Hello, I’m curious about the really tiny sounds, such as equipping a weapon or ring/accessories, picking up loot, coins dropping, moving something in an inventory, opening something, a rare item dropping, etc.
I’m particularly interested in sounds you still remember years later, or just some good dopamine-hitting sound effects that makes you want to keep playing the game.
Many thanks.

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Hello! Could you please share your thoughts on job state in game/mobile/gambling audio?

I keep seeing the same companies looking for Sound Designers/Music Composers for months and months. Sometimes it’s the exact same position, posted by the same HR person, and then it gets closed and reopened a month later.

It honestly makes me wonder: is it really that difficult to find the right person for these positions or they just grabbing on test tasks?

I recently did a test task that took me literally 5(!) working days to complete. It included several music loops and sound design for different scenes. Before that, I also had an hour-long conversation with HR. In the end, they rejected me without any real feedback — just the typical “there were some things we liked, and things we don`t like” (Like literally they were using this exact phrase! They didn`t told me what they "Liked" and "didn`t Liked"!).

And the strange thing is that I had already seen this exact vacancy open for several months.

So what is actually going on here? Are companies really looking for unbelievably skilled professionals who have to be a perfect match for the position, or are some companies simply collecting test tasks from candidates?

I know a guy who opened an audio position and received around 60 people willing to do his test task within a few days of posting this job! Everyone agreed to do a test task which were creating sound design for FINISHED 30 second animation!

So do You think that this is so UNBELIAVEBLY HARD to find right guy for this job or companies just bs everyone and just take it all?

Thanks for your answers!

I have been asked to create some SFX for a game. First time doing this for a paid gig. I have no idea how much to charge. They have to be semi elaborate but nothing too complex. What is everyone charging for solely SFX creations?

Hello all! Long-time audiophile/composer here looking to get into game dev. I’m currently working on a project prototype where I need genuinely CC0/public domain audio (not just “royalty-free,” which usually still comes with its own restrictions). I’m building something that triggers individual samples directly rather than baking them into a finished mix, so I need sources with zero ambiguity on that front.

So far I’ve found Versilian Studios Chamber Orchestra Community Edition and (obviously) freesound.org.

What CC0 sources/samples do you rely on? And where’d you find them? Especially interested in anything choir/vocal, but happy to hear about anything good. Trying to build out a solid list for future projects too.

Thanks!

Hi everyone, I'm a sound engineering student, and I want to learn game audio. I've seen a lot of sound designer job postings on LinkedIn, but I can't apply because I don't know FMOD yet. I wanted to ask: Is FMOD difficult to learn, and how many months does it usually take to learn it?

Thanks

Hello people, i'm making a 2d game where you are an armadillo that can become a ball and roll around the levels, i need to make or find a good looping ball rolling sound, i'm really new to sound design in videogames so i don't have any idea on how to make something similar.
Hope someone can help me.

hey everybody! long time producer/composer here, again trying to dip my toes in interactive audio, doing the whole FMOD + wwise courses and whatnot.

Just wanted to ask for recommendations for games you consider great examples for interactive music (and interactive audio as second priority) - games I've been playing lately all feature really good music but not much in the "wow, it changes with your gameplay" field. Essentially, I want to see how do real life composers apply the stuff the courses teach.

Thank you very much in advance!

Problem 1 is whether the engine even reads your loop points. WAV keeps them in the smpl chunk, OGG uses LOOPSTART/LOOPLENGTH vorbis comments, and support is all over the place. Godot reads smpl natively. Unity actually reads it too, which surprised me (undocumented, and the default vorbis import wrecks it, which is why everyone says it doesn't work). Unreal ignores smpl but reads cue markers sample-accurately. RPG Maker reads the OGG tags. FMOD and Wwise don't care about the file, you loop inside the project.

Problem 2 is the one that gets you after the markers are perfect: the tail. The last bar is still ringing when the playhead jumps back. That decay gets chopped, and the dry attack of the loop start lands right where the ring-out should have been. Sounds like a gap even though the samples are contiguous. Loop points can't fix it because it's not a loop point problem, it's just what happens when one playhead wraps.

Two ways I know to deal with it. Run two voices, where the old pass rings past the loop end while the new pass starts. Wwise does this out of the box with post-exit audio on a music segment. FMOD can do it with a transition timeline and the tail as an async instrument, which FMOD's own QA has called not very discoverable. In plain Unity/Godot/web you schedule it yourself against the DSP clock. Or you bake the tail into the head of the file, so a plain one-voice loop carries its own ring-out. That works anywhere including RPG Maker and GameMaker, with the tradeoff that the very first pass plays a tail from a pass that never happened. Dense mixes hide it, sparse intros don't.

Happy to answer questions about any of these setups.

Game Sound Related Blogs

Updated March 2022

Welcome to the subreddit feature post for Game Audio industry and related blogs and podcasts. If you know of a blog or podcast or have your own that posts consistently a minimum of once per month, please add the link here and we'll put it in the roundup. The current roundup is;

Subreddit Helpful Hints: Mobile Users can view this subreddit's sidebar at /r/GameAudio/about/sidebar. Use the safe zone sticky post at the top of the sub to let us know about your own works instead of posting to the subreddit front page. For SFX related questions, also check out /r/SFXLibraries. When you're seeking Game Audio related info, be sure to search the subreddit or check our wiki pages;

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I hace recently gotten into composing for games and am participating in my second game jam. I need some advice on how to loop music effectively. I dont know any middleware yet so I am relying on the programmers to input it into our small game for the game jam where time is already limited. How can I bounce my track so that it loops effectively? Do I bounce it with the audio tail at the end or have it cut off right at the end? Any tips on how to go about this and how it works?

Hello!

I'm trying to find the best way to export music tracks without creating duplicate files.

