Improving sound design workflow

[u/MightyMuso]

I think I'm taking too long making sound effects, and I'm wondering how I can speed up my workflow (from foley to final sound) without sacrificing quality.

For example, I recently made a set of 6 gib sfx (2 sounds, 3 variations each, not synced to animation) and it took me somewhere between 6-9 hours. That includes recording all the foley and processing the raw recordings, shaping the sfx, and mixing.

I do know having a library of sounds helps a lot, and I'm steadily building this. Aside from that, how could I improve my workflow

[u/bye-standard]

It truly just comes to practice. Just keep doing it and challenging yourself each time you sit down at your daw. Thats how you get faster. In my free time I’m always tinkering with templates or doing little sound redesigns with small challenges for myself (ie environmental design, elemental magic spells, etc.)

I’ve been designing for 8years, seriously for 4-5 for linear media + games and I’m STILL learning and improving my workflows.

But heed my warning, when it comes to a project/job, you GOTTA just get a SFX or sound to “good enough”. Pull from libraries (purchased or your own) when timing is rough, record more in your free time - not ON a project, build multiple templates, talk with peers, ask questions, etc.

[u/Joevual → u/bye-standard]

Excellent advice. Retain a high standard of quality to the best of your ability. Optimization will gradually come with time, so just budget your projects around those restrictions.

[u/MightyMuso → u/bye-standard]

Really helpful advice, thank you! I should take the time to build my own library outside of jobs. What sounds do you recommend recording to cover most situations?

Also, what about syncing sounds to complex animations?

[u/bye-standard → u/MightyMuso]

I’m actually coming off a project where the top feedback was sync over quality. So I had to do exactly that, nudge by way through every frame to make sure it matched. I almost exclusively work on animation and generally this is assumed, this was the first job though that it was actively brought to my attention.

But if the animation truly is overly complex, break it down to the fundamentals. If it’s a crazy fire blade attack with a bunch of twists or flips, sparks and embers. Just nibble on it.

You’re probably gonna have:

• Fire
• Whoosh (Cloth)
• Whoosh/Swish (Sweetener/Cinematic)
• Impact
• Charge Up (?)

And start building from there. I always stick to a 3-5 layer rule if I can. Though games can be drastically different. If after 3-5 layers, there’s no major different in tonality or sound, I don’t need it. Don’t get caught up in the details.

Re: Building a library - record what you spent the longest time searching for (within reason). For me, I keep a list; mainly of doors, chairs, and small trinkets. But you can never have to many room tones, doors, or machines (fridge, dishwasher, ac, etc.)

[u/BuzzardDogma]

As the other commenter said, the further you can get from asset creation/management the better. Building your own library is good, but don't be afraid to reach into your existing toolbox. It will also make you more flexible and improve your "ear" for sample selection/use possibilities.

[u/ajohnsonsfx]

Yeah adding to this, it's all about making choices quickly. If you imagine all the actions that you need to do to complete a sound, usually the thing that slows you down is just being indecisive. It's a lot easier if you have a clear idea of what you're designing, rather than throwing random stuff at the wall.

That all gets easier with practice, because you know what your options are... But I'm just sayin, if you want to be fast, lock down each step and move on. That's where the speed comes from.

[u/Grepok]

Practice, and learning where you can you can cut corners without losing quality. Also creating repeatable workflows, saving things you know work like patches and presets so you aren’t building everything from the ground up every time.

Also, foley takes a ton of time. Especially without an assistant engineer. If speed is a concern, I’d consider only using it when fully necessary or using it in combination with canned sounds.

Getting more out of your recordings and design will also help you build out more variation. For example I often will make a design my hand, manually editing everything, and then recreate that in a collection of samplers all triggered by the same controller. I’ll add variations and random sample selection to those layers and then play in on a key board hundreds of variations and make slight tweaks to each to quickly build out a larger collection of sounds.

Another useful approach is to separate your design time from your creative time. So where I work, we build sound palettes first before we ever start to trying to make specific designs. Just taking a few days to play with sounds and have fun with it. Then when we go to make our designs, we pull from that library and naturally it’s already going to be pretty close to what you want and on large features especially you can get a lot of mileage and time saved doing than initial exploration.

[u/blackgaff]

What's your current flow? It's hard to offer suggestions on improvement without knowing what you're currently doing

[u/soundmoodboard]

Before changing anything, time each stage on your next set: recording, editing takes, designing, variations, mix. On sets like this the hours usually disappear into cleaning and auditioning raw foley, not the design itself.

Two things cut that a lot. First, slate takes while recording (say the take number out loud, call out the keepers) so editing becomes picking rather than searching. Second, design one full version of each sound, then build the variations from it: keep the core layers, swap one detail layer, shift pitch by one or two semitones and nudge layer offsets by 10 to 30 ms. Render all three from the same session.

You get a consistent set much faster that way, and in-game consistency usually matters more than each variation being completely unique.