u/soundslikejoe

Spent most of last week tracking train schedules and rolling long takes on various trains. This is for a popular sound design platform [unnamed for nda reasons]. We caught Norfolk Southern freight, Amtrak passenger, CATS light electric, and a vintage diesel engine at the transportation museum. Lots of horns, clacks, brakes, etc.

Mics were Schoeps MS pair (MK4 and MK8) in Radial wind system, Sony PCM-D100 in ortf, and a Usi Geophone for subsonic rumbles. 24bit/192kHz via Sound Devices 633.

Highly recommend. Lots of great sounds found at train stations and near tracks.

Long time smoker, first time poster. Good deal on brisket yesterday at store (4.99)

Teager smoker. 15hrs. Pulled at 203. Rub is SPG+

I shared this years ago with the filmmaker community... Now I'm wondering what Sound Designers think? Do you search local or online? Do you use UCS or diy org system or no system? Here's a blog post about this.... and the OG post to filmmaker community. Thoughts on UCS?

https://thewavlab.com/ucs-sound-effects/

I recently met TWO different young filmmakers who confessed they are searching online for sound effects... and using YouTube or Freesound.org exclusively, because that's the only way they were taught in school. They had no idea that sound libraries existed or that sound designers didn't work that way!

Made a detailed blog post about Universal Category System and using local sound libraries with metadata. If you're having to DIY your film's sound design... please consider adopting a sound designer's local workflow. We have links to resources in the post!

The WAV Lab is a medium-sized facility about 17 miles outside Charlotte, NC. We do music recording, audio post, sound design, Foley, ADR, and field/location work. Broadcast credits include NBC, ESPN, BBC, Apple TV, and PBS