Resources
Over the years since beginning my journey in video game composition and sound design, I have amassed many tools and resources that have help me improve my skills and increase knowledge of the industry. On this page, I want to share with you the same resources that I have used that have helped me get to where I am today.
This page contains some of the best tools that I still use every day in my work. These tools range from software and hardware products, various books, and services. They have served me both in my sound design, music for video games and in my business.
I am constantly revising and adding tools as I discover and use them, so keep an eye on this page if you are interested to see what I use.
This page contains affiliate links. If you decide to purchase a product or service through the links, I will receive a commission (at no extra cost to you!). I only promote products that I have personally used (or currently use) and have gained or benefited from. Thanks for your support!
PRODUCTS
Sound Packs
My full set of 10+ sound packs created for sound designers and game developers. Add to your arsenal monster sounds, magic sounds, gun sounds, and many more.
Music Packs
My set of growing music packs created for game developers. Currently featuring 3 medieval and fantasy music packs.
SOFTWARE FOR MUSIC (SAMPLE LIBRARIES)
air music tech
Air Music Tech instruments for a long time were part of pro tools set. Now you can purchase theme individually and are a great place to go to for electronic and dance music. My current collection includes Vacuum Pro and Hybrid 3.
audio imperia
A sample library developer focused on creating libraries for cinematic music. My current collection includes Photosynthesis 1-4, Dystopian Dreams Vol. 1&2, Hank Drum, and Hank Drum Exp. 1.
best service
A sample library marketplace and one of my favorite developers. My current collection includes Forest Kingdom II, ERA II Medieval Legends, and Ancient Era Persia.
cinesamples
A fantastic developer with many libraries, including orchestral and world samples, many of which were recorded at the famous MGM studios. My current collection includes the CineBrass COMPLETEÂ Bundle.
heaviocity
Excellent and powerful are descriptive words that can accurately describe the products from this developer. My current collection includes Damage (included in NI K11U) and Vocalise.
native instruments
A leader in the industry with their sample libraries, synths, and their industry standard Kontakt sampler. My current collection includes Komplete 11 Ultimate.
orange tree samples
Some of the best guitar libraries around. My current collection includes the Cherry Electric Bass and the Evolution Strawberry.
orchestral tools
Excellence in orchestral sampling, this company has some of the best orchestral sounds in the industry. My current collection includes Metropolis Ark 1 & 2.
project sam
The first orchestral libraries I ever owned. They are excellent to add character with their huge list of multis available. My current collection includes Orchestral Essentials 1 & 2.
sample logic
An award-winning developer with a unique sound. Many of their libraries are great for creating new and morphed sounds. My current collection includes Morphestra 2.
soundiron
A veteran developer with hundreds of products under their belt. These libraries are great for music composition and sound design. My current collection includes Olympus Elements, Olympus Micro, Mercury Elements, Mercury Micro, APE Elements, APE Micro, Elysium Harp, Glitch Hero, Motor Rhythms, Antidrum Machine, Voices of Gaia and many more.
spitfire audio
A staple developer in many professional composer’s arsenals, Spitfire Audio has really made a name for itself with its excellent string and orchestral samples. My current collection includes Albion ONE.
spectrasonics
Spectrasonics has made a name for itself as a leader in the world of virtual synthesizer with the Omnisphere synth. My current collection includes Omnisphere 2.
steinberg
Steinberg is a reputable company having been around the digital music industry since 1984. Their work in midi revolutionized the music industry making their DAW (Cubase & Nuendo) a great choice for composers and sound designers alike. My current library collection includes their Cubase 8 pro suite (Padshop, Retrologue, Groove Agent SE, Halion Sonic SE, and many more).
SOFTWARE FOR Sound Design (Plugins)
Boom Library
A go-to company in the world of sound effects, Boom Library has worked with some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry including Marvel, Dolby, YouTube, Nintendo, among others. They now have a growing collection of audio software. My current collection includes the Recenter and Soundweaver.
Eventide Audio
Having made a name for itself in the world of hardware plugins, and now digital plugins, they are a great choice for musical effects. My current collection includes the Blackhole Reverb.
Glitchmachines
A forward thinking and futuristic sounding company developing both plugins and sound packs. My current collection includes Cataract, Quadrant, Fracture XT, Fracture, and Hysteresis.Â
Inear Display
A boutique developer for experimental sound design and music. My current collection includes Amalgame.
iZotope
A leader and industry standard in audio repair, Izotope have the go-to tools for any audio need. My current collection includes all the plugins in the Music Production Suite.
