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good software for sound design and editing recorded sounds


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my brother and I are working on a game. sound effects and music is left up to me. Im not sure where to start when it comes to sound effects. Im looking for something that I can change recorded sounds, such as slow them down, morph them together, ect. Im also looking for something that I can make sounds from scratch. the only software I have thats slightly useful for editing already recorded sounds, is cubase. but Im looking for something thats more for sound design, and editing sound effects, not instruments. any suggestions for software?

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Check out Audacity for the sound editing side. Free software that has quite a lot of features (even more in the beta version). I'm doing a lot of sound effect design right now myself and it's been invaluable to me.

As far as creating sounds, it depends. You're going to be looking at synthesizers or other sound generators - generally stuff that's found in something like Cubase. Never hurts to do some research on how to create/record sounds in the real world to help what you're doing, assuming you've got the hardware to do so.

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Check out Audacity for the sound editing side. Free software that has quite a lot of features (even more in the beta version). I'm doing a lot of sound effect design right now myself and it's been invaluable to me.

As far as creating sounds, it depends. You're going to be looking at synthesizers or other sound generators - generally stuff that's found in something like Cubase. Never hurts to do some research on how to create/record sounds in the real world to help what you're doing, assuming you've got the hardware to do so.

audacity doesnt have the quality that Im looking for. cubase is useful but I really hate the feel of the software. things that should be right in front/easy to find are in some little sub menu. its like photoshop vs. fireworks. fireworks has all the main tools so easy to find and use, and photoshop has them in some hard to find sub menu. Im looking for a powerful user friendly software. this game is comming out amazing, and I feel obligated to have it with awesome sounds.

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audacity doesnt have the quality that Im looking for

Haha, what? Audacity does a perfectly fine job of slowing stuff down.

its like photoshop vs. fireworks.

That's probably the worst comparison ever.

Im looking for a powerful user friendly software.

Any audio software is hard to learn because it's an extensive tool that depends on a certain philosophy and a set of conventions.

It depends a bit on which version of Cubase you have, but what you have to keep in mind is that people who use Cubase have been either using it since it came out on the Atari or have enough studio experience to understand the jargon used.

Furthermore, droves of people claim they want to switch to Cubase because it's more professional or whatever misguided idea they have after working for a year in (the perfectly capable) FL Studio. Then their work sucks for 6 months because they've got to re-learn everything, and they either return after a short while or push on.

I myself have dumped Cubase in favor of Ableton Live. This is in no way a guarantee that Ableton Live is going to work better for you, but they've got a fully function 14-day demo on the site so try it out yourself. If it's SX3 you have, I understand the pain; Ableton's a lot faster.

this game is comming out amazing, and I feel obligated to have it with awesome sounds.

Then hire people or convince 'm to make music for your game. You're not going to crank out absolute amazingness in a short timeframe if that's what you have in mind.

There's no device that makes things magically awesome for you. There are however a number of pretty expensive software sample libraries that are pretty awesome by themselves. Spectrasonics Atmosphere and ReFX Nexus come to mind.

http://refx.com/?lang=en&page=products/nexus/expansions

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audacity doesnt have the quality that Im looking for. cubase is useful but I really hate the feel of the software. things that should be right in front/easy to find are in some little sub menu. its like photoshop vs. fireworks. fireworks has all the main tools so easy to find and use, and photoshop has them in some hard to find sub menu. Im looking for a powerful user friendly software. this game is comming out amazing, and I feel obligated to have it with awesome sounds.

Sounds like you're unhappy with what you can crank out with the work-flow you've established... that sucks... I hate feeling that way :sad:. Most DAW's are 3ft long and about 100 Miles deep; easy to learn, long time to master. If you want to build your FX's up from the ground you're probably gonna need to run around with the mic and do some Foley artist work. If the game is sorta Sci-Fi you can probably get away with murder for synthesizing sounds. I would try running your sounds through a sampler (any ADSR gate equivalent) and messing with the values... it might be really cool what happens when a pencil click is sustained for 4 secs... then pitch that up/down 5 semitones you might have something cool... or not.

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what yoozer doesnt uderstand is that Im looking for software that is primarily for sound design, not music. I already have experience with music.

with music, the software I got used to is FL studio. I learned how to use it very fast. these days I use FL just to compose and write out the music, and I use other VST softwares for the synths and samples.

slowing down the sounds was probably a bad example on my part. I cant think of a good example at the moment, but take a look at this infinity ward into...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT1JBpR4Hps

"Any audio software is hard to learn..."

FL studio wasnt. user friendly does not mean its not powerfull. what I meant by that was a software thats easy to get its basics down. thats why I was compared photoshop and fireworks. two very similar softwares, but fireworks is much easier to learn . And because of the way fireworks is layed out, it makes it a lot more efficiant to work with.

Omnisphere does sound pretty cool though for the music side, and possibly some of the sound effects. the music style I have in mind is fusion between orchistra, rock, and electro. though Im going to wait before most of the game is done before I start composing music for it.

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what yoozer doesnt uderstand is that Im looking for software that is primarily for sound design, not music.

I do understand. There's no specific software for sound design in that sense. The closest you'd get would be software that supports full surround so you can pan the sound effects around the speakers, but if you're not dealing with those kind of things, sound design is a matter of layering, panning, automating, cutting up, etc.

Audacity's capability to layer can already do this for you; it's just that using synthesizers is going to be easier in a sequencer instead of just a wave editor.

http://theheartcore.com/megathread/future_jet_engine.mp3 was done with a few synthesizers in Live. http://theheartcore.com/music/kirbyfx.mp3 was done by resampling an audio track in Live and putting it back in Simpler (Live's sampler) again.

That good enough? ;)

There's no reason to not use FL Studio for this unless the workflow is holding you back. It's just that merging, resampling, dealing with audio tracks that don't fit in patterns works better for me in Live.

Omnisphere does sound pretty cool though for the music side, and possibly some of the sound effects. the music style I have in mind is fusion between orchistra, rock, and electro. though Im going to wait before most of the game is done before I start composing music for it.

Orchestra means an orchestral sample library. Rock means you playing guitars. Electro means building patterns with drumcomputers.

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That good enough? ;).

yes that is thank you!

I dont need anything past stereo. the surround will be in the engine itself.

Orchestra means an orchestral sample library. Rock means you playing guitars. Electro means building patterns with drumcomputers.

yep I know. I have all that covered.

heres a quick concept I made a few months back, of the general direction I want the music to be like. I want it to be similar to this but with more synthesizers.

note that I made it in one session, so its very repeditive...

stats.png

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