Gear is not the ticket to entry in the game audio community

Do you think you’ll need highly-expensive gear to get started in game audio?

That doesn’t have to be the case at all: In this guide, Ali Tocher highlights key items to focus on for a lean, effective game audio setup that gets you off the ground without breaking the bank – and what to go for as your game audio career evolves:

Our field suffers from a lack of diversity. We need new voices to bring their experiences and stories. One barrier that I have personally recognised is the perceived requirement of expensive equipment to make professional audio for games. I think we can work to take this barrier down a notch. The stereotype of the white male, big mixing desk, racks, surround speakers etc is no longer the only truth of what a game audio designer looks like, especially during the pandemic. AAA games are being made in bedrooms now too.

I’d like to suggest that, from my own experience, there is a path to professionalism through gradual accumulation of a basic kit.

It’s important to be frank here though. This is still a very privileged industry and even the basic equipment will cost a considerable amount of money. Competition is also increasingly fierce. Junior positions receive hundreds of qualified applicants. What this means is that, whether you intend to freelance solo or aim for a AAA in-house role, you will need to start designing and implementing sounds at a near-professional standard to be considered.

The truth of the matter is that your gear is not what will make you stand out from the crowd. No client or senior in a hiring position will have any interest in what gear was used to create your early works. There is a baseline of audio quality you must reach but beyond that your audio design ethos, understanding of player experience, study of contemporary games, ability to be a good team member, be a nice person, and openly communicate are what will make you a good audio designer. Those are all free. Do the work here and the weight that you need to place on the expensive stuff massively diminishes. Your business and your craft will be founded on who you are, not what gear you have.

There are great resources for this topic. This article that defines the roles in game audio, and this awesome collection of books on this very website (Rob Bridgett’s and Damian Kastbauer’s stand out to me).
Also this amazing collection of knowledge, collated by Mark Kilborn.

Knowledge and understanding of the field will truly help to separate you and enable you to show your considerable passion for game development. However, there is no side-stepping the need to show your ability to make great sound. This is my personal list of what I think is a minimum gear list. It’s what I’ve used to obtain a professional footing. Others will have their own opinions I’m sure. Frankly I’ve been afraid to show how limited the gear I’ve used is, and I think perhaps others are too. And I think that’s probably doing damage to the way that new people feel about entering this field. So here goes:

Min spec gaming PC

This is probably the biggest cost item. Perhaps you can justify it, or already have it because you really want to play PC games anyway.
I know a lot of audio people learn and grow up on Macs. You can probably get away with using one. But it will need a decent graphics card. The issue is that indie games are not optimised during development, or sometimes ever. By the end of my first project it would take 40 minutes to load a new scene in Unity. If you happen to have a high spec Mac already and you can put Windows on it you’ll be fine but otherwise a PC tower or laptop will be much easier to build affordably. Unity, FMOD, Wwise (sort of) work on Macs. But most indie games will be developed in Windows.

48khz USB Soundcard

For example the Focusrite Scarlett, or Saffire for an extra input channel. It’s crucial that you can ensure you’re listening to the audio you’re creating in a professional environment. One microphone input is plenty. In fact both mics and monitor speakers are not going to make this essential list. And though you can spend a lot more here, this level of soundcard is totally acceptable. You shouldn’t get any noise from your PC via USB but if you do (I did) try putting some cheap DIs in the signal path.

Headphones

Please don’t buy a gaming headset. Buy audio production headphones with a flat frequency model. The standard of audio reproduction you can get from headphones is so much more cost efficient in headphones than speakers, and don’t require any room treatment. Brands like Sennheiser, AKG, Audio-Technica make headphones for £150-200 that are absolutely professional quality. Headphones with replaceable cables worked well for me.

That’s the bit that breaks and though not necessarily efficient it’s easier to scrape up £20 for a new cable every year or two. Maybe noise-cancellation is a worthwhile investment too if you don’t have access to a quiet environment to work, otherwise closed back headphones will cut out most of what you need. You can also use cheap headphones, earbuds, laptop speakers, your phone to perform very effective reference monitoring.

