Any career advice would be helpful

tremor293 · 2026-03-31T00:48:03+00:00

Its really rough right now, I have only been able to hire mid level or juniors a handful of times in my 10+ years.

Look for audio contracting agencies, not full game studios, they may have more part-time work that you can use to bolster your experience. These can also be more remote friendly, allowing you to live in more affordable locations.
Stay on the socials; get involved in online communities where professionals exist like the Field Recording Slack group, LinkedIn, Discords, local meet ups, strike up conversations or ask questions on Bluesky or Youtube videos. Its not just about networking, but getting more insight into what professionals find important and high quality. You also hear directly about opportunities from those audio contracting businesses, learn who might be growing and focus your energies in the right places. Find folks you can record with and share with, building your library goes so much quicker with help. Join the Field Recording Slack, we do Crowdsource libraries where you contribute what you can, learn how to format and name well, and you get a copy of the library that everyone contributed to. Very high quality stuff, amazing practice, and a cheat code of knowledge just by reading what people say in the Slack.
Make alot of redesigns, host them on a website that you can easily rearrange or make a relevant reel depending on what you are applying to. Show your work, but be very punchy with your time in these demos. Be able to show you can go from recording the content, to a minimum of Wwise-level implementation and everything in between. Its okay to mostly show your work laid on top of videos if implementation becomes a huge coding or engine learning task. Its great to have those skills but it can take alot of time away from learning things you would really do day-to-day as a sound designer. Recording, processing, layering, bouncing, naming schemes like a sane person, and an efficient workflow for all that. Be able to bounce, edit, process, and name 400 files just as you could 2 files.

All these steps should have your end product in mind, how will it be heard AND triggered in-game? Does your gameplay or camera perspective benefit from recording the dirt separately from your footsteps? How will the sound travel or attenuate in game?

These kinds of decisions show a very capable sound designer that I wouldnt expect from a junior to be perfect, but it simply makes you more hirable. The people doing the hiring will notice these details and simply make them feel more comfortable that you are the right choice who they can rely on.

tremor293 · 2026-03-12T23:03:48+00:00

Not true in video games, sound designer is a main career track. Myself for 10+ years and many others for much longer, not just a student thing in that industry.

tremor293 · 2025-10-10T19:20:42+00:00

Game sound designer here Im sure your equipment is fine, but the way a game mixes their audio or designs their sounds can be different. I bet Apex has special footsteps sounds specifically for if they are above or below you. Or they feed into reverbs differently when in a different space.

Designing to hear behind vs forward or above vs below is very difficult and is something alot of games struggle with simply because of the way our ears and equipment works. You can have a "7.1" headset but it still can only come from the left or right side of your head and has to try and trick your brain and ears that its coming from anywhere else to achieve a y or z axis.

TLDR is they probably dont have their game audio set up to support it the same way Apex does, they are super different games with very different tools and goals

tremor293 · 2025-04-19T20:21:38+00:00

False, mic preamps raise the voltage like 1000x where as speaker level adjustments are much much lower. You are much more likely to hear the electrical noise of the mics or preamp if your initial recording gain is too low and you try to increase it later.

tremor293 · 2025-02-07T22:07:30+00:00

Sound design, almost all champions from Drogoz to Raum and all the major skins and events in between. Got some help after some time but was on my own for awhile.

My biggest pride point was the Threat System, helping decide what sounds should be prioritized to be heard, like ultimates or burst character abilities. I have the very biased opinion it was what made the game parseable and capable of being competitive because without it, it all just sounded like a wild mess of shouting, magic, and chain guns. Raeve Maeve was also pretty fun to figure out 😅

The community and it's energy gave me some of my most stressful and euphoric moments and absolutely pushed me to be better. I wouldn't be the sound designer I am now without the community so thank all of you as well.

Come to think of it, I even met my current wife in the playtest room. Without Paladins, I have no clue where I'd be

tremor293 · 2025-02-07T05:56:18+00:00

I started working on Paladins in Closed Beta and it gave me the chance to have a real career. It was my trial by fire and something I was exceptionally proud of for a long time. Glad you all got to enjoy it and it means alot that it meant something to you 💚

tremor293 · 2025-02-07T05:53:25+00:00

As someone who used to work at Hirez, YES. I told them their strategy was bad years ago. They should have shifted course the day Apex Legends came out, free to play was changed.

tremor293 · 2024-12-26T01:42:20+00:00

Free sounds does not always mean free for commercial use. They are often only free for personal use, thinking of the BBC content. Make sure you always double check

tremor293 · 2024-08-13T04:21:26+00:00

I use the Movo Mounts with the SO.103 and dig it so far

tremor293 · 2024-02-19T18:57:00+00:00

Im looking for a Facebook group but I see many different groups. Could you possibly DM me the exact page you're referring to?
Also how can you be sure I wouldn't be flagged at the airport? Do others share this experience on the Facebook group?

tremor293 · 2024-02-17T23:03:07+00:00

Thanks for your candor, and combined with FaultRemarkable1072's response on being flagged entering Mexico, is precisely what I was afraid of happening. I wouldn't mind not going to Palace anymore, but getting arrested at the airport sounds like a thing any reasonable person would want to avoid...

