of the games. It's the only game I own is a highway version of Alien. Nice, that's a big game. I mean, like physically. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. I like it a lot. And then Pinball Brothers took all the assets and scrolled them away and went away and re-engineered all the electronics. Broke the big board into seven small boards. I mean, they did a major, major redo of it. And then got this factory in Italy to build them and so on and so on. So then they built a bunch of them and that was good. And I was thrilled, right? Because I wanted to see a lot of Alien. I consider Alien one of the better packages I've John Papadiuk, Black Water Podcast, Twippies Awards, transliteregon So I was still in contact with these guys. I was working on an hourly basis with them on the queen work. So when the Ripley thing finally became a reality, and you know, this is like six years in the making because Highway tried and tried and tried and could never get past Sigourney Weaver's female agent. Oh. Just thought, you know, these people confuse pinball machines with video games. Ah. So they just don't take it serious or they just brush it off? Well, okay. An alien video game, the development for that could be upwards of $20 million, right? Right. So asking what, and the recording session for that, you might bring Sigourney Weaver in, pay her just a ton of money, and she might spend a week or two in a studio just reading endless lines over and over and over again, right? Sure, yeah, yeah. That's not what pinball audio is. If we would have custom speech, which we don't, but if we were, we'd be here for 90 minutes. That's how much time we would need to capture the things we want. And they don't have pinball development. I have no idea how much it takes to make the first unit these days, but it's less than a million dollars generally. mesmerismus It's on there now. It's on there now. Everybody I'm train anything up onlime canabs pricks They god head onух logic Sarah Well, I did. I don't know. I haven't countered them up, but it was more than 100 new call outs that I scoured. I had a stem. I had a dialogue in isolation for aliens. And so that makes it much easier because it's much cleaner. All I had was the center channel from the Dolby 5.1 for alien. Ah, so you get close. And that's a lot noisier. Yeah. The There are fewer from Alien than there are Aliens But There's Still a bunch But you know She spends a lot more time Breathing and Grunting an alien Then She Does talking Sure There's all These Scenes She's Running Down Corridors and Stuff and you've got all this Great Yeah She's a you know To get that in the game Oh I could have my wife do that you sure who's Gonna Say that's a gurney Weaver or my wife All right. I got three final questions for you. One, if you can, whatever you can answer of this. I know you're working on Pulp Fiction or that's kind of like it's coming out anyway soon. Yeah, Pulp Fiction is done, done, done. In fact, I just got a production ROM that I'm going to stick in my Pulp Fiction and I'm going to beat the hell out of it to make sure that everything got done. Tim McC Illinois holesaker. »I'm happy there is one for the Coronavirus Team wrap torso and bring this forوق Um, you know, and and it is because of the odd way it came to be and because play mechanics doesn't have a factory. They work, there was never a factory to rip it out of their hands and say, hey, we have to put this on the line to keep you know, all these guys working. So it's had this gestation period. I mean, it's been out and to public arcades in the in Chicago for a year. And so they've had the advantage of watching people beat on I think you probably have one. I don't know if it's as good as it was cool the year, and especially the year that Fiers I'm a fan of the game. I've played it and I got to work with Mark Ritchie and that's absolutely great. Are you working on another game? I'm working on two actually. Is it something we're going to like? Oh, geez. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What is your favorite or most proud game that you worked on? There are three candidates because I was really happy with the way Alien turned out. So I really like Alien. It's the only one I own because I can't collect games. I live on a slope and it's just too hard. I don't have a space where I can. I have a studio space I created about six years ago when I totally committed to being a pinball audio artist. I can house about six games in there if they're next to each other and I like them further All reason, Antes De Comp Nayar, Trans Einstein, or Ion, k raza en E f05 k six ten in it This Week in Pinball Podcast, Termsprisingly, Black Water, Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, Twippies Awards, translite warriartwork panel in backbox that is backlit during playCommentary Barney. embr. Buffett custom lines in seven characters cheese. See, when you when you get custom speech, you're lucky to get one or two actors to, you know, do something for you and and casting is everything right now, I casting can break you. See twenty four. So but Seth just I mean, he totally got it. He's a brilliant guy. I can't say enough nice things, I didn't have much of an interaction with him just because he had this big script in 90 minutes and he wanted to go to a family guy Christmas party or something. Yeah. So he just walked in, started reading them. I think he asked me clarification on about two or three callouts. Otherwise, he just piled through them in seven characters and the end result, I mean, I was just going, oh my God, is this going to be good in the game? Wow. So yeah, Family Guy turned out, and I liked everything else I did for it except for perhaps Fart Multiball. That wasn't, that's not the jewel in my career. But beyond that, I think it's a real good, somewhat overlooked game because it was so faithful to the show and so rude that a lot of wives didn't allow it in the house initially. So then they skinned it as Shrek, but the location machines did something Music by Frank And we had a good callout package. We had Admiral Stevens, we had Steve doing his Steve thing. And yeah, it turned out pretty well. What are you most looking forward to in 2024 in the world of pinball or audio? I should say, I'm real excited about this, this new project that I've taken on. It's unique, and it's going to take a year. So you know, I'm in, I'm in five page deep NDA hell with I can't say anything except that I've said I haven't done anything with time and it's they've asked on a few occasions and I could just never make the scheduling work out because I'm you know I'm I'm a I've never been an employee of a pinball company all the work that I've ever done has been done as a one-off contract I accept deep root. Yeah Yeah, well, I was gonna think of that as a contract as well. I was an indentured servant paid very very well for deep root for two and a half years and you know, I can now talk and you know that my my Three-year NDA on deep root is finally done and I could actually say things but I don't know that much to sayvel ensuite la trchale w emot brief teep to I well for a good해도 day I know that was that was you know, but that was then three years Now to the point where they're actually making them. I'm you know that's happening and I'm I'm Here's the deal Besides I mean I've already gone on about Pulp Fiction but most people have experienced Pulp Fiction in a public space at a show or in an arcade or somewhere and Pulp Fiction is such a sound game I'm a big fan of the I'm a big fan of the I'm a big fan of the Not because of me, but because of George Petro, and because there is no screen, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. These guys worked backwards from the soundtrack to design Pulp Fiction. These guys worked backwards from the soundtrack to design Pulp Fiction. They designed it around the callouts they knew they were going to have, that defined the themes and the modes and everything. that defined the themes and the modes and everything. And George is a brilliant programmer and has done some terrific choreography around the sound. Talking te make the light shows and the display effects and everything pop but make the sound sound better I mean it's really great when you can hear and you can hear it yeah okay so I'm I'm excited I'm that soon these machines are going to be in people's collections and they're going to actually play them in in the way that the machine shines the best well I'm excited I'm going to be in this I'm so excited. I think everyone out there is excited to see Pulp Fiction and the ones getting the Alien Ripley version right now. David Thiel, I can't thank you enough for joining. I really appreciate all the openness and honesty and maybe we'll have you on again sometime once your next game or two come out and we can see you all. I really appreciate someone with an interest in audio asking things about it. I think it raises awareness. People understand. If you think about something you can't see, you'll hear it with different ears the next time you go play a pin. That's my hope. Well, David, thank you very much for joining. It was a pleasure. Good luck on all your pinball creations this year and in the years to come. Well, thank you so much. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: b3f7a278-947e-418c-8456-ff8ac58b27e7*