Digital Audio Workstation

Reaper is becoming an outstanding option for game audio. There’s a fully functional free demo and a very reasonable pricetag for purchase. However the demo won’t expire and honestly, I don’t think anyone will look down on you if you wait until your first actual paycheck to pay the bill.There’s also a lot of resources to help you improve.

Sound libraries

Look no further than A Sound Effect. It will be very difficult to cost-effectively record your own sounds early on. I would not recommend a field recording kit to start. That’s something you can work towards. Even home recordings will be very hard to produce professionally, outside of a subset of objects. Hopefully you can land paid projects that will allow you to justify steadily increasing your library.

Plugins

Another area where you can exercise caution and restraint. Mastery of a few plugins will massively outperform owning a tonne. Even the free plugins that come with Reaper can be totally effective.

There are a lot of high quality free plugins too. Like these. Sign up to newsletters and look at your favourite suppliers websites. There are regular sales.

Honestly that’s it. You can make professional audio using only these things. I assure you of this fact.

A Condenser Mic

I actually toyed with leaving this off the essential list. I think that technically you don’t need this. However the understanding of sound effects from their fundamental starting point is going to be hugely instructive to how you design and how you choose library assets. Affordable options are available for example an MXL 990 or AT2020. I would also point out (from years as a live sound tech) that cheap stands and cables are a cost fallacy. Buy mic stands made by known mic companies (AKG, Audio-technica etc) and buy cables with Neutrik connectors. Learning to solder can also be a valuable investment of your time.

There’s some more things you’ll want to acquire as soon as jobs allow. But they are NOT essential. You can be a professional game audio designer without any of the following items. The obvious ones would be:

More Mics

Many more mic types exist, for good reason. Shotguns, contact mics etc etc will allow you to record more things in more places.

Monitor Speakers

Close field monitors are a great target. Properly installed these can give you an acceptable listening environment in an untreated room. But high-end monitoring solutions are probably lost on your home studio. Monitoring LFE/sub is a challenge however. You will need to be very judicious with EQ to make sure you’re controlling those frequencies. Also consider whether you can borrow a sub or hire/borrow a studio to mix your game before shipping with untamed low frequencies. Realistically though, your clients don’t hear these frequencies either. So in the worst case scenario just mix them out and live with it. This is perhaps contentious, but having killer sub-base is not worth keeping under-priviledged folks out of our industry and I will not be convinced otherwise.

More advanced soundcard

If you start to record more then having 96khz recording capability and the ability to record more mics simultaneously will be beneficiall. Be aware that until you have a low-noise space you’ll need to spend some time in RX to get much out of this extra functionality. Same for those nicer preamps if they’re just bringing up your noise floor.

More Plugins and RX

Izotope RX is pretty hard to do without if you want to record more too. It’s not cheap (though there are sales) but get the basic edition and value it over room treatment and mic quality which both cost much much more. Some plugins can help up your quality or save time. Again, do research and focus on learning a few over acquiring a lot.

Field Recording Setup

This should be a stretch goal. I think we all want it. But for value you’ll struggle to compete with indie library recordists. Alternatively, if recording is captivating to you, and you have the resources, consider this approach.

Midi Controllers

A truly great tool that you don’t need. However cheap entries into this category will go a long way to improving your sounds. You truly can start by using your mouse and learning what to automate first, and then buy controllers as you grow into needing them.

I hope that you take away from this some belief in yourself, that if you put the work in it will show. Even if you don’t have the same resources or equipment as others, you can still be considered an equal member of the community. Game audio is a friendly and welcoming place. There are a lot of folks who, if asked specific questions, will gladly take some time to help you out. (Over 100 on Twitter alone) Be humble, be polite, show effort and you will be most welcome. Gear is not the ticket to entry in the game audio community.