Sound design tools

Sound design tools

Every theatre has its own equipment.
But there are some tools that I bring in to every process.
Here you can read about my personal toolbox.
I picked up them all along the way.
Most of it is what is called "industry standard".
I use the tools that make the jobs safe, quick and are compatible with the world around me.

Sound design tools: Hardware

Here you can read about what kind of hardware I use.
Feel free to mail me if you have any questions about it.

MacBook Pro

2.6 GHz intel Core i7.
16 GB RAM.
A powerful, portable computer from Apple.

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Apollo Twin.

If I can I use the DANTE protocol.
For smaller events I use my Apollo Twin. A thunderbolt sound card
with 4 outs. Sounds great and runs stable.
http://www.uaudio.com

This is the sound monitor Genelec 8030. It is durable and it gives a clear sound. The little brother Genelec 8020 it is portable and fits in a special bag.

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Ipad from Apple is what I have been waiting for.
It replaces all of my other controllers in many situations. http://www.apple.com

Push2

Ableton Push 2. A control surface specially developed for Ableton Live. You can mix with the knobs and play melodies with the velocity sensitive pads! Great feeling.

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Zoom H6 is an affordable portable recorder. Use it to collect sounds, A puls is the SD-card that fits right in your computer. It sounds good enough to make it´s way into most of my productions.

External thunderbolt hard disk on 2 TB from Lacie.
It is full with the sound effects archive, sample banks and a back-up of your show.

Headphones.
I use Sennheiser HD 25-1 II.
Very good closed headphones.
It is possible to flip up one side to be able to listen to what is going on at stage.

Sound design tools: Software
Here you can read about what kind of software I use.
Feel free to mail me if you have any questions about it.

Ableton Live 9 is my main DAW.
Love, love, love it!
It is quick and flexible and a joy to work with.
(But if you want multitrack editing or score writing you have to look elsewhere.)
http://www.ableton.com

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Qlab 3 is my favorite live show control software.
This software is the last in the design process.
http://www.figure53.com

ProTools

ProTools 11. If you are into multitrack recording this is my one stop solution.
I returned to ProTools as they introduced off-line-bouncing.

Sibelius 7.5 for score writing. When it comes to working with numerious musicians you need to write scores for them to read.
But there are a lot of buzz around Avid these days.
Makes the future for Sibelius a bit unsure. http://www.sibelius.com

Smaart v7 by Rational Acoustics with headquarter in Connecticut, USA. Measure the coherence between the material that you send to your sound system and the material you get back. Keep an eye on the phase and get the right delay of your speakers.

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RX4 advanced from Izotope get you into spectral editing ave de-verbing. This makes my new laptop feels slow again. We will see a lot of those kind of tools in the future.

Ozone 6 from Izotope is a mastering plug-in. I am very happy with is. Especially useful on background sound scapes and sound for the Web.

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Make the impossible possible!
Create your own interactive software with Max7.
A great choice for interaction design.
There are also Max4Live for deep integration with the Ableton product.

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And so I have Komplete 10 ultimate from Native Instruments.
FM8, Massive, Kontakt och Absynth that I use to create sound scapes. http://www.native-instruments.com

Altiverb is an impulse reverb from Audio Ease in the Netherlands.
I put it on the most things I make to get the right feeling. http://www.audioease.com

You will need a sound archive.

Check out the stuff from "Sound Ideas". Also make shure to build your own archive to pick from.

EzDrummer 2 is very quick and flexible to use. It sounds great in my ears.

Crystal is another freeware VST-synth that creates strange and useful sound scapes.
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/219.html

audioFinder

Audiofinder makes life much easier.
It makes me quickly look through my sample archive.
It is so much easier then working with finder.
Here is a link to a discount-code that worked for me
http://www.icedaudio.com/sale.html

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From time to time you need some extra musical power. Pick the plug-inns you need. This is a choral library. But it can be expensive and get a lot of software in the end. So chose wisely.

Snapper is another program from Audio Ease. I helps you to check out a waveform in seconds and even trim, convert and email it on the fly.

Music streaming is a great thing.
Check out spotify, Last fm and Winp.

Nocturne is a freeware program that makes your screen dark enough without using a physical filter.
http://docs.blacktree.com/nocturne/nocturne

iTunes. internet on the stage is a must.
Then I can search for music direct om iTunes-store and play directly if I need to.

Some other software you may need!
And then there are those things that are not related to creative sound work, but that you need to do as a freelance sound designer.
You can hate it or love it, but there are a lot of office work to do to get long time endurance i the business.

Word, excel and powerpoint is such an industry standard. You will use them a lot.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/

Dropbox went from an mind blowing small program to something that I use almost everyday to transfer and collect files on the internet.
https://www.dropbox.com

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Rapidweaver 7 have I been using to build this very website.
http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/

Firefox provides the best surf experience on the mac.
This is the browser that works most of the time.
http://www.mozilla.com

FCP-X-for-2012-2

Final cut Pro X from Apple.
Sometimes you need videos to help the sound :)

Skype is for video calls.

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If you can´t play a video file throw it at VLC.