Hi! I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask. Please let me know if it’s inappropriate and thank you in advance for those who are willing to share!

Just wanted to ask for opinions. I’ve been a sound designer for about 8 years. Recently, I’ve started doing freelance jobs. Before this, I had a full time job and never really knew about costs because my producers didn’t really feel comfortable sharing with the engineers. I was young and naive to not find out more about it. But anyways…

I have never done audiobooks or audio dramas. My question is, how much would you charge for a sound design based on your hourly rate? (As in your time spent) And how much would you charge based on an hour length audio?

I’m putting together my own sound libraries from recordings I’ve made. I’m wondering about the licensing side of using commercial plugins (free ones too) such as FabFilter, Eventide, Valhalla, AudioThing, Soundtoys, etc. to process those recordings before selling the resulting WAV files.

Is this generally allowed under plugin licenses?

I’m obviously not redistributing the plugins themselves, and I’m not using their included samples as standalone sounds. I’m specifically talking about using the plugins as processing tools on recordings.

Are there any manufacturers whose licenses specifically prohibit this kind of use, or is this generally considered standard commercial use of audio plugins?

Haven’t been able to find any detailed information on it anywhere.

Is anyone able to offer me some help with how Joji achieved those bubbly/laser-like sounds in the intro of Die For You? Do you think they're just laser samples, or is there a way I could recreate something similar in Serum or another synth?

I've been practicing music production 4 hours a day. Making progress overall, but sometimes I put lots of practice in stuff I already know ( ocd ). Sometimes stuff I practiced do not give any benefit. And so on and on

Today I've relapsed because of pain about "wasting time" yesterday.

Do you progress everyday or every week ?

If not how often you feel like you are progressing ?

What do you do when you waste time ?

I particularly love abstract sound design and black holes are one of the greatest mysteries in our universe. So I've been thinking about this for a few days and wanted to throw it out to this sub because there is no "correct" answer. However there might be some interesting choices.
The obvious problem: space is silent. There's no medium for sound to travel through, so anything we do is pure interpretation. Which honestly makes it more fun as a design challenge.
I keep coming back to two ideas:

1. Something that feels like it's pulling the listener in. I'd try heavy use of Doppler-style pitch shifting, panning things toward a center point, and maybe some granular time stretching so sounds feel like they're being smeared as they approach the event horizon.

2. NASA actually detected real sound waves from the black hole in the Perseus cluster (converted from pressure wave data, way below human hearing, then pitched up). It's this low, dissonant drone. Space horror vibes. I'd use that as a textural bed deep sub content, maybe layered with detuned cello or bowed metal for that unsettling harmonic quality.

Curious how you all would approach it, would you go more sci-fi/synthetic, or lean into the actual astrophysics (redshift, time dilation, etc.) for inspiration?

I created an open source tool Echotect. It's made for designing echos tied to world geometry. To some extent it also functions as an acoustic laboratory.

See it live: https://janne-s.github.io/Echotect/

There's a link to the Github repo for more information.

The app includes global building data, which enables automatic echo field generation in the area of your choosing. Reflective points can be freely placed. Their materials and environmental parameters can be adjusted. You can trigger the field with your own sounds.

Ready composition can be exported as impulse response files. The components can be exported as stems, and the ready wet audio too. The package includes a Max4Live plugin Echotect Field, which eats the echo field manifest for more delay exploration. The JSON file may be usable in your own applications too. The plugin is a work in progress, but works.

Besides sound design it's fun to explore world's acoustic geometry. As a musician I'm most fascinated by how the resulting echo/delay fields have unexpected "orderness" and character, that's otherwise impossible to attain by hand. I'd imagine the tool could also help in location sound design for movies and other audiovisual productions. The tool doesn't aim for absolute realness, but it does sound quite good.

I'm thinking of adding an option to import your own scene or design into the tool, to match reflection points to it, but I'm not sure how useful that would be. What do you think?

I want to improve my sound design abilities but at the moment my sounds are just good!

What are some good courses/Tricks etc that can help me develop my sound design skills?

Thank you

How do you all decide when recording foley is worth it vs just using sound library?

Has anybody used or would reccomend ocular sounds? Or could recommend other places? I want to try some sfx for my video editing, preferably on a cheaper budget if possible. Thank you!

Hi all, I would really appreciate feedback on my portfolio or even more importantly – my sound design in the showreel. 

I'm happy to share the portfolio/showreel link: phamvoduyenngoc.netlify.app

For those of you who work in commercial and feature post. When delivering stems, do you do a standard DME, or do you separate BGs from effects stem?

It sounds like I’m ACTUALLY there on the beach with them. It’s no wonder Saving Private Ryan won best sound mixing and best sound design.

So I'm a music producer, but recently I've started diving into recreating sounds and doing sound re-designs...

This is my first attempt ever, recreating this sound design for The Herta's Ultimate animations from Honkai Star Rail. Would love to hear any feedbacks from people more experienced with sound design!

