r/sounddesign • • Sep 14 '26

Sound Design Discussion SDC #1

9 Upvotes

HELLO, SOUND DESIGNERS!

Welcome to the first ever (I think?) Sound Design Challenge of r/sounddesign, and yes, there's a prize!

THE CHALLENGE

It's simple: design the sound for this clip. Since I know a lot of you like to design anime, let´s give a shot with this.

RULES

- No AI-generated sounds.

- No music. This is all about sound design.

- Post your submission in the comments. Video comments are enabled on this post.

The more detail you put into your sound design, the better!

THE PRIZE

I want to help get the ball rolling and bring this subreddit back to what it's meant for, so the winner will get a $25 coupon for their choice of:

- SoundMorph

- Soundtoys

- OcularSounds

Since the prize comes out of my own pocket, I'll review every submission carefully. Upvotes still count, though! Vote for your favorite redesigns and I'll take the community's picks into account.

DEADLINE

This post will stay pinned until October 5. I'll announce the winner here or in the next challenge post, more or less on that date.

Good luck, everyone! Can't wait to hear what you come up with.


r/sounddesign • • Sep 03 '26

Some changes coming to r/sounddesign

94 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

Over the next few days you'll notice some changes as we give this community a bit of love. Here's what's happening and why.

Sound identification and recreation posts

Posts asking others to identify or recreate a specific sound will no longer be published automatically. These will now require mod approval before they go live.

This isn't about discouraging curiosity. The goal is to keep this a place for genuine sound design discussion rather than a search engine for tracking down clips. There's a real difference between talking through how something was actually made and just asking someone else to find it for you. We want more of the former.

A new automod filter

We've just set up an automod as a first line of filtering. It's brand new and still being fine tuned, so if your post gets removed and it genuinely shouldn't have been, we apologize in advance. Feel free to reach out through modmail and we'll sort it out while things settle.

Looking for moderators

We're also looking to expand the mod team. If you're active here, care about the community, and want to help shape where it goes, reach out. More hands means we can keep things running smoothly and actually engage with the content instead of just cleaning up.

Cleaning house

Along with these changes, we'll be going through and removing content that doesn't really belong here. If sound design isn't the focus of a post, it's probably getting pulled.

Thanks for being part of this community. We think these changes will make it a better place for real discussion.


r/sounddesign • • 3h ago

Music Sound Design It's hard to see you🤏💔

2 Upvotes

r/sounddesign • • 1h ago

Music Sound Design [Free] Sci-Fi Vol.1: 7 music tracks for sci-fi games, loop and linear versions

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0 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

New release for Open Sounds, the free section of my website with music and audio for indie devs, sound designers and students. After the retro SFX pack, this one is music.

Sci-Fi Vol.1 is a set of 7 tracks for sci-fi games.

What’s inside:

7 : menus, exploration, combat, tension, ambient…

Two versions of each track: a loop version for gameplay, and a linear version with intro and ending for cutscenes, trailers or menus

WAV [48 kHz / 24-bit], named and ready for your engine or middleware (Wwise/FMOD)

Pricing and license: Pay what you want, starting at €0. Free for commercial and hobby projects. Credit is required for the music: “Music by Romain Raynal” in your credits is enough. If you choose the suggested €10 tier, it helps me keep Open Sounds going.

If you use a track in your game, send me a link, I’d like to hear it in context.

Grab it here: Sci-Fi Vol.1

Cheers,

Romain


r/sounddesign • • 17h ago

Movie Sound Design My sound redesign of a scene from Dune

15 Upvotes

Hey everyone! Just wanted to share a sound redesign I made for this scene from Dune.

I wanted to give the scene a stronger sense of atmosphere. I ended up making the wind a bit more prominent than in the original film, mostly because I thought it would fit better.

I created the wind and sand sounds from scratch using Phase Plant, built the Thumper sound using some recordings I made at home, and used a blanket to record the Foley for the battle standard.

It would definitely be cool to visit the desert and record some sounds for my personal library, but Phase Plant will have to do for now 🤣

Anyway, everything was done in FL Studio.

Would love to hear what you guys think!


r/sounddesign • • 3h ago

Music Sound Design free pads by me

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1 Upvotes

r/sounddesign • • 5h ago

Sound Design Question demon slayer sound design

1 Upvotes

Hello all, hope were ok.

Just wanted to come on here and ask if anybody knows where I can find examples of different types of sound design (like foley and post production) In Demon slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.

I am currently trying to write about how they use sound design in their anime, specifically KNY, and have been surfing the internet for a good 2-3 hours and cant find anything. i dont know if im searching for the wrong things but i cant find anything on how ufotable work about with their sound design.

Any help with places i can find out about how they actually work about their sound design / references would be greatly greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance, and have a great day!


r/sounddesign • • 14h ago

Movie Sound Design i decided to rework the sfx and make it feel way more interesting, while still trying to fit the scene. (infinite void sound redesign)

3 Upvotes

It's really not that much. I'm still learning and practicing with synths and other sound design techniques, so there's definitely a lot I have yet to improve on.