For example, let's say I have three sections (Explore, Combat, and Boss) and three instrument groups (Drums, Bass, and Synths). In my DAW, I organize them into three columns (Explore, Combat, Boss), each containing those three instrument groups.

Here's the problem: only the drums and bass change between sections, while the synths stay the same. I can create cycle markers and export all the tracks at once, but that would result in exporting the exact same synth track three times.

I'm using Cubase. I don't know if other DAWs offer a better way to export only selected regions, but I have to keep track of which tracks actually need to be exported (a typical song contains far more than just three tracks).

Has anyone run into the same issue, or found a good workflow for this?

Market so saturated that you even have to compete against 100 people to write an OST for free, so how do you even get opportunities to practice doing it?

Not asking how to get jobs, it’s really about how to get practice.

Sitting down and coming up with ideas for asset packs isn’t the same…

Not looking for networking, game jams or coming up with fictional ideas myself.

I know networking is important but currently I don’t have time and energy for that, I just want to practice.

Hi guys! I was wondering if there is any definitive roadmap guide to audio programming? I want to work on game audio and would really appreciate any guidelines that might help me land a gig in more of technical aspects than creative ones.

Hello!

I'm using Wwise, and creating music playlists with a large number of randomized tracks.

For example, I have a Music Playlist Container with four Music Segments. Each segment contains around eight Music Tracks, and each track is set to Random Step and can select from up to eight different layers or variations (see screenshots). I set it up this way so that the music keeps evolving and rarely repeats the same combination of tracks.

My question is: how much could this setup affect CPU performance?

The Wwise documentation mainly discusses CPU issues such as voice starvation when too many voices are playing at once. In this case, it's just random selection.

I’ve also checked the Profiler, but I’m not entirely sure how to interpret the results. Can anyone give some feedback?

Thanks!

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If this pertains to your own website, then it goes in comments section of the current Share Mine community pinned post

Some links related to industry jobs

Game Audio related Self-Promotion welcomed in the comments of this post

The comments section of this post is where you can provide info and links pertaining to your site, blog, video, sfx kickstarter or anything else you are affiliated with related to Game Audio. Instead of banning or removing this kind of content outright, this monthly post allows you to get your info out to our readers while keeping our front page free from billboarding. This as an opportunity for you and our readers to have a regular go-to for discussion regarding your latest news/info, something for everyone to look forward to. Please keep in mind the following;

• You may link to your company's works to provide info. However, please use the subreddit evaluation request sticky post for evaluation requests

• Be sure to avoid adding personal info as it is against site rules. This includes your email address, phone number, personal facebook page, or any other personal information. Please use PM's to pass that kind of info along

Subreddit Helpful Hints: Mobile Users can view this subreddit's sidebar at /r/GameAudio/about/sidebar. For SFX related questions, also check out /r/SFXLibraries. When you're seeking Game Audio related info, be sure to search the subreddit or check our wiki pages;

Subreddit Info and Rules | General Info and Links | Music Info and Links | FAQ / Getting Started | FMOD Info | Wwise Info | Calendar of Events

Join the live chat on our Discord server - https://discord.gg/RedditAudio

So I'm really kinda just figuring this stuff out, we're exclusively using metasounds and whatever is built into Unreal.

With Ambience, in our fairly decent sized, mostly all outdoor map, what is the proper best practice to ambience? I would want this to be affected by occlusion, so I know it has to be a 3d sound. Do you do multiple overlapping 3d sounds, a volume, or one massive sphere encasing the whole level with an attenuation set to it? seems unwieldy that way. This of course would just be for a looping ambience animation, I'm starting simple. Thanks!

Is there anyone having this issue? Tried to migrating WWise version

I’ve been experimenting with a standalone spatial composition tool because I wanted to design movement much faster than drawing automation by hand in a DAW.
Instead of tracks, the project focuses around:

sound objects
movement behaviors
rooms
scenes
timeline

It exports binaural and up to 3rd-order Ambisonics.
My question for people working in games:
Do you think there’s value in authoring complex spatial movement in a dedicated tool before bringing assets into your engine?
I’m happy to hear your thoughts.

Game Sound Related Blogs

Updated March 2022

Welcome to the subreddit feature post for Game Audio industry and related blogs and podcasts. If you know of a blog or podcast or have your own that posts consistently a minimum of once per month, please add the link here and we'll put it in the roundup. The current roundup is;

Subreddit Helpful Hints: Mobile Users can view this subreddit's sidebar at /r/GameAudio/about/sidebar. Use the safe zone sticky post at the top of the sub to let us know about your own works instead of posting to the subreddit front page. For SFX related questions, also check out /r/SFXLibraries. When you're seeking Game Audio related info, be sure to search the subreddit or check our wiki pages;

Subreddit Info and Rules | General Info and Links | Music Info and Links | FAQ / Getting Started | FMOD Info | Wwise Info **

Join the live chat on our Discord server - https://discord.gg/RedditAudio

I am looking for something easy to understand the basics of and ideally with a free trial. I have no music theory experience, but I played a lot of video games, so I kinda have an idea of what I am envisioning for this project. It would be great if it is a one-time payment, but I know many things have a subscription service. I would like the ability to make it feel more natural rather than just chiptune. I am not opposed to chiptune, but I want to make something that can stick out too many different types of people.

I am hoping to develop a "main theme" for the project that I am working on and then branch it off into different vibes/styles from there and expand upon it. I don't really have any melody working around in my mind as of right now and am looking for inspiration. I am developing something intended to be fun, uplifting, exciting, but also sorta intellectual if that makes sense. I am open to talking more about the direction if that can help with specific advice too! :)

Anyone find the music coming in and out in the dlc a little off? I'm having it where it's super background then very front and then back to the background