Kilohearts
This company offers an awesome set of tools and plugins for sound design. My current collection includes their Kilohearts Toolbox ULTIMATE.
Native Instruments
A leader in the industry with their sample libraries, synths, and their industry standard Kontakt sampler. My current collection includes all plugins in Komplete 11 Ultimate.
nvk.tools
nvk.tools offers various amazing Reaper script for sound designers. My favorite is nvk_Create, but I also use nvk_autodoppler, nvk_Loopmaker, and nvk_Search.
Polyverse Music
A creative developer with plugins useful for both sound design and music. My current collection includes Gatekeeper, Manipulator, I Wish, and Wider.
Soundmorph
Having been featured in projects by EA, Walt Disney Studios, and Epic Games, Soundmorph have established themselves as industry leading professionals in the world of sound design. My current collection includes all the plugins in the Software Bundle V3.
Tonsturm
A sound pack and plugin developer, Tonsturm have been the secret weapon to many sound designers. My current collection includes Traveler and Whoosh.
Twisted Tools
A fantastic developer with many effects plugins. These have been some of my favorites to use for sound design. My current collection includes S-Layer and Ultraloop.
Valhalla DSP
A developer of simple yet effective plugins. My current collection includes Valhalla Freq Echo and Valhalla Room.
Studio SOFTWARE
Audacity
A 100% free, multi-track audio editing software. Great for those starting out on a budget.
Basehead
A powerful sound effect library manager and search engine capable of not only finding your sounds fast, but also editing, renaming, and adding effects to your sound effects.
Nuendo 10
My previous choice DAW. It is great for editing midi when doing music composition and equally flexible for recording and editing audio.
Izotope RX6 Standard
My choice editor for sound effects. It is great for removing unwanted noise and frequencies and making micro edits to any audio track.
Reaper
My current choice DAW. With it’s quick, flexible, and efficient workflows and customizations, it outperforms all other DAWs on the market (in my opinion). The countless powerful and time-saving scripts that allow you to create sound effects make it that much more attractive to game audio professionals.
Sonarworks SoundID Reference
A must-have for any home studio engineer! My production quality has increased significantly since purchasing this product. I highly recommend it!
Soundminer
A powerful sound effect library manager and search engine. It is what I use to embed metadata to my sound effect libraries.
Studio Hardware/Recording Gear
Audient Audio Interface
The Audient ID4 audio interface is a 2-in/2-out high performance audio interface. It can record audio up to 96kHz.
Behringer C1 Microphone
A professional large diaphragm studio condenser microphone. This microphone’s cardioid pickup pattern is great for capturing vocals in a home studio.
Cortado MkIII
A contact microphone by Zeppelin Design Labs that is flexible in it’s ability to record low end and ultrasonic sounds.
EM258
A tiny pair of microphones with excellent ultrasonic response for the price. These are awesome for doing extreme pitch shifting of recorded materials.
Lom Electrousi
A pair of passive electromagnetic sensors for recording electromagnetic interference.
Lom Geofon
A sensitive omnidirectional geophone perfect for capturing low frequency content.
Lom Usi Pros
A pair of phantom-powered, omni-directional electret micrphones. They are very sensitive and great for recording quiet sounds and ambiences.
M-Audio BX8 D2 Studio Monitors
A discontinued set of budget studio monitors with a frequency response of 38Hz to 22kHz.Â
M-Audio Oxygen88 Midi Keyboard
An 88 key hammer-action usb-powered midi keyboard. Designed with 9 faders, 8 knobs, and multiple buttons.
Nanuk 920 Waterproof Hard Case
This is a waterproof hard case with lid organizer and padded dividers. I use this to hold and store my microphones, recorder, cables, and field recording accessories.
Rode NTG5
A nicely balanced shotgun microphone with extremely low self noise. A nice choice for field recording.
Sennheiser HD 280 Pro Headphones
An excellent pair of budget-friendly professional closed-ear headphones.Â
Shure SM57 Microphone
A legendary microphone in studios around the world, this microphone is great for recording vocals, instruments, and almost anything you can throw at it.
Streamdeck by Elgato
The 32 key Elgato Streamdeck has become a staple in my workflow. I use every day and highly recommend it. It has easily saved me hundreds of hours of work.
Xfer Sonarworks Measurement Microphone
A nice shotgun microphone used to measure your studio’s room alongside Sonarworks’ Reference software. It can also be used as a shotgun microphone for recording audio.
Zoom F6 Portable REcorder
An excellent field recorder with low noise floor, 6 XLR inputs, and small profile. Perfect for the field and studio.
Zoom H6 Portable REcorder
A hand held audio recorder 4 XLR inputs and a pair of XY microphones. A great choice for anyone starting out in audio.
Computer
Cooler
The Noctua NH-D15, is a premium CPU cooler. Excellent for high performance computers.
Graphics Card
The Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 Windforce 8G Graphics Card is a powerful card for most video editing needs and gaming pleasure.
RAM
The Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB RAM offers plenty of RAM to do composition, play games, and create sound design.
Computer Screens
A BenQ 27 inch 1080p gaming monitor. Nice size to work on and play games.
Storage - SSD
The Samsung 960 EVO M.2 PCIe NVMe 1TB Internal SSD is a fantastic option to run your operating system. The system can load in a matter of seconds.
Storage - SSD
The Samsung Evo 860 1 TB SSD is a great place to store sample libraries and any files that require lots of RAM.
Storage - HDD
The Seagate Backup Plus Portable 4TB External Storage is an HDD drive I use to back up projects and files. It is always good to protect and back up your work, specially in the middle of working on a project.
Storage - SSD
The Samsung T7 Shield (4TB) is an SSD drive capable of 1050mb/s read and write speeds.
ONLINE BUSINESS
Affinity Photo
A professional photo editing software. Great for editing photos and YouTube thumbnails alike.
Astra (Website Theme)
This is the WordPress Theme I use for this website. It is very customizable specially with page builders such as Elementor and Thrive Themes Architect. It also comes with template websites!
Befunky
This is my go to image editor. Whether I am cropping and image or resizing a logo, BeFunky always gets the job done and is easy to use. It is also 100% free!
Davinci Resolve
An excellent (and free) video editing software which makes a great alternative to Adobe’s Premiere Pro.
dropbox
Dropbox is a cloud file hosting and sharing platform. It is a great place to share images, videos, pdf, and other files team members.Â
Elementor Pro
Elemento is the page builder I currently use on this website. It is highly flexible, customizable, and comes with dozens of page templates, blocks, and addons.Â
evernote
An excellent note taking and tracking app. Organize your thoughts, work, and life on your desktop and mobile app. Your notes are always with you and are always in sync. 100% free to use. Sign up today!
fiverr
An awesome site I use often to get logos created, boxed products designed, and other freelancer projects completed.
google suite
If you are looking for extra cloud storage or a professional email address with your business URL, look no further. G suite integrates with your current gmail and has tons of features at one low price.
grammarly
An add-on to your web browser, Grammarly helps to spell check and grammar check your writing. It’s 100% free to use. Sign up today!
Mailchimp
An email marketing tool, Mailchimp is free to use when starting to build an email list from scratch. Sign up for free today.
Upwork
This is an excellent website to outsource tasks and projects to talented freelancers. You can get almost anything accomplished on here.Â
Thrive Themes
Thrive Themes offer website plugins specifically geared towards marketers. My current products include the Thrive Comments, Thrive Ovation, and Thrive Apprentice.
Trello
It’s free to use and simple to get started. Trello is a flexible tool for project and task management. Sign up for free today!
WordPress
Said to be powering 30% of the entire internet, WordPress is a solid foundation for a website – and best of all, it is 100% free. This site is run on WordPress.
Books
Aaron Mark's Complete Guide To Game Audio
A book for any aspiring game audio professional. The book covers almost all topics imaginable including tools, techniques, how to get started, interviews, middleware, field recording, game platforms, and more.
Deep Work
Working on a specific task while not getting distracted is what deep work is all about. This ability to do deep work is what allows you to master any subject you choose.
Maximum Achievement
A strategy-packed book filled with practical advice to get you achieving more than you thought possible.Â
Mixing Secrets
Discover how to achieve radio quality mixes from some of the world’s most successful producers. This book covers all mixing topics from EQ and compression to advanced spectral dynamics and special effects.
The Power Of Habit
In this book, author Charles Duhigg reveals cutting edge scientific discoveries of the habits, why they exist, and how they can be changed. Filled with real life examples, this book is perfect for the person looking to change their life.
The Sound Effects Bible
An awesome guide to recording, editing, and creating your own sound effects. In this book, Ric Viers gives many practical examples and advice on creating various types of sounds and how to approach them. As a sound design, it is a great resource to have on hand.
