SOUND DESIGN KIT

Useful resources for a sound designer

This list of hardware, software and other resources are what I consider to be useful for a sound designer to have access to. I’ve tailored it towards someone who is starting out in their career. If you are starting to explore sound design, or are on a more limited budget, check out this page, These are my personal preferences, and what works for me may not work for you, so use this as a starting point to explore the options.

Hardware

Computer - There was a time when you needed thousands of pounds worth of equipment to make the simplest sound design. Fortunately, now you can achieve 95% of things with a computer and a few extra bits. Your design work will involve you working in rehearsal rooms, theatres, hotel rooms, all over the place. Whilst some people like to have a studio base, it’s important that your main rig is portable. A laptop will form the heart of your studio. Avoid cheap PC laptops as the build quality and audio performance is often severely compromised. Most, but not all designers use an Apple MacBook Pro because QLab, one of the main bits of software we use, is Mac only. They're not cheap, but are well-built, and your livelihood and reputation will depend on this object so avoid skimping on this, if possible. You can get a discount on buying Apple products via the ASD, or if you’re a student, you can usually get an educational discount too. Amazon often sell the standard models at less than purchasing direct from Apple. Curry’s PC World will price-match any offer you find on the internet so is a good option if you’re in a hurry. If you want to customise the computer, adding more memory or a larger hard drive, then you have to purchase direct from Apple. And these components can’t be upgraded later. You can find second hand models via eBay and Cex.

Audio interface / sound card - Accepted wisdom is that you need one of these to get sound in and out of your computer. But these are big and bulky to carry round. Instead, buy a field recorder that can double up as an audio interface - see location recording kit below.

A good pair of headphones - I use Beyer DT770, which sound great and are useful for recording as they cut out a lot of outside noise. Sennheiser HD25's are also very popular but I’ve found the cables are quite fragile (the HD 26 is more durable but more expensive). Sony MDR7506 headphones sound good, fold up small, are pretty durable, and good value. It's useful to keep a cheap pair of ear-bud headphones in your bag for the day when you forget your headphones. Recently, I've been carrying around a pair of Bose QC35 headphones instead of the above, because whilst they aren't necessarily the best headphones in the world, the noise cancellation is brilliant, and generally means I can listen to them at a lower volume than other headphones, which is better for your hearing, and means I can work on the train, etc.


A bendy USB light - like this one. Use with a USB hub.

MIDI controller - A 2 or 3-octave keyboard is useful for playing with sounds in the studio or in the rehearsal room. I use a Novation LaunchKey Mini, as it’s light and portable, has keys, buttons and dials to get nicely hands-on. It also comes with a free copy of Ableton Live Lite.

Portable hard drive -A Seagate Backup Plus 5TB portable hard drive will be very useful for storing sound effects and all your projects.

Backups

Make a plan for when (not if) your computer breaks down or is stolen. Over the past 10 years my laptop has been stolen (twice), had the internal drive fail (once), power supply fail (three times), screen smashed (twice), ports stop working (twice). This has almost always happened during a production week. Use a service like Dropbox Plus, which automatically backs up 2TB of your hard drive whenever you are online. Have a credit card in case you need to buy a new computer in a hurry. If you buy a new computer, keep the old one as a backup.


Location recording kit

This is the area where you really get what you pay for.

The Zoom H4N Pro unit is reasonably good quality, feature built-in mic’s and XLR inputs with phantom power, and can work as a USB sound card / audio interface. But the mic’s distort in wind easily - Rycote make a mini windjammer that fits over the unit.

If you can afford it, a Zoom F6 with a couple of these batteries is a great investment. This unit is super compact, has 6 mic inputs and can act as a USB sound card too. This doesn’t have built-in mics, but you can plug a range of professional mics into it. Whether that’s the industry standard Shure SM58 vocal mic, or mics for recording on location. The Rode NT4 with a Rycote NT4 Mini Windjammer is a good stereo mic for effects recording.

