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

Pass-By: Fun Rides

$30.50

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Animal Hyperrealism Vol II

$170

3

WW2 Weapons: German & US

From: $25

4

Polarity

$90

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Latest releases:  

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  Foley Switch Play Track 124 sounds included $20

  124 recordings of various switches and buttons, flipped, pressed and clicked. This collection contains household light and lamp switches, radio buttons and a variety of other activate and click presses.

  Recorded in 2018 and 2019 with a stereo shotgun microphone.

  All sounds were recorded and edited at 24-bit / 96Khz resolution and mastered to broadcast quality, with only the best final sounds selected for this collection. Each audio file includes embedded meta-data.

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  Whooshes Effective Trailer Risers Play Track 106 sounds included, 26 mins total $34.99

  Over 100 cinematic riser effects and epic buildups featuring distorted synths, eerie whispers, sci-fi glitches, hardcore guitars, dramatic reverses, drilling leads, and profoundly evolving textures. This original library is from the personal collection of trailer music composer Federico Soler Fernández (“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” – “Middle Earth: Shadow of War” – “Halloween – 2018” – “The Predator 2018”)

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  Animals & Creatures Botswana Play Track 49+ sounds included, 136 mins total From: $60

  Botswana Faunethic sound library is a unique collection of 49 sounds recorded through several national parks of the country (Okavango, Chobe,…). All these sounds has been recorded and produced with high quality equipment in multichannel.

  This collection offers a wide diversity of soundscapes and animals sounds such as:

  -Bush, savanna and forest soundscapes.
  -Hippopotamus grunt and vocals.
  -Elephants vocals, showering and drinking.
  -Zebras and impalas fighting.
  -Lion chasing an elephant during one night.
  -Birds and insects at different perspectives.
  -Villages
  

  If you want to hear more about this field recording trip, feel free to check this post.
  The multichannel version contains 40 tracks in native 4.0 and 9 tracks recorded in stereo only.

  This library provides authentic and interesting sounds, recorded with DPA, MBHO and Neumann mics powered by an Aeta 4minX.
  All Faunethic tracks includes metadata carefully edited, compatible with Soundminer, Soundly and Basehead.

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  City Life Shenzhen Play Track 53 sounds included, 266 mins total $39.99 $19.99

  Shenzhen is the first ever sound library of the Silicon Valley of China. Jzoo Sound invites you on the first ever audiological journey to the unique locations in Shenzhen that only locals know.

  This is a unique collection of sounds captured of various atmospheres at different times of the day. From energetic local farmer’s market, to howling subway tubes, to local middle school performance day, to old alleyways of a forgotten part of town.

  The library also contains many rhythmic elements, such as meat chopping, construction hammering, and ominous beeps. Not to mention the echoing Chinese announcements between two schools, and the cacophony of crying and construction in a forgotten alley. I hope this library will even meet your sound design needs, and ultimately show you a local and unique side of China.

  All recorded in 24 bit/96 kHz. Some recordings contain detail information above 20khz. The library is passionately described emotive words, and all the recordings are fully tagged with metadatas compatible with Soundminer, Basehead and Soundly.

  Gear Used: Roland R26, four channel built-in microphones (OMNI and XY), four channels merged down to a stereo file.

  Shoot me an email if you have any questions: shiheng_xu@emerson.edu

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  Drones & Moods Twisted Reality – Drones & Other Worlds Play Track 50 sounds included $40 $20

  Twisted Reality – Drones & Other Worlds, brings you 50 dark, twisted, ominous and magical drones / underscores for all your sound design needs. Perfect to create that unworldly atmosphere in your theatre show, film or game. Made from original field recordings and twisted into something quite different, the styles vary from monotone drone to full soundscape. All styles covered from, the condemned man's last walk, to the Snow Queen's, Ice Palace, and with most of the files over 3 mins, there should be plenty there to cover your scene.

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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