Sound Design Basics

Here I am organizing some advice on the basics of sound design. This page is in progress. If there is a particular sub-page that you urgently need information on, contact me and I'll try to update it quickly.

1. what is sound?
2. digitization of sound
3. reading waveforms, frequency domain representations
4. headphones
5. ear safety
6. a basic workflow for recording and editing
7. recording with a smartphone
8. recording with a hand-held recorder
9. getting the right levels when recording
10. speakers and acoustics
11. coiling cables
12. amplitude
13. envelopes
14. file formats, lossy versus lossless
15. frequency
16. microphones
17. mixing boards
18. physical (meatspace) filters
19. processing sound with effects
20. music
21. recording voice when you don't have a professional vocal booth (DIY isolation, etc.)
22. Ardour
23. EQ
24. compression and limiting
25. an introduction to mixing
26. fixing a mix
27. mastering
28. six common mistakes in audio editing

1. synthesis basics
2. jsfxr: synthesizing sound effects in the browser

1. some things to try in sound design

1. the presence of sound
2. the aesthetics of effects
3. suspend judgment, or avoid prejudgment
4. listening to your environment
5. how to give a useful critique
6. Why process sound?
7. dynamics
8. mickey mousing

1. legal issues
2. UX sound design
3. sound for games
4. sound for video
5. easy generative music for your game or sound
6. using a storyboard

1. how to zip files

Audacity homepage: https://www.audacityteam.org/

Audacity manual: https://manual.audacityteam.org/index.html

basic audacity tutorial:

1. getting files into Audacity
2. adjusting the volume after recording
3. adding an envelope
4. noise reduction
5. noise gate
6. looping sounds
7. viewing a frequency-domain representation of sound in Audacity
8. applying effects in Audacity
9. sample rates in Audacity
10. using the filter curve EQ in Audacity
11. adding tracks in Audacity

Audacity tutorials provided in their documentation: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorials_for_audacity.html

quick guide: https://zoomcorp.com/media/documents/E_H4n_Pro_QuickGuide.pdf

manual: https://www.zoom.co.jp/sites/default/files/products/downloads/pdfs/E_H4nSP_0.pdf

h4n pro, intro on how to use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAFsAAVBoC0

zoom, batteries, and power

article with advice on setting up the zoom with one mic: https://www.sam-mallery.com/2020/07/how-to-use-one-microphone-with-the-zoom-h4n-pro-and-tascam-dr-40x/