Sound Design Tutorial - Creating Punchy Transient Impacts 

wtf this is so goated

@@dubchung hey there, thanks for the kind words! I made the transition from PT -> Reaper as well, and it was definitely tough. It took me a really, really long time to get my actions setup to be as close to Pro Tools as I could get it. If you’d like, I can email you my Reaper configuration file. If you’re not already familiar with how those config files work, you simply need to import it via the Reaper settings, and it should immediately assign your actions to be similar to mine, which will feel intuitive if you come from PT. If you’re not already familiar with Noah Sitrin, I recommend checking out his channel! He has a video about his Reaper template setup, and mine is very much inspired by his :)

@@anthonyturi That'll be amazing actually! You're too kind! My email is dubchung@gmail.com. I immediately did notice similarities from Noah's setup, I was not aware he made a video of his template. Thanks Anthony! Keep up the good work.

@@Iskra_Audio it’s the best! I often wonder how I worked without it in the past haha

Thank you! This is a great question. So I wasn't familiar with that library by BOOM, but I checked out their trailer, and it instantly sounded familiar. These sorts of crunchy sounds can be heard all across modern AAA games as well as big budget action films. As is the case with most sounds, the key is to use appropriate source material. For those Brute Force-style sounds, I'd reach for organic impact field recordings such as rock impacts, explosion sounds or close-proximity firearm ballistics. For more trailer-ized sounds that may involve synthesis (ie: risers, downers or whooshes), I'd reach for simple, clean tones that aren't too wide at the source. Throwing too much Chorusing/Phasing/Flanging on a synth can dull transient detail, either for better or for worse. If I were designing in the Brute Force style, I'd probably sample tones in the 60 Hz - 200 Hz range and then provide some destructive processing to squeeze out as much detail as possible. The processing for these sounds tends to be fairly simple. Once you have some good source material, I'd encourage you to use the following effects: - heavy compression (while being mindful of your attack/release times to avoid ruining the transient fidelity) - distortion (I'd imagine Soundtoys' Decapitator and/or Black Box HG-2 are excellent for that sound) - using transient shapers for some elements to really accentuate the initial impact (I like SPL's "Transient Designer" plug-in, as well as "Crack" or even kiloheart's free "Transient Shaper"). You can use a similar method as in this video to create these short, distorted layers that you can arrange one after the other to create more complex sequences. - clipping (I love "KClip", and find that driving a sound effect into a clipper prior to your limiter can really bring out those crunchy details). - sub bass enhancement (Waves' "RBass" or Brainworx's "Subfilter" are great for generating these subharmonics and "thickening" your sounds) Those are the primary effects that I would use, and can distinctly hear in the BOOM trailer for "Brute Force". You may also want to experiment with Doppler effects for the more movement oriented sounds like Whooshes or pass-bys. Ultimately, whatever sounds best! Cheers :)

@@anthonyturi awesome Anthony thank you so much. I'll try this out and come back to you if I have any interesting things to add. I think I hear quite a lot of Filterfreak on some of those sounds and I'm thinking some envelope following on the distortion could work too

@@jorela8150 No problem! Yeah for any movement/doppler/whoosh sounds, I have no doubt they may be using envelope followers to drive different filters. Brute Force appears to have quite a bit of variety across sound types, so their processing is likely far different when comparing whooshes to impacts. Feel free to reach out if you ever have any other questions!

Awesome, I hope you're able to get some useful source content from it :) FX Containers are a gamechanger too!

@@henqification not snarky at all, it’s a valid question! You could totally just load up a kick drum sample and run it through a chain like this to accentuate the transient. That’s actually the approach I tend to use most of the time when I don’t want to split up the “transient” and the “punch” of the sound”. The method in this video is just a surefire way of generating that same sort of layer out of just about any sound, assuming that you don’t have a library of good kick drum samples to pull from. Also, I’ve found that sometimes, kick drums are too “rounded” out and not pointy/sharp/clicky enough to act as the initial transient of the sound. I tend to prefer using these layers at the very start of my SFX, and then layer on a smoother, more rounded out kick drum sound to act as the “punch”. Typically, that involves the transient being the first sound heard, and then the punch/kick drum layer being delayed by several samples. This creates a rhythmic impact that can sometimes read more clearly than if you just used one of these sounds to account for both the impact and the punch. I hope that makes sense. In retrospect, I should have designed a quick sound using this as a layer to better show how I’d incorporate it in a final design. I’d encourage you to check out Mark Kilborn’s video on firearm weapon sound design, as that includes a practical example where the transient is split up from the punch sound: m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-e7U3NDRBeO8.html

@@anthonyturi thank you for the detailed answer! that makes a lot of sense

@@Tokolovessound thanks so much!

@@Cloud2KK that’s Global Sampler: forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=2506514 I believe there are comparable alternatives for other DAWs if you don’t use Reaper, but Global Sampler is super helpful and free!

@@anthonyturi man youre quick , was just about to delete my comment because i found it haha thanks

@@anthonyturi by the way.. do you know if this exports at the same quality i would get if i would render manually via reaper? cant find anything online about it

@@Cloud2KK Global Sampler, by design, is sampling the audio at the project’s specified sample rate and bit-depth. That is, if your project is set to 24-bit/48 kHz, the audio you pull into your session from the Global Sampler will be of those same specs. It’s best to think of the Global Sampler plug-in as a simple recorder that will constantly capture the last 60 seconds of the corresponding track’s output. It’s no different than if you were to route the output of one track to another and record everything post-fader. Now when it comes to exporting/bouncing your audio out of Reaper, you always have the option to downsample/upsample your files and/or modify channel count. So if your session is set to 24-bit/96 kHz, your sampled media would also be 24-bit/96 kHz, but you could always render that media as 24-bit/48 kHz, 24-bit/44.1 kHz, 16-bit/44.1 kHz, etc. The pros and cons to downsampling are a whole other subject that could incur aliasing artifacts, but all of that is to say you have the flexibility to modify those rendering options after the fact :)

@@anthonyturi awesome thank you