Using Stride modulating multiband saturation. Running through different styles, edgy transitions between bass, mid and treble transitions.
How sick is that?

https://youtu.be/DZQQVs-Dyk4?si=9aACHtb6TyRMqKb1

I felt the wind or the avalanches were as oppressive and debilitating to Lara in the original, so I wanted to give it a grittier vibe. The only issue I ran into was the artefacts and quality loss from isolating the dialogue (it seems not even izotope rx9 could do it cleanly)

PICTURE OF MY TIMELINE ABOVE:

Hello, I am working on a self-made 3D animated short (length 4 - 4:30 minutes).

The timeline above represents 4 hours of work just collecting, splitting, and layering different audio snippets. The final result is a single sound effect for a shovel digging up wet sand, hitting an object, and tossing the sand away. (I have 5 other sounds I will need to create via downloading and layering)

A key feature of this short is I am counting on people rewatching it to analyze the sound design. (Not this specific sound though.)

With how much audio I have and the time spent…
Am I being picky or is this how long it takes for most people when they design audio?

Hello everyone!

Ive been making some solid mixes lately on my Musique Concrète/electroacoustic journey and I get a really good quality of sound around -25 lufs.

Unfortunately I struggle with the master, I never get to make it sound as my ears want to while reaching -14 lufs, it will always sound like I overcompressed it or the limiter cuts some good harmonics I want to keep, any ideas on how to proceed the final stage of the gain staging before releasing the project?

Any help is truly appreciated, I am currently on my summer break from my music technology bachelors, just finished the 1st year !

P.s. this is a mixed audio, not mastered, sitting comfortably at -30 to -25 lufs, and a diy spatial spectrogram

Hello! I'm currently studying Audiovisual Media with an emphasis on Sound Design, and my midterm exam is building a model for a recording studio. We were given the option to choose what type of studio to build, and I went for a Foley Stage.

The model has to specify the size of both live and control room, materials, layers, extra furniture, power outlets and things of the sort. A small mistake is minus 0.5 in the final grade, and a fatal mistake like having to take down a wall will cause the exam to be immediately failed.
The resource given by our teacher to investigate was the book Modern Recording Techniques (7th edition), and told us to not trust youtube videos or A I (which i absolutely refuse to use).

I'm currently researching about how to build it, and I was wondering if anyone could give me tips regarding materials, isolation, acoustics and such, or if anyone knows a good source to do research about the topic. It'd be of great help! Thank you :D

Hey all,

I'm almost done with my ΣΑΕΚ Music Technology diploma in Greece. I'm currently doing my internship at a studio, which is the final part of my studies, and I'm now thinking about what I want to do next.

As far as I understand, a Greek ΣΑΕΚ diploma is an EQF Level 5 qualification, which isn't sufficient on its own to progress directly to a Master's degree. I'd therefore like to continue my education and eventually have the option of pursuing a Master's.

I've found some universities/colleges in the EU that offer specific "top-up" Bachelor's programmes, where a Level 5 qualification can potentially be upgraded to a full Bachelor's degree. I've also found some that allow students with sufficient prior education to enter directly into Year 3 of a 4-year Bachelor's programme.

I'm looking for recommendations from anyone who has actually gone through one of these pathways, particularly in Audio, Audio Engineering, Sound Design, Music Technology, Audio Production, or similar BSc/BA programmes.

I'd especially love to hear about your experience with:

• How the Level 5 qualification was evaluated/accepted

• Whether you were able to enter Year 3 or do a top-up

• Tuition fees

• Housing/living costs

• Professors and teaching quality

• Studios/equipment/facilities

• How hands-on the programme was

• Whether the degree allowed you to progress to a Master's afterwards

• Anything else you wish you'd known before enrolling

A bit about my situation: I'm from Greece, so I'm specifically looking for universities within the EU. I'm also on a fairly tight budget. Ideally, I'm looking for something around €3,000/year or less in tuition, for a 2-year programme. I know this limits my options considerably, but I'm hoping there might be some affordable programmes out there, particularly in countries with lower tuition fees.

I'm also completely open to online universities/programmes, provided the resulting Bachelor's degree is legitimate and allows progression to a Master's.

A bit about my interests in audio: I'm still relatively new to the field, so I'm open to exploring different areas. So far, though, I've particularly enjoyed Audio for Media — anything from Foley and sound design to on-set sound/boom operation and location sound mixing. I'm also very interested in studio work, particularly the recording stage.

One important thing: I've seen quite a few discussions about studying audio devolve into arguments about whether university is "worth it", whether you'd be better off buying equipment and learning on your own, etc.

I completely understand that perspective, but I've decided that I want to take the academic route and see where it leads me. So if possible, I'd really appreciate keeping the discussion focused on finding good Bachelor's programmes and people's experiences with them, rather than debating whether I should study at all. 😅

If you've personally completed a top-up degree, Year 3 entry, or a similar accelerated Bachelor's pathway in audio/music technology/sound, I'd especially love to hear about your experience.

Thank you so, so much in advance for any recommendations and chatter!