7 min read
Sound design software for filmmakers: what you actually need at each budget
You do not need the industry standard to finish a short. You need the right tool for the job in front of you.
Choosing sound software is mostly about matching the tool to the stage of the job. Preparing files, editing dialogue, designing effects and mixing are four different activities, and no single application is the best answer to all of them for every budget.
DaVinci Resolve Fairlight
Free with Resolve and living in the same project as the picture. Fairlight handles multitrack dialogue, effects and a full mix without a round trip, which is a real advantage on small crews. Its weakness is workflow speed once sessions get large, and interchange with outside mixers.
Pro Tools
Still the interchange standard for professional post. If you send an AAF to a mixer, that mixer almost certainly opens Pro Tools. Worth the licence when you collaborate with sound facilities, hard to justify for a solo filmmaker finishing in Resolve.
Reaper
Cheap, fast, endlessly configurable, popular with sound effects recordists for batch work and huge track counts. The learning curve is the price of the flexibility.
Audacity and free editors
Fine for a single file repair, awkward for anything with timecode, multitrack sync or metadata. Useful as a scratchpad, not as a pipeline.
Browser tools for the boring parts
A lot of sound work is not creative at all: splitting poly WAVs, merging mono stems, mapping channels, converting sample rates, extracting audio from video, checking metadata. Doing that inside a DAW means opening a session per file. Doing it in the browser takes seconds per batch and keeps rushes on your machine.
- Prepare and convert files in the browser before the session starts.
- Edit and mix in Fairlight or Reaper on a small production.
- Move to Pro Tools when a facility joins the project.
- Keep original poly masters archived whatever you choose.