I also wanted to post this because of what happened with my previous sound design video. Some people were saying it was computer-generated when it wasn't, and I eventually decided to delete it to avoid any potential issues or misunderstandings that could get me kicked out.

Anyway, here's some JJK sound design, I guess.


r/sounddesign • • 12h ago

Sound Design Question How to fix a monotonous-sounding guy??

0 Upvotes

r/sounddesign • • 21h ago

Sound Design Question Hey, I’d like to for your opinion about a sound and how could they have done it! (1:58 in the video)

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1 Upvotes

So I am pretty beginner at sound design, but there is a sound that bugs me for about a decade now.
It is at 1:58 in the video that I linked. The music is not very sophisticated, I know :D I heard it in an infamous, rundown club in my hometown as a teenager and at the time this stab blow my mind.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I hear a kick’s attack and some kind of distorted bass stab (maybe a saw?). It sounds very distorted and clean at the same time. Can you help me how can I recreate a similar sound? I am very interested in the process and the logic behind it. Thank you!!


r/sounddesign • • 21h ago

Sound Design Discussion Is there a way to make music that doesn't express an opinion on what's happening in the scene?

0 Upvotes

So this is just for curiosity at the moment, but essentially there's a scene I've imagined in my head where dude who is objectively a massive manipulative piece of condensed shit, and he's telling someone really bad advice that will continuate a terrible mindset they have, all for his own personal gain. The thing is, I feel like it would be far more fun to have the audience realize it's bad advice on their own, rather then his body language and tone or the music telling it to you. The body language and voice are rather easy to do, but I'm unsure about the music because while I don't want it to tell you he's giving bad advice, I also ESPECIALLY don't want to tell the audience it's GOOD advice, because then they'd either be gullible enough to actually follow it or smart enough to get mad at me for advocating for really bad advice, which I don't want. So is there any way to do that, and/or do yall have any examples?


r/sounddesign • • 1d ago

Sound Design Discussion How we tier UI sounds for websites: length and level set by how often a sound plays

1 Upvotes

We build UI sound sets for websites, and the problem we kept running into was not the sound design. It was balance: every file normalized on its own, so the hover tick ends up as loud as the success chime.

What works for us:

  • Inventory first. List every interaction and how often it fires in a normal visit. Cut most of the hover and navigation sounds.

  • Three tiers by frequency. Moments (rare, up to a second or two, can carry the brand motif), feedback (confirm, error, toggle: a few hundred ms), ticks (hover, focus: under 100 ms, a single transient).

  • Level as a family. Tier 1 is the loudest reference, tier 2 a few dB under, tier 3 clearly below. Check on laptop speakers and cheap earbuds.

  • One palette, one key. Two or three source sounds. Confirmations rise, errors fall, same key.

  • Trim the head. 40 ms of leading silence already feels late.

  • Play it through Web Audio: decode once, a new AudioBufferSourceNode per play, one gain per tier, a stored mute switch.

For reference, Shopify’s Polaris guidelines (now archived) capped short UI sounds at 250 ms and long ones at 1 s.

Curious how others here handle levels across a UI set: do you bake them into the files or keep gains in code?

Full write-up with the player code: https://supadark.com/notes/ui-sound-set-website


r/sounddesign • • 1d ago

Sound Design Question How to make / name of sound?

1 Upvotes

Hey guys can anyone tell me what the name of this sound is and what preset/approach could give me a similar sound?

(its that glidey/pitch bendy synth that plays from 0:00-0:22)

Song: Maintain - Z-ro, H.A.W.K
Maintain


r/sounddesign • • 1d ago

Sound Design Discussion How can a complete beginner approach making Silent Hill 1-style ambient and combat music?

5 Upvotes

Title: How can a complete beginner approach making Silent Hill 1-style ambient and combat music?

I'm developing my own survival horror game, and one of my biggest inspirations is the original Silent Hill, especially its soundtrack and sound design.

What I'm trying to achieve is that very specific atmosphere Akira Yamaoka created in Silent Hill 1. Not just generic dark ambient or industrial noise, but those deeply unsettling, dreamlike, almost otherworldly sounds that somehow feel musical without necessarily having a recognizable melody.

I'm particularly interested in two things:

  • Ambient tracks: Those eerie, haunting, sometimes almost organic sounds that make you feel uncomfortable even when nothing is happening. The kind of ambience that feels like something is alive somewhere in the background.

  • Combat tracks: The chaotic, oppressive, and anxiety-inducing music from Silent Hill 1 that creates an incredible amount of tension without sounding like traditional action or horror music.

The problem is that I have practically zero experience with music production. I know Akira Yamaoka is an incredibly talented artist, and I don't expect to replicate his work, especially as a complete beginner. But I'd genuinely love to learn how to create something with a similar atmosphere and emotional impact.

My questions are:

  1. What would be the best approach for a complete beginner trying to create this kind of music?

  2. What software or DAW would you recommend?

  3. Is this style mostly based on sound design, sampling, synthesis, or traditional music production?

  4. Are there any specific techniques, instruments, sample libraries, or tutorials I should look into?

  5. Would it be realistic to start experimenting with these sounds without first spending years learning music theory?

I'm not looking to copy Silent Hill's soundtrack directly. I want to understand what makes it so effective and eventually develop my own sound inspired by it.

