How To Supercharge Your Sound Design With A Stream Deck – an essential guide by David Dumais

Interested in using Elgato Stream Deck for sound design? David Dumais – professional sound designer and composer for video games – shares his knowledge on getting started with Stream Deck and making the most of it in your workflow. Dumais works professionally as a freelancer with indie game developers around the world, and he also creates sound packs (available for purchase on A Sound Effect).

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Story by David Dumais, photos courtesy of David Dumais

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If you are a sound designer and want to greatly speed up your workflow, save time, and reduce error in your work, then look no further. The Elgato Stream Deck is the answer you are looking for.

What is the Elgato Stream Deck?

I like to think of the Stream Deck as a super macro pad with an infinite amount of assignable buttons. It’s kind of like a customizable control center for your computer where you quickly access different functions, shortcuts, and commands across any application. It can easily be programmed to do anything from launching applications to executing a series of hotkeys, and even controlling your mouse.

Features:

✓ Assign a key from your keyboard
✓ Assign a hotkey
✓ Assign multiple keys or hotkeys in a sequence
✓ Control mouse position and mouse clicks at the click of a button
✓ Assign a specific series of mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, keyboard clicks and hotkeys
✓ Loop or repeat a certain hotkey a set number of times or infinitely until you tell it to stop

Hopefully this gives you a glimpse as to why this tool is so powerful. My goal with this article is to provide you with some tips and tricks for getting the most out of your Stream Deck as a sound designer.
 

Considerations before incorporating the Stream Deck into your workflow

1. Learning curve

As with all things new, the Stream Deck comes with a learning curve. Fortunately, the software is very intuitive and user-friendly. Programming a button is usually as simple as dragging the desired function from the menu list to the desired button on your Stream Deck. If you are even just a little bit technology inclined, you won’t have an issue here. The true consideration will be the time it takes to set up.

2. Set up time

Here you may want to consider doing a quick time/cost-benefit analysis. Consider asking yourself the following:

What hotkeys/shortcuts do I use in my work?

What tasks do I repeat on a daily basis? Project basis?

What actions do I wish were assignable to a key press?

What I do every once in a while is take mental note of how I spend time during my work day. If there is ever a manual task that I am repeating, I make sure to assign it to my Stream Deck.

Yes, there is the cost of time to set it up, but if it is a task you do on a daily or even consistent basis, the time saved will quickly outweigh the initial setup effort. For example, if you spend a few minutes each day performing a repetitive task, automating it with a Stream Deck button could save you hours over the course of a month or year. This time savings can then be reinvested into more creative or productive aspects of your work. In essence, the initial time investment in setting up your Stream Deck can lead to significant long-term gains in efficiency and workflow optimization.
 

How to use your Elgato Stream Deck

To start assigning actions/functions/commands to buttons on your Stream Deck, you will need to create a profile. A profile is basically a preset for a specific application. For example, I have a profile for when I work in Reaper and another profile for when I work in iZotope RX and yet another profile for when I work in Soundminer. Each profile contains your collection of buttons I have assigned for that application.

As mentioned, assigning certain functions to a button on the Stream Deck is as easy as dragging and dropping the desired action from the list onto the desired button in the Stream Deck software.

Common command functions you’ll probably use

Hotkey: With hotkey, you can assign a keyboard key, key combination (ex: Ctrl+Shft+A), and even virtual keys to a single button on your stream deck.

Multi-Action: Multi-Action is like a folder that can house as many actions as you want. When pressed, it will cycle through all actions in the folder in sequence until complete.

Create Folder: This will create a folder. When pressed, it will unlock a whole new blank page of assignable buttons to your Stream Deck.

Navigation (next page, previous page, go to page, page indicator): Similar to folders, pages are a different way to organize, manage, and navigate your buttons on your Stream Deck.

Super Macro [BarRaider]: This third-party set of plugins can be used to control your mouse position, clicks, and scrolls as well as looping/repeating hotkeys.

– Super Macro: I use to control mouse position, clicks, and scrolls
– Sticky Super Macro: I use for automatically repeating hotkeys
– Sticky Keystroke: I use for automatically repeating keystrokes
– Mouse Location: I use to get the XY coordinates of my mouse across my dual monitor setup. The coordinates can then be used in Super Macro to control mouse position.
– For full documentation, check out the BarRaider website
 

How to organize your profiles

I’m sure there a ton of ways people like to set up their profiles, and I’m sure they will be different based on the application. For my DAW however, I personally like to split my profile into 3 sections.

Reaper DAW – Stream Deck

Top: At the top, I have all my folders for when I am working on a specific task. For example, in Reaper, I have a folder for MIDI, audio, tracks, plugin, sound design, other, and misc.

Bottom: At the bottom, I like to keep my common static buttons so that they do not change across pages or folders. These are hotkeys I use all the time like play/pause from mouse cursor position, play/stop, loop, and record.

Tip: Right click on a button in the stream deck software and select ‘Pin’ to pin a button in its location across folders and pages of its respective profile.

