The Boom Box Post blog provides insights into the creative sound design process of Boom Box Post's owners and employees.
It isn’t close to being Halloween yet, but there’s never a bad time for something SCARY! This blog has some very exciting sound design by one of our sound editor’s, Lalo. We hope you enjoy its creepiness as much as we do. Check out this scary balloon nightmare below!
Have you ever been watching a video on youtube or streaming a song online and wished you could boost the bass, tweak the mids, or even-out the high end? Well, what if I told you there was a chrome extension that allowed you to EQ any audio source in your browser window? Introducing Ears: Bass Boost, EQ Any Audio!
At Boom Box, we are lucky to get to use so much creativity designing new things for our shows. A lot of times this includes monsters, vehicles, machines etc. I think this one is especially cool because it is an army of monsters with weapons, vocals, and more! Check out the awesome sound design Katie used to create this army build and how she did it below!
I remember the first time I was on a mix stage, the mixer broke out this software tool that made it look like we were about to decode The Matrix. There were grainy shades of orange in crazy designs. What was I looking at?!?
That tool was the Spectral Repair module from Izotope RX and it’s a modern marvel.
I decided to give the super-awesome and totally free Zebralette Sythesizer from u-he a try. I’m not very experienced when it comes to synthesizers. I’ve had fun messing around with them on occasion, but I am far from a proficient synthesizer user, so I decided to get my feet wet and do some experimenting. I am SO glad I did.
Here at Boom Box Post our slogan is to focus on the creative. While that’s at the top of our list, a close second is focusing on the positive. This is easily reflected in our extensive backlog of blog posts. Favorite Free Apps, Most Loved Plugins, Favorite Cartoon SFX, the list goes on and on. But not everything can be our favorite. So this week I asked the Boom Box Post team to share their least favorite sounds.
I hope you’re ready to be SPOOKED because this blog is going to uncover how Natalia created an evil slime monster! Here at Boom Box, we are constantly having to create unique sound design, so check out how she managed to make THIS monster unique!
Last fall, I had the pleasure to take part in a roundtable discussion about sound design for series animation with the lovely people at the Tonebenders Podcast. At the time, I had just had a new baby a mere matter of weeks before and was in the heart of the sleep-deprived, can-barely-grab-a-banana-much-less-a-sandwich days of motherhood. But, I couldn’t turn down the flattering invitation to join this discussion between key animation sound design players. So, I aggressively fueled up on coffee, shut myself up in my garage studio (ahhhh, the joys of a completely silent soundproof room after playing maidservant to a screaming tyrant…), set up my mic, and away we went!
One of our most popular blog series is Glossary of Sound Effects, of which we have done 3 parts. On the original post, we get a ton of questions asking what keywords should be used when trying to find very specific sounds. I decided to relay a few of these questions to our editorial team. I’m very curious what buzzwords they will recommend.
Build your library! We say it all the time in blog posts, and it's advice we always give to our interns, but this tip often raises the question: What do I buy? There are a ton of amazing commercial libraries out there to purchase. If you’re overwhelmed and unsure of what to buy, this blog post is for you!
We are SO excited to announce that we were nominated for FIVE MPSE awards this year! Working from home has had its fair share of challenges, but getting this good news makes it all worth it. We cannot be more proud of the hard work our entire team has put into our projects this past year. Check out the nominations below!
March marks 1 full year of lockdown and WFH for most of the world, including the Boom Box Post team. It took some creativity and planning, but over this past tremulous year our team was able to virtually come together for some team building fun! Take a look at some of the activities we held to help us stay connected.
In past blog posts, we have mentioned different ways to optimize Kontakt, or other samplers, to digitally walk foley for our shows and how advantageous it has been in animation. It often involved pulling walk cycles into Pro Tools and cutting up small samples then exporting the samples and pulling them into Kontakt. This method, although convenient, is not the only way to create footstep samples. In this blog post, I will do my best to give instructions on how to create samples without having to cut up the original audio file in Pro Tools; and instead splice or split the original audio file within Kontakt then mapping it to your desired keys, keeping the source file intact! Woohoo, get excited!
As a mixer, I see all kinds of issues cropping up that originated in sound editorial. And with my background in sound editorial, I’ve surely committed every one of them myself at some point. Here’s a list of some common problems we see on the mix stage. Avoiding these problems will not only make your work easier to handle and more professionally presented, it will hopefully save you a snarky email or comment from a mixer!
One of our sound effects editors, Ben, was faced with a unique challenge recently. He needed to create 8-bit video game style sound design for one of our shows. Now if you don’t know what 8-bit video games are, check out this example I grabbed from Youtube showing a few popular games under this genre. It makes me want to play some video games right now... that is besides the point, though, so let’s dive right into what he created!
I was recently asked about some of the information in my Top 10 Internet Resources for Sound Designers post, and looking back, I realized that this was a really great post that deserved updating! The original was written in 2015, and although some of the suggestions are still valid, many of them have disappeared (silent tear shed here for Designing Sound) or been surpassed by new online resources. Who knew so much could change in five and half years on the internet??? (That’s a joke. Five and a half years is like 100 years in terms of the internet.)
We have done a couple of blog posts in the past spotlighting our favorite audio tools. So for this installment of “BBP’s Favorites”, I asked our team which plugins they couldn’t live without. Whether it’s a stock plugins or third party, if you don’t already utilize these picks hopefully our love for them can convince you to!
When I think of risers, stingers, and cinematic hits, I think of horror movies! They’re placed at just the right moments to make me jump out of my seat or hide behind a friend. I’m gonna get nightmares just thinking about it! Whether you know it or not, these risers, stingers, and hits can also be used in other genres. Here at Boom Box, we use them in the animated shows we work on! One of our editors, Greg, designed some cool ones which you can check out below along with how he went about making them.
This is a module from Izotope RX that I’ve used quite a bit! De-bleed works just like its name. It reduces the unwanted sound that bleeds into an open mic. In one of the shows I worked on, they recast one of the lead characters after they did the production shooting which means I needed to remove his voice underneath any other dialogue so I can replace with ADR in there. De-bleed performs a great job in this situation!