Studio rig

I have very little equipment at home - essentially just a sound-card (which acts as a mixing desk - MOTU and RME cards are good for this), some Genelec speakers) and back-up hard drives. I also have a Behringer X-Touch One to speed up editing. You can get some really good monitor speakers on eBay. A pair of Genelec 1030’s or Dynaudio BM5’s are a good investment. Avoid anything that has less than a 6” LF driver and don’t buy “DJ” speakers! A sub-bass speaker is worthwhile, but not essential, to hear the low end stuff you can play around with in a theatre.

Software

Whether you use a Mac or a Windows machine is purely down to individual preference of software, and you can do well with either. Choose the software that lets you create as efficiently as possible - it's better to know a few applications inside out than to have a large complex set-up which you barely know how to use. Most designers use Mac’s - the theatre standard software for theatre playback is Figure 53's QLab, which is Mac-only, and whilst your computer won't be used to run the show, you will need to program it.

DAW software

DAW Software allows you to create and edit a montage of sound files, and probably where you'll create most of your design. These are all very powerful software packages, and they run plug-Ins to provide extra features. The world is largely split into those who use Pro Tools and those who don't. Pro Tools is designed as a high-end editing package and is very good at that, however it's not necessarily the best software to "create" with, and it is very expensive.

Pro Tools was primarily designed for editing audio, thus the MIDI features are useable but not advanced. The line-up of their software packages varies on a regular basis, but there is usually a light version to get started with. The plug-ins for Pro Tools are often more expensive than for other systems and freeware/shareware plug-ins are rarer. Pro Tools is notoriously temperamental (particularly on PC), and once a stable system has been achieved, it is best not to update the operating system or install other programs until advised by the developer to do so, which can take a while. Pro Tools has now largely moved over to a subscription model of payment and upgrades, which does make it quite expensive. You can create basic stereo content with the Standard edition, but to create surround sound material you need the Ultimate edition, which currently costs £802 per year!

Alternatives to Pro Tools include Logic, Nuendo, Cubase, Digital Performer, Sound Forge, Vegas, Audition, Reaper; with most packages available for both Mac and Windows

Steinberg’s Nuendo is a popular DAW, and has features comparable to ProTools Ultimate, if not considerably better than ProTools Ultimate. It is oriented heavily towards audio editing and mixing, with a lot of feature sets for video, game, and VR work. You can purchase Nuendo, then minor updates are free, and major updates are paid (which come out every 12-18 months). Steinberg run intermittent sales on Nuendo, which can be combined with their competitive cross-grade offer (if you already own a DAW), which makes it a lot more affordable. At time of writing there is a 40% off sale, which combined with the cross grade offer brings the cost to £379. Whilst this is more expensive than Logic it offers way more features, and is considerably cheaper than PT Ultimate.

ProTools and Nuendo are designed for audio editing and post-production. Apple's Logic Pro and Steinberg's Cubase both started as music sequencers but now have very powerful audio editing facilities. Both come with a very powerful set of built-in effects and instrument plug-ins and allow the use of AU or VST plug-ins of which there are many commercial, freeware and shareware plug-ins available. They allow you to use virtually any sound card, MIDI interface or control surface you can buy and are generally very stable. I've used Apple Logic Pro to create all my designs since I began, and is, relatively, incredibly cheap to purchase. Logic Pro version 10 came out in 2015, at £139, and there have been regular free updates since then (currently up to 2022), so works out closer to £19.85 per year!

In my experience, Pro Tools and Logic Pro are the two most commonly used DAW applications in the theatre industry.

Ableton Live takes a slightly different approach to most DAW software - some people prefer it, whilst others may use it in addition to they main DAW software for specific purposes. It’s also a very flexible performance tool, and everything is focused towards real-time control and performance. There are a range of purchase options, with paid updates every 2-3 years. You can often get a light version of Ableton when you purchase a keyboard or MIDI device, and this can be a good way to explore if it’s right for you. You can then upgrade the lite version for less than what it would cost to purchase the software from scratch.

