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
 

Popular on A Sound Effect right now - article continues below:

 

1

SFX & Atmospheres Bundle

$129.50 $30

2

MOVES

$115 $89

3

Essential Bodyfalls

$24

4

Fairgrounds

$37

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Latest releases:  

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  Foley Vintage Telephones Play Track 244 sounds included $39 $25

  Vintage Telephones SFX library contains 244 sounds extracted from 10 historic, rotary dial devices designed between the 1880s and 1980s. Inside, you’ll find three common ringing patterns (used in the USA, Australia, and Europe) for each telephone type, handset pickups/set downs, number dials 1-0, hook toggles, as well as single ringings with natural long ring decays to design your own ring timings according to your project needs.

  In addition to the standard telephone sounds, we captured some experimental ones, which were generated by feeding the devices with random low frequencies, thus producing some really weird mechanical rattles, buzzes, glitches, and unusual bell ringings.

  THE FOLLOWING 10 TELEPHONES WERE RECORDED

  • 3 Box Phone [1882]
  • Antique Wooden Phone [1930]
  • Siemens W48 Wandapparat [1934]
  • Ericsson DBH15 [1947]
  • Siemens W48 [1948]
  • Siemens Fg Stat 23a [1956]
  • Siemens H70 [1968]
  • Siemens FeTap 611-2 [1970]
  • Siemens H70 [1975]
  • Siemens Masterset 111 [1980]
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  Destruction & Impact Trailer Elements 3 Play Track 712 sounds included $109

  Dive into a new world of trailer sounds.

  TH Studio Production presents you our new sample library, the 'Trailer Elements 3' Sound FX Toolkit Library.

  Fresh new sound design sounds for trailers , video games and movies. Inspired by the sound of the latest Hollywood trailers, the library delivers 3 GB Content of (712 sounds), custom-made for trailers. It also features a version for Kontakt 5.6.6 (with 38 Kontakt instruments), as well as a WAV version.

  Elements include:
  Boom • Bass • Braams • Braams pulse • Clocks pulse • Downers • Guitars • Dark Hits • Hits • Short Hits • Kicks • Low pulse, Mid Pulse • Pads • Pianos • Pings, Rises • Synth Pulse

  + a Legato Vocal instrument, featuring the voice of Bulgarian singer Vladislava Hristozova

  Add to cart
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  Environments Christmas Play Track 165+ sounds included $17.40

  Christmas time. The time of the year everybody calms down and settles. The period is also dominated by a lot of festivities, shopping and winter actions.
  To bring you the christmas cheer, this library includes a broad variety of musical instruments, city ambiences, foleys and ready to use scenes.
  Merry christmas!

  Add to cart
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  Horror Essential Sound – Darkness And Fear Play Track 100+ sounds included, 22:55 mins total $45 $40

  It’s my pleasure to introduce you to this dense library of accomplished and cacophonous sounds. This is a dramatic and horror filled library, teaming with tension and ghostly ambience, stingers and hits.
  Most of these sounds have been used in film and television in one form or another. They’re more than just “designy sounds”.

  These are intended to create a score of tension that can help you build a scene to it’s full potential. These sounds add movement within the soundtrack, especially with the drones. When creating sounds, I like to inject some sort of movement within the sound itself, so that it’s never stagnant or ‘still’ sounding.

  So if you’re looking to notch your project up a level with dark, moody and expressive design, this is a good bet for you. Hopefully you’ll have as much inspiration as I did when creating these.

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  Motorcycles Vespa 1962 – 125CC Play Track 100+ sounds included $50 $35

  This sound collection covers a wide range of sounds produced by the Vintage 125CC motorcycle Vespa 1962 . All sounds recorded with high end equipment – 24 bit and 96KHz
  All the files are mono. The stereo impression in the demo is created by means of panning.

  In this collection of high quality sound-recordings you’ll find several tandem and multitrack recordings. Please note that phasing issues between the MKH 8070 and the DPA4061’s are perfectly normal because of fluctuating time differences. The 4061’s are always onboard, fixed and in phase in contrast to the MKH8070 which was handheld on the roadside or handheld pointing at the exhaust while driving along as a passenger.

  Besides that also important to note:
  The 5 LOOPED SOUNDS are not unique. They
  are edits from the larger driving sounds. I just put these in for your convenience should you
  quickly need some loops for your project. This is also true for one of the the Revs soundfiles.
  (Heavy revs) I thought I just cut this one too for your convenience to quickly have a list of all
  relevant revs in this library. So those six soundfiles are the only double content.

  Equipment:
  Recorders

  • Sound Devices Mixpre 6
  • Zoom H5

  Microphones

  • Sennheiser MKH8070 (handheld for tracking at roadside and handheld onboard pointing at exhaust for extra perspective in addition to 4061's
  • DPA 4061 (2 x mono: exhaust and engine)

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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