5 sound design-focused YouTube channels worth following

AKASH THAKKAR

Akash Thakkar is an award winning composer/sound designer/public speaker who specializes in video game sound. He has an amazing backlog of short, focused sound tutorials that are a lot of fun to watch. Not only does he do great sound design but he also gives great career advice so you should also subscribe to his newsletter!

Notable videos:
Video Game Sound Design – 4 Essential Techniques
Making Horror Ambiences
Free Sound Design Tools

ROBERT DUDZIC

Robert Dudzic is a sound designer for Hollywood movie trailers (Infinity War!) as well as music libraries such as DAMAGE which he co-produced alongside Heavyocity and Native Instruments. Among his other videos, his “How I Use What I Use” series is a hands on, detailed look at how Robert records and manipulates his sounds. It looks like he’s just getting started bringing great educational content so let him know you want more!

Notable videos:
Creating organic drones
How I Use What I Use 4 – Horror trailer sound design
How I Use What I Use 5 – My creative process

INDEPTH SOUND DESIGN

Indepth Sound Design deconstructs film/TV sound (from the actual stems!) so that you can examine the intricate layers that go into quality sound design. There are also commentary layers so you can hear the various sound designers and re-recording mixers go into detail about how the different sounds and mixes were created. If you’re familiar with the Indepth Instagram page then you’ll be happy to know the YouTube videos are much higher quality and also feature 4K UHD picture.

Notable videos:
The Dark Knight Rises – “The Bat” aircraft sound design deconstruction
Terminator 2 – T-800 vs T-1000 sound design deconstruction
The Bourne Identity – Car chase sound design deconstruction
The Social Network – Trent Reznor vs. Elvis Costello music and sound design
 

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1

Gamemaster Pro Sound Collection

$45

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Toys

$28 $22

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Real Snakes

$15

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Animal Sounds

$15

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Latest releases:  

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  Environments Head West Play Track 57+ sounds included, 133 mins total $29.99

  Nature and ambiance recordings across Ohio, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming.

  Including the Great Lakes, meadows, the Dakota Badlands (Both North and South) Wyoming mountains, Yellowstone geysers and mud pots, Bison, Prairie dogs, and birds.

  Take a 2000 mile aural road trip across the Midwest and west.

  Gear Used: Recorded with a Sound Devices 702, Tascam DR680, and Zoom H1, using Sennheiser MKH 30/40 Mid Side, Sennheiser MKH 20 spaced omnis, Sennheiser MKH8040 ORTF and XY, Sanken CSS5.

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  Environments Singapore City Soundscapes Play Track 122 sounds included, 327 mins total $50 $39

  Welcome to A Sound Effect first ever Singapore Sound Effects library!

  Explore Singapore as you've never heard it before! This massive library includes ambisonic sounds recorded with the new Zoom H3 VR, binaural recordings with the Soundman OKM II Rock Studio and stereo soundscapes recorded with the Zoom F8n, DPA 4060 and several LOM microphones.

  The diversity of Singapore makes this library unique with lush sounds from busy highways, crowded food markets/ hawker centers in many different languages, neighborhood basketball games at night, skateparks, horse races, city rain sounds, the countries super efficient underground train station (MRT), and even loud military fighter jets and helicopters.

  Perhaps you're wanting nature sounds? No problem! This library features sounds from a variety of cicadas recorded at night and birds from the famous Javan Mynah near Mount Faber.

  With nearly six hours of recordings throughout Singapore, we suggest reviewing the metadata and discovering sounds you may not have expected!

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  Game Audio Packs & Bundles WW Audio SFX Sampler Pack, Vol 1 – General SFX Play Track 90 sounds included $38

  The first in a series of WW Audio SFX Sample Packs. This is Volume 1 – General SFX and contains 90 high quality, professional random, sometimes eclectic sound effects for your theatre or film projects.

  ​Sounds include, Airbus A380 flying overhead, ancient well handle, audience applause, bar bell, bbq, fireworks, spooky walking with chains, various sound design elements, footsteps, various birds, wind and rain, motor bike starting and driving off, metal door unlocking and opening, police helicopter, radio interference, sledging, comedy farts and burps, various domestic foley sounds, footsteps and much more.

  ​All files include Soundminer, ID3v2.3.0 and Riff Info metadata embedded into the files to make for easy searching in your database of choice.

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  Foley Realistic Snow Footsteps Play Track 347 sounds included, 4 mins total $30

  Mini pack of natural snow foley! Frozen type, individual sounds. Cleaned and gated, ready for fast usage.

  Few useful sound effects sets of realistic snow footsteps. Non-classic sounding, frozen type snow of ski slopes and paths. Included bonus walking on the snowy wooden bridge. Individual, cleaned and gated footsteps with clarity. Sounds are fully without clothing noises, usage with people moving foley is recomended, so it is pretty universal and elastic.

  Recorded with Sennheiser MKH 416 from 40cm distance. Great usage for foley sampling, midi, game audio and more.

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  Animals & Creatures Mutant Insects – Flying Play Track 477+ sounds included $69 $41.40

  Red Libraries teamed up with the sound designers Frederic Devanlay and Thibault Csukonyi to create the new “Mutant Insects” collection

  The library gathers a wide range of oversized wings for equally-oversized designed flying insects, along with an extremely rich toolbox. It allows you to quickly and easily create every flying creatures and mutants you have in mind, but also sweeten or emphasize details with natural layers for real-life documentaries, games or feature films.

  These insects are more impressive than in real life by their size and the noise made when flying.
  So we called them “MUTANT Insects”.
  And why not also use it for bird wings…

  8 different species are featured : Fly, Hornet, Grasshopper, Beetle, Moth, Gnat, Rhino Beetle, Dragonfly.

  The movements offered are Idles (loop), Passes by, Swirling Evolutions (loop), Swarms (loop), Abrupt Movements (take flights, attacks, spasms…)

  These evolutions have been created with the help of the Traveler plugin by Tonsturm, and the Sound Particles software by Sound Particles.

  Presets for Sound Particles and Traveler are included in the pack. Many thanks to Tilman Hahn and Nuno Fonseca.

  The toolbox will allow to imagine your own mutants or to just simply create real insects, With natural layers such as hummings or different appearances to made wing strokes.

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SYNTHHACKER

If you want to be a well rounded sound designer then you’ve gotta know your way around a synthesizer. Synths can give you ominous textures and 808 kick drums that can help your gunfire sounds pack a wallop. SynthHacker makes hyper focused synth design tutorials that cover a wide variety of styles. So watch that Justice style nu disco pad tutorial and then go make some serene sci-fi drones.

Notable videos:
How to make deep organic pad sounds
How to make Strangers Things style synths
How to make a Blade Runner synth lead

MARSHALL MCGEE

Marshall McGee is a sound designer at Avalanche Games that also makes videos about sound design for games, film, and TV (mostly games). His videos discuss how some iconic video games sounds are made as well as going into his own personal sound design experiments. Many of his posts have a video essay style feel and are extremely well edited and easy to watch.

Notable videos:
The sound design secrets of Horizon Zero Dawn
Making a powerful punch sound from scratch
The sounds of Uncharted