Cockos Reaper is a relatively new but increasingly popular DAW. It is both very cost effective, with licenses starting at $60 and a 60 day evaluation period, and very powerful. The power and flexibility has made it ideal for developing for games and VR work, and it is increasingly the choice of DAW in those industries. The user interface is not always as intuitive as it’s more expensive competitors, but their are many online tutorials to help you find your way around it.

Effects & Instrument Plug-ins

Most DAW's come with a suite of built-in plug-ins which cover many of the basic effect types such as reverb or compression, But there are many plug-ins available that can be added to your DAW to expand it’s processing capabilities. Some are available commercially, and some are available for free. There are a range of formats (VST effects, Audio Unit effects, AAX effects) that may only work in certain DAW’s or on Mac or PC only. Many developers publish their plug-ins in most formats. The plug-in’s I use most ofter are TDR Lab’s Proximity (for making stuff sound further away), Audio Ease’s Speakerphone, Sound Tools Crystalliser, Waves LoAir and Isotope RX.

As well as effects plug-ins, there are many instrument plug-ins. These provide playable instruments like synthesisers, samplers or a full orchestra, with each typically specialising in a different type of sound or musical instrument. Spitfire produce a great range of sampled instruments, whilst Spectrasonics Omnisphere is a great synthesiser. Native Instruments Kontakt is a powerful sampler instrument, that is also used as a host for a variety of other sampled instruments.

Sound Effects

There are lots of websites dedicated to the art of recording your own sound effects, and a lot can also be learned from cinema foley artists. 

There are plenty of times when you can’t record your own though, either because of time or budget.

Most sound effects are sold as libraries of sounds, though some companies offer them individually. There are General libraries, which tend to be be big and expensive, but cover a huge array of different effects. These are expensive investments but once you start turning over a few shows these work out cheaper than buying individual effects. Sound Ideas have a large selection of general libraries (watch out for the older libraries though); Pro Sound Effects have bundles of libraries - check out their freelancer-tailored Hybrid Library.

There are an increasing number of specialist sound effect library creators, of which many are distributed via www.asoundeffect.com. These are great ways of getting a bunch of sound effects relating to exactly what you’re after.

You may come across individual sound effect CD’s in record shops, or on iTunes. They're tempting to buy, but are often low quality and are rarely provided copyright free. Unless you actually database all the tracks they are a nightmare to organise.

Soundly offers great access to sound effects - it is a piece of software (Mac and PC) that comes with a starter pack of sound effects, with the software allowing you to search through those sounds quickly and efficiently. You can add more sounds to the database software, and purchase sound effect packs via the software, or subscribe for $14.99 per month on a pay-as-you-go basis. This is definitely the place to start with sound effects.

Alternatively, ProSoundEffects Search and SoundMiner Plus are very useful tools to database and search for sound effects, although neither comes with any sound effects.

What I Use:

This is my compact rig for creating sounds in rehearsals. It’s just a simple analogue stereo system that all fits in my bag.

It consists of:

Not in this photo is a laptop running QLab (which I’m screen sharing into), a Yamaha TF1 mixing desk and a small speaker system, all of which is part of the theatre’s rehearsal room system on this occasion.

For complex shows I’ll often have a Behringer X Touch Compact control surfaces & a Novation Launchpad.

Location Recording:

I have two set-ups. One for everyday carrying that is small and lightweight, and another that’s better quality but heavier.

My everyday kit consists of:

My bigger rig consists of:

Home Studio

My home setup is focused around my laptop, but with some more monitors, hard drives, etc. I use a Motu 828X sound card to feed into a 5.1 Genelec 1030 and Genelec 1092 sub speaker setup (all purchased off eBay). I also use a Behringer X Touch One, a Stream Deck and a TC Clarity meter.