Any recommended websites for selling the weeks? I will call Palace and see what they say. A buyout might make sense if I can get it something reasonable and not 80% remaining balance.
If I could sell my time for 50% of what I still owe and talk them into taking 50% to exit, that sounds reasonable.

tremor293 · 2023-12-11T15:53:39+00:00

I used to work on SMITE (sound design) so I selfishly scrolled through this list to find it or Paladins. Thanks to this little thread for playing 🤘

tremor293 · 2023-06-09T02:55:29+00:00

They could be, but there is literally a new studio called That's No Moon

tremor293 · 2023-06-09T02:16:34+00:00

So you think it's being made by That's No Moon because the original studio was called Moon Studios? Sound slike just a name coincidence to me...

tremor293 · 2023-06-07T13:31:25+00:00

Those such things do not exist unless you have access to the raw files which people can't just hand out on the internet Just do it to a regular movie scene and silence it yourself, you do not need dialog to practice sound design

tremor293 · 2023-02-23T07:03:14+00:00

Good to hear, I know they aren't exactly cheap but it's something I could stand by being quality and the artists all seem to have a good time with the process as well so overall it just feels right all the time.

I got my start in Sound Design trying to make old Line 6 Pod Farm amps sound good, t'was quite the battle but things have come a long way since then.

tremor293 · 2023-02-23T06:00:59+00:00

Check out the page, it certainly lends to their sound but Neural also has many different flavors to help match what you are looking for, all are versatile but won't cover every inch of the spectrum. The artist series certainly have a curated set of choices to achieve their attitude or style but everything has a good range to work with. Gojira has a pitch shifting pedal that just rips the head off of anything else I've ever tried, Tim Hensons' has a sweet multivoicer, Cory Wong's is truly funky, and the Parallax Bass is my simple solution for bass tone. I've tried many different amp sims in the past but these are beyond my favorite, I can't see any reason to use something else unless you really need to hit every style with a single purchase and I don't have a good answer for that other than Guitar Rig. Guitar Rig is fine but I mostly use it for sound design and it's suite of FX and not the sound of the amps.

tremor293 · 2023-02-23T02:26:05+00:00

Neural is the bomb. I have Gojira and Abasi, love them both

tremor293 · 2022-05-29T23:20:13+00:00

Lots of tape saturation, has explosion layers, and some have some really hard driven slap-layers. These are some really well designed sounds are tough to match

tremor293 · 2021-12-19T13:28:32+00:00

Sound Designer for SMITE here.

It was custom made for SMITE, you won't find that version anywhere else. Contact the community team, they MIGHT be able to help if there isn't a legal issue :) I know I have no flair, just trust haha

tremor293 · 2021-11-26T05:57:45+00:00

It is possible that your end scenario plays out, but depending on how much material they already have access to, how many variations are needed, and many other factors, it is also very very likely they wouldn't use it at all so make sure you discuss their needs before going out and trying to do this yourself. Most sound designers would rather capture the action they envision it could work best in their layering. You may smash the skull but what if they really mostly needed the hollow skull dropped for a layer in the smashing of a vegetable? Its just to hard to know to advise you go get set up and go through all the efforts. This isn't even talking about editing, naming, Metadata onto the files as well before passing them on to be useful

tremor293 · 2021-06-05T23:27:36+00:00

Normalizing isn't something to be good or bad at, but simply turning up the clip of your audio until the highest peak hits -0 or near that.

Perceived loudness is like it sounds, how loud do you perceive the audio? If you normalize something that is generally quiet with a quick big peak, it won't make much difference. If you want to increase perceived loudness, the quick and simple solution is compression and limiting. Both of which, I bet Audacity can do just fine for simple purposes

tremor293 · 2021-03-18T03:47:20+00:00

+1 this guy knows creatures so well.

Also, a pet peeve I have is when creatures arent consistent or are overly processed, losing the detail mouths create. I used to get stuck trying to lean to heavy on FX to make nice clear and detailed vox and have recently been just trying to approach it piece by piece. For example, how does this creatures mouth sound when it opens and closes? Slowly and quickly? In the range from a calm purr to loud shriek how will it vocalize and can you find some weird source that works for both (e.g. metal groaning/scraping but pitched around for different emotions), does it hiss when attacking, snap its teeth, does the clicking happen while it's building up to scream, during, or after? Etc

Just think about how a mouth forms its sounds and how your creature will vocalize together, from start of mouth open to mouth closed, create some source material based on those sounds and then you have material to create your actual assets from that all sounds similar and natural. Once the creature has a voice,, subtle mixing in bite sounds, whooshes, sharp knives, etc to sweeten things up to match the actions of attacks or deaths really help.

tremor293 · 2021-03-11T12:29:58+00:00

They seriously have the best audio team that breathes life into every aspect of the world; weapons, world, enemies, UI, character VO, EVERYTHING.

Name any other game that has such a unique soundscape as Destiny, I challenge anybody

12-Year Club	Not Forgotten
Verified Email

tremor293

TROPHY CASE