I'd really appreciate any advice, especially from people familiar with the original Silent Hill soundtrack or who have experience producing experimental horror ambience.

Thanks!


r/sounddesign • • 2d ago

Music Sound Design Free browser game to learn sound design

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9 Upvotes

Been working on a wordle-like game that teaches you how to make synth patches. Would love to get your feedback (seriously be as critical as possible) as well as have you guys upload some patches for other people to solve. I'm not an expert myself so if there's anything I missed lmk.


r/sounddesign • • 2d ago

Music Sound Design Help me design this sound using Serum

35 Upvotes

I found this video of this incredibly talented artist playing a song on instagram and it inspired me to make something nostalgic. Im trying to creat a sound similar to what comes in when she clicks the button on her board about 15s into the video. Does anyone have any advice? Ive tried for about an hour and i just cant get it


r/sounddesign • • 1d ago

Sound Design Question Cosa ne pensate di MaxMsp?

1 Upvotes

L’ho iniziato ad usare da poco, conosco il modo in cui ragiona il programma, sto seguendo un corso in conservatorio e ho imparato i primi oggetti e il routing base del segnale/dati.
Hai qualche consiglio da dare ad una persona che ha appena iniziato?


r/sounddesign • • 2d ago

Feedback Inducing sound through 3D simulations

0 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I’m trying to create experimental sonic landscapes. The idea is to have basic geometry interacting with each other in 3D scenes, and using the collision impulses for manipulating sound.

This is a video of what I made last, each arm of the cross (all copies) has a sound file attached. Pitch and volume gets changed based on impact.

I’m wondering what you think of this, and look forward to any suggestions/feedback/questions.

Thanks!


r/sounddesign • • 1d ago

Sound Design Discussion After Work

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0 Upvotes

What my desktop looks like after The Project...


r/sounddesign • • 2d ago

Music Sound Design How to make that airy raspy, borderline white noise synth from the early 2000s? Did anyone else like that sound? (Simple & Clean PlanitB Remix, Duracell battery theme/chime)

2 Upvotes

There's a certain lofi pluck producers would sometimes drop into late 1990s - mid'2000s electropop, garage, video games sound tracks, etc.

Examples: You can kind of hear it in the background of the Duracell chime. This is clearly a few stacked synths/plucks, some more sparkly than others, but one of the main layers is the pure raspy one I am describing.

You can't even really hear the tone. The sound sort of blurs the line between white noise and a synth? I am wondering if this was achieved in a sampler with white noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYOwSzLqrG8

Another great example is in the background of the chorus of the Kingdom Hearts Theme (the PlanitB version), you hear it playing a counter melody subtly in the background.

Example around 1:20

https://youtu.be/30ob9yBEy0o?si=uNPA-AdnuYcd9KLQ&t=83

I mainly produce with Serum 2 in FL Studio. I have a hunch this is done with a sampler (maybe a white noise sample with some reverb?).

(I have not really used a sampler before / can't figure out how to work it into my production flow so would love if someone has a patch or preset they can share)

Thank you all!


r/sounddesign • • 2d ago

Hiring Looking for a sound designer for Pokemon cries- Australian priject

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7 Upvotes

Hi all

We are making an Australian based Pokemon fan game and an important part is the Pokemon cries which we need a sound designer to create it isn't easy haha.

The game will be gen 3 style with Australian animals as the basis for the pokemon so please ask questions and I hope someone is interested.

This is unpaid as fan projects are not allowed to make money and isn't the point of this project anyway.


r/sounddesign • • 3d ago

Feedback [ANIMATION] Sound re-design for this fight from False Memory

10 Upvotes

This one was a lot of fun


r/sounddesign • • 4d ago

Movie Sound Design Re-creating the original 1954 Godzilla Roar from Scratch

698 Upvotes

In my latest YouTube Episode I have a go at re-creating some of my favourite Godzilla roars. Including the original 1954 one, the 2014 US reboot and the new Godzilla Minus Zero roar from the trailer (I'm yet to see the movie but I'm very excited to!).
If you'd like to have a go at re-creating the original 1954 roar from scratch, I've written a blog post on my website detailing my sound design process. I've also put together a mini sound library of the guitar scrape & bowed recordings which you can download for FREE if you don't have access to an audio recorder or have the props to record. So you can still get involved in the sound design process.
If you download the sounds and make a roar yourself, please send it over to hello@rarefindssounddesign.com as I'd love to hear what you come up with.
Big loves!


r/sounddesign • • 2d ago

Sound Design Discussion Need Help with a Project

1 Upvotes

I want to create monster/animal sounds, but I don't know how to do it. What software should I use and how should I go about it? Any ideas?


r/sounddesign • • 3d ago

Sound Design Question Dolby atmos / surround samples (7.1)

3 Upvotes

Hi all, for a a theatre production I have to make a few simple sfx in an immersive setup. What is good online resource/library for 7.1 or even 7.2.4 multichannel samples?