Mancubus Pain sound sped up 200%

I contacted Bobby Prince and asked him about the sound.

He said he used stock animal sounds from a CD and meticulously layered them.

I gave him a link to this thread and he downloaded the Fudd clip and manipulated it, and got the same results we did. He said it is either the mancubus sound or an amazing coincidence. He says that he did not knowingly use Elmer Fudd, but speculates it is possible a sound clip labeled as an animal or a monster was an already altered Fudd.

If BP gives me permission to do so, I will post the email conversation here.

Sorry for the double post, but I think it is justified in this case.

Bobby Prince gave me permission to post it, so here, as promised, is the email conversation we had. (email addresses removed for privacy)

My first email to Bobby, Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 9:27 AM:

I do not know if you still use this email, so I hope you get this.

A guy on the Doomworld forums sped up the Mancubus pain sound from DooM 2, and it sounds like Elmer Fudd saying "quiet" from "Be very very quiet. I'm hunting rabbits."

There is a bit of debate about this, so I figured I would go to the source. I know it has been twenty years, but is it possible for you to confirm or deny that the mancubus pain sound is a slowed down Looney Tunes clip?

Bobby's reply, Wed, 18 Dec 2013 02:06:45:

Hey Mark!

You're right about the 20 years making it difficult to remember things :-) But, I know that I did not use anything from Looney Tunes. As I recall, that is an animal sound that sounded human. I may have slowed it down a bit. Some of the sounds used pig sounds -- squeals, snorts and the like. I think this was a "disgruntled pig" sound :-)

Have you ever been to this page: http://www.perkristian.net/game_doom-sfx.shtml -- I can't believe the time it must have taken for Kristian to recreate these sounds. I'm sure he had trouble with some because they included sounds that I recorded over the years because they sounded cool at the time. I think Kristian is correct in some of the material I used though.

The problem with the Doom effects is that I didn't have multitrack audio editing software twenty years ago. So I built the sounds by starting with one sound and mixing in the others one at a time. If I got several sounds mixed and then decided that one of the sounds didn't fit, I had to start from scratch and try to remember what I did before, skipping the sound that didn't fit. My intent was to document what I was doing, but I found that to be impossible -- writing down multiple settings for each effect, stretch percentages, edits to the source before mixing it in, ... and the list goes on forever. It took long enough to do the effects as it was. I even thought about video recording what I was doing, but there wasn't enough video tape for the hundreds of hours spent.

Nowadays, I use a multitrack editor that allows me to layer the sounds and keep track of my source material. If I have to edit source material, I name the edit to include the name of the source sound. This was next to impossible with DOS's file names limited to eight alphanumeric characters.

Maybe someone on the forum could contact Per Kristian Risvik (he's registered on the forum) -- he may have discovered some potential source material for this sound. I didn't see where he mentions the pain sound on the page linked above.

Hope this helps you!

Best regards,
Bobby Prince

My Reply, Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 8:22 AM:

Just to be certain, here is the link to the thread.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/66309-mancubus-pain-sound-sped-up-200/

Thanks for your reply.

Bobby's reply, Wed, 18 Dec 2013 11:59:36 -0500:

I'm copying John Romero on this. John, do you remember anything about this?

I downloaded Elmer's "Be very very quiet. I'm hunting rabbits," clipped out "quiet" and pitch shifted and stretched it. It is either the Mancubus pain sound or an amazing coincidence. I assure you that I did not create the sound knowingly using Elmer's "quiet" (the "Fudd waveform"). I'd love to take credit for such a thing, but the sound had to be on a CD of animal sounds -- most likely a pig in this instance. I quite possibly pitch shifted the sound a bit, but I know I'd remember that it sounded like Elmer Fudd if it actually did sound like him on the CD version.

To get a result I could compare, I looked at the Fudd waveform with the Mancubus waveform and clipped the Fudd waveform to match what I thought could have been used. I listened to the two sounds and they were 19 semi-tones apart.

Then I edited the Fudd waveform as follows:

1. Pitch shifted it down 7 semi-tones, which put it an octave higher than the Mancubus waveform.
2. Stretched the Fudd waveform 200%. This lowered the pitch of the Fudd waveform another 12 semi-tones (octave) down.

I'm attaching the audio files, an Audition 3.0 multitrack file, and an xml multitrack file for those who want to import to other software.

fudd-beveryveryquiet.wav -- "Be very very quiet. I'm hunting rabbits."
MPAIN02.WAV -- Mancubus pain sound (last modified 02/17/1995)
quiet-original.wav -- "quiet" cut out of fudd-beveryveryquiet.wav
quiet-down7stretched200.wav -- my edit of quiet-original.wav

To compare, listen to the two quiet*.wav files.

Multitrack files: Fuddcubus.ses and Fuddcubus.xml

No, I did not suddenly have a sudden clarity in my memory of how I did this twenty years ago. It took a good bit of experimentation to get the results in the new file. This Mancubus sound came off a CD, either claiming that it was an animal (pig) sound, or maybe a claimed "monster" sound. I may have pitch shifted or stretched it a little, but to my ears it never sounded like Elmer Fudd. I would definitely remember if it did, and I would have laughed for twenty years thinking I'd pulled off a really great practical joke on millions of people :-)

So, it's no longer the Mancubus, it's the Fuddcubus!

Best regards,
Bobby

I think I like Bobby's new term, "Fuddcubus".

It's most likely just pure coincidence.

I love that guy.

The emanations of the Fudd Waveform now propagate throughout all of reality. We are corrupted, every one of us.

fascinating how former doom developers are still answering questions after 20 years of the initial release of the game.
awesome!

Wow, that is kinda cool lol

Fellowzdoomer said:

I always thought the Mancubus death sound was him gasping then muttering while clearing his throat...?

Oh wait... thought you meant when it died. Sorry, everybody!

Now all we need now is a mod that puts Fudd's hat on the Mancubus and falls off as a separate actor when it dies. Like the SS Nazis in Beautiful Doom.

Platinum Shell said:

Now all we need now is a mod that puts Fudd's hat on the Mancubus and falls off as a separate actor when it dies. Like the SS Nazis in Beautiful Doom.

Well that is quite creative lol

Kinda sounds a bit like Microsoft Mike to me.

You have to realize that the sound software around then was miles different than any sound software today.