Nowadays with so many more plugins and synths available without the need for hardware, pretty much anyone can create a whoosh, impact, or glitchy breaker and stick it on the internet for a few dollars or pounds. But like most things, just because you can, doesn’t mean it’s good. And, like any other market that’s grossly over saturated, real quality products will always cut through and rise to the top. Fortunately there are still some awesome FX makers and companies out there, but you need to sift through the saturated swamp to find the real golden nuggets. So what do “real quality” FX sound like?
Before we dive in, it’s worth pointing out that like most creative audio, it’s all subjective to a degree. Top end FX have similarities, which I’ll explore below, but if you find a pack that goes against all of these characteristics and you love it, GREAT! Crack on and enjoy using it. The below is what I look for, and try and build into our FX libraries here at LMM.
Dynamic range
One of the best FX tips I ever received was from the sound design genius, Jeff Schmidt - creator of the Alien Imaging FX packs a few years back. He let his FX breathe and didn’t smash them to pieces with hard limiting or a crazy master chain. I love this approach, and adopt it in my own work. If the end producer is mixing their production properly, you don’t need FX that are absolutely smashed blocks of waveform. Impacts punctuate way more when they have more dynamic range. Chris Nicoll at Wizz is also an advocate of this approach, judging by the excellent quality of his FX.
Rhythmic
FX should compliment and not detract from the piece being created. They’re the glue that binds it all together. So when a breaker with no rhythm whatsoever is chucked into a beatmix, for example, it’s gonna cause a problem and sound jarring. I like my FX to be rhythmic in nature, so I can blend them into the piece using grid mode in my DAW to add that extra spice and punctuation.
Placement is key; on beat to punctuate, soften music edits and transitions, highlight key phrases. But be warned, even world class FX can sound shitty if used incorrectly. It’s like if my wife bought me a £500 power drill - the thing would be killer, but I’d still create havoc with it and shelves would still be wonky. Get the tools, but learn how to use them.
Flexibility
FX you can cut up and manipulate, join with others to create new one’s are killer. For one, it extends their lifespan as you can reuse time and again without sounding the same. And two, you can create your own individual sounds to taste. Yes, you can do this with any FX… but look out for the one’s that are designed in a more user-friendly way and you’ll get way more mileage out of them.
Sci-Fi Space Wars
Top tip here from my pal Adam Burgess - audio wizard over at Imaging Blueprint. Not all FX need to sound like they’re in a sci-fi movie! It’s a strange misconception, and a pitfall I’ve made myself many, many times over, and I can’t explain why… but it’s true, many, many, MANY FX packs sound like they’re set in some sort of future-space-war -with-machines-and-alien-crap. Source sounds are crucial to avoid this kind of thing. You can sound edgy and hot without being a Sigourney Weaver soundtrack.
Conclusion
Creating sound design FX is a really fun, creative process. But in a massively saturated market, it helps to have some criteria to help navigate through the average to get to the golden nuggets and take your audio productions to the next level. Hopefully the pointers above help with that to some extent, but remember - it’s ALL SUBJECTIVE! These are my thoughts, and are used to create the sound design packs here at Little Monster Media (cheeky plug - go take a listen to hear and see if you can hear what I’m talking about).
Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments!
Cheers,
Adam.