Middle: For the middle section, I house my most used scripts such as nvk_Search, nvk_Variation, nvk_Create, nvk_Autodoppler, nvk_Loopmaker, LKC variator, LKC Render Blocks, FX Permutator as well as open VST on selected track and close all windows.

Tip: Create profiles that are visually similar so that common functions are at the same location across applications and profiles. This will save you time and mental space to not have to relearn profiles between the applications.

For example, if in Reaper you use [Enter] to play audio but in RX [Spacebar], you can assign both to a button that is at the same location in both your Reaper profile and RX profile. Or perhaps you use [Ctrl+Enter] to open the export window in Reaper, but [Ctrl+E] to open the export window in RX. You can assign each of these hotkeys to the same button but on their respective profiles. In this example, if you keep your export button in the same place across profiles, you don’t need to remember the specific hotkey for each application. For me, my export button is always at the top left across all applications, so when I’m ready to export, whether in RX or Reaper or even when I’m editing video, I know to go for the top left button on my stream deck.

RX Profile – SFX Page

Another Tip: Color code your folders. Keep all buttons in each folder the same color or shade of the same color. This helps not only keep your buttons visually pleasing and organized, but also keeps certain colors assigned to certain tasks.
 

My most used Shortcuts/Hotkeys for my DAW

1. Load scripts: My most used Stream Deck shortcut is probably to load scripts in Reaper by assigning hotkeys to scripts both in Reaper and the Stream Deck.

2. Insert Plugins: Another common use is to insert plugins on to selected tracks or selected items in Reaper. Here’s how you can do that.

a) Save your selected insert fx (or fx chain) as a preset

b) Search for saved FX preset

c) Right-Click and select ‘Create Shortcut’

d) Assign the fx preset to a shortcut

e) Assign that same shortcut to a hotkey in your Stream Deck

3. Loops for cutting and trimming multiple items: Recently I have been using the BarRaider Sticky Super Macro to loop through a set of shortcuts I have assigned in Reaper for editing multi-mic field recordings. Here’s how it works.

a) In Reaper’s action list, assign a shortcut to Item navigation: Select and move to next item

b) In Reaper’s action list, assign a shortcut to Item navigation: Move cursor right to edge of item

c) In Reaper’s action list, assign a shortcut to Item edit: Trim right edge of item to edit cursor

d) In Stream Deck, drag Sticky Super Macro by BarRaider

e) Under the ‘Macro:’ section, click the ‘capture’ button to capture keystroke

f) Capture your assigned shortcut for Item navigation: Move cursor right to edge of item

g) Capture your assigned shortcut Item navigation: Move cursor right to edge of item

h) Capture your assigned shortcut for to Item edit: Trim right edge of item to edit cursor

i) Set the delay to around 60ms

Now your button is ready. You can edit just 1 track and then run this script to clean up the rest of the microphone tracks.

Check out David Dumais’s Helpful Stream Deck Video: ‘Best Productivity Tool for Sound Designers?’

My most used Shortcuts/Hotkeys for RX by iZotope

1. Export regular: This exports the audio file to the same folder it was loaded from and overwrites the file.

a) Select all

b) Open export window

c) Press Enter

d) Delay 150ms

e) Press Enter

f) Press Enter

g) Go to next tab

2. Export Field Recordings: This opens the export window and selects 24-bit from the bit depth drop down menu. It then confirms all export settings by pressing enter. Now we choose file location (which is the same as where the file was loaded from) and file name. For the file name, I add ‘(edited)’ to the end of the file name to note that it was edited in RX. Finally, the file is exported.

a) Open export window

b) Press Enter

c) Delay 100ms

d) Mouse to bit depth drop down

e) Mouse selects bit depth drop down menu

f) Mouse selects 24-bit

g) Press Enter

h) Delay 200ms

i) Right button

j) Spacebar

k) Adds text ‘(edited)’

3. Close All Tabs: This closes all files. If files were edited, a popup window shows up asking if you would like to save the file. It then selects ‘No’ and enter for each of the files in RX.

a) Close all files

b) Right button

c) Enter

d) Repeat Step 2 & 3 fifteen more times

Steam Deck Plugins you may find interesting:

• Cubase
• Discord
• Midi
• Mouse Control by VIVRE-MOTION
• Mouse Simulator by VIVRE-MOTION
• Nuendo
• OBS
• Slack
• Super Macro [BarRaider]
• Twitch
• Unity for MacOS
• Unity for Windows

Check out all available plugins at: Elgato Marketplace

Where to go from here

If you want to test the Stream Deck to see if it’s right for you, you can download the Stream Deck Mobile for iOS for free and get started with up to 6 buttons. For those on Android, you can download the app for a 30-day free trial.

If you want to purchase the Elgato Stream Deck, you can do so on Amazon or at Elgato.com.

If you’re looking for different functionality, consider checking out the Stream Deck + which comes with knobs and a touch slider. There’s also the Stream Deck pedal which you can use with your feet.

Consider checking out the Elgato Marketplace for tons of free plugins, profiles (you don’t have to manually program everything – others have done the work for you), sounds, icons, and more.

A big thanks to David Dumais for sharing his top tips for sound designing with Elgato Stream Deck! You can find David’s sound packs here on A Sound Effect.

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