Hi there I was wondering if someone could maybe answer some questions I have on Sound Design? At the moment I am halfway through my Degree in Music with Electronic & Electrical Engineering and I am becoming increasingly ionterested in becoming a Sound Designer. Through my course I am already familiar with Cool Edit/Pro Tools and a bit of CSound and live recording but I was wondering what kind of software/tools do professional Sound Designers use in their work? Also how does one go about synchronising the audio with say a piece of video or a computer game? thanks very much for taking the time to read that spiel, I'd be grateful if anyone could answer a few of the questions! :)

The industry standard for PC is protools or neundo. Nuendo is getting more popular as it offers ulimited tracks. For mac, it would be logic.
To synchronize a video i think u can load it up into protools / logic and play it. You can also synchronize it with time codes ( Correct me if im wrong )..

thanks for the help.
I suspected those programs would be mentioned, in other forums a lot of sound designers seem to talk about SoundForge for audio effects too so might try and give that a whirl too!
thanks again

I'd have to say Pro Tools is standard on the Mac too--IMHO Logic sucks, and large studios are still using hardware Pro Tools setups like the digi001 and 002.

I hate Csound--how do you stand it?

Most sound designers have a whole slough of apps that they use to tweak sounds, and it's just a matter of finding what works for you. Some people prefer to use synthesis in the studio, and some people do the Ben Burtt thing and go out with a mike and record themselves hitting giraffes or something. Everyone prefers something different, and there's such a wide range of good equipment that you just need to find what you like best.

Some designers prefer to edit the audio into a video online, and some prefer to take the finished video and just lay in the audio tracks. Depends on your preference--the first way encourages interaction with the director, and the second gives the sound designer a little less play, but there are benefits to each. You could edit in Premiere or Final Cut. I'm not sure how game cut scenes would be done though--anyone know more than me?

In terms of sound effects, I don't think it particularly matters what program you use - you're just trying to get the best sound you can, and you're going to end up with a wave file that's easily ported to anything. There are plenty of single track and multi track editors for that. Personally, I use Sound Forge, but that's mostly because I'm used to it and can use it effeciently; I think your best bet is to pick one program and get to know it well.

Syncing audio to video and syncing audio to interactive video games are two completely different tasks. If you end up syncing audio to large lengths of film, you will need to work with time-accurate and time-encoded mediums. The cheapest is VHS, which has a built-in timecode. Most computer formats, including standard encodings of .mpg and .avi files, are NOT time-accurate, and are not guaranteed to play back at precisely the same speed on all computers. However, if you're only referring to short cut scenes, this isn't an issue because there isn't time for the sound to get out of sync. If you're doing sound for a scene, depending on the scope, you will other mix down all your audio on to one track, or seperate it onto several tracks so it can later be mixed with dialog, music, etc.

(Yes, pro tools syncs very easily with time codes. You can even set it up so that pro tools will rewind and fast forward VCRs to specific timecodes, and of course digital video stays with the timecode).

As far as sound within video games, that varies. Music is often linked to the artificial intelligence system so that it can change according to the state of the game. Other games use location-based triggers. Sounds are usually synced to on-screen and off-screen events (one sound per event, not a predetermined batch of them). For a video game, it will be the job of the sound programmer to make sure the sound fits in right just as much as the job of the composer/sound designer.