Sound Designer

Q: What type of music do you usually work on?

A: For music composing my styles are experimental with diverse influences of contemporary and electronic music in combination with orchestral instruments and traditional acoustic world sounds, vibes and rhythms.

Q: Tell us about your studio setup.

A: In my studio I work with analog and digital high quality music production equipment. For composing and sound design I am creative on many different standard and rare organic acoustic, electric and virtual instruments, mixed with field recordings.

Q: What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?

A: What is binaural immersive 3D audio and for which kind of projects is it useful? - Binaural 3D Audio simulates the human spatial hearing via every kind of stereo headphones (no special models are required). When listening to stereo audio with headphones, the perception of all sources of sounds is located inside of the head between the left and right ear. With binaural 3D Audio the sound appears outside of the head and can be anywhere within a full 360° three-dimensional sphere. Voices, instruments and sounds can be positioned around the listener - in front of, behind, right, left and even below or above and everywhere in between. Binaural 3D audio sounds amazing in audiobook, radio play, shortfilm or documentary video productions and can enrich the listening experience of dialogues, atmos, foley, sound effects and music. But also music productions of artists and bands that are mixed as binaural 3D audio can sound interesting as an alternative to stereo mixing. ​For music tracks, audiobooks or videos I prefer to produce a combination of stereo and binaural 3D Audio. There are also more immersive multichannel audio formats such as Ambisonics that are used for audiovisual presentations, sound installations and AR/VR projects as well as Dolby Atmos played on special speaker setups. Dolby Atmos is used in more and more films and now also on the streaming platform Apple Music. I can edit, mix and master your already recorded audio (music, dialogue, sounds) in Mono, Stereo, Binaural 3D Audio and Dolby Atmos and deliver production ready audio files according to the specifications that you need in your project.

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: Beside sound design and audio editing jobs for clients, I follow continuously my own music project, where I am recording and producing music and soundscapes as a combination of stereo and binaural 3D Audio.

Q: What's the biggest misconception about what you do?

A: There is often a misconception about 3D Audio, because this term is often used differently by manufacturers of home entertainment audio systems. 3D Audio is not the long time known Surround 5.1. format. Within immersive 3D Audio the sounds can be positioned anywhere within a full 360° three-dimensional sphere. To get the full immersive experience of binaural 3D audio you need to listen via headphones (no special models are required), but depending on how it is mixed it can be played also most properly on stereo speakers and soundbar systems. Multichannel 3D audio formats such as Ambisonics can be used also for sound installations and in virtual reality projects. Another immersive format is Dolby Atmos for various speaker setups and sound systems enabled with Dolby Atmos.

Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?

A: I have been an active musician since the early 1980s, at first mainly as a bass player in live bands and for studio sessions. From the nineties I also work as a sound designer and audio engineer in my own studio in Germany on audiovisual multimedia and music productions for many artists, record labels, publisher, theatre, radio, tv, film and media agencies.

Q: Can you share one music production tip?

A: Do your best to improve the project, but make decisions.

Q: What's your typical work process?

A: Please send me a message via the contact button on my SoundBetter profile and describe your project and needs. I will send you a price offer and additional information. If you accept, I will start to work on sound editing of your already recorded audio or compose and produce new music and sounds for your project. Please send me a Quicktime movie of your animation or film scenes and your already recorded audio files via Dropbox, Google Drive, WeTransfer or I will provide an upload link to my cloud/server. I will do sound design and sound editing according to the clients wishes and the necessary specifications. After that I will provide the audio master via a password protected download link. According to the agreement one or more revisions are included.

Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.

A: I have a special focus on custom sound design, audio drama / film scoring and music production for multimedia. I am creating storytelling music and immersive 3D audio soundscapes including sound textures, transition effects and cinematic sonic atmospheres for audiobooks, animations, documentaries, films, VR and video games.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: Every project is different, so there are always new challenges ... It remains exciting.

Q: What's your 'promise' to your clients?

A: I always work for the project to realize the wishes of my clients. For this I use my many years of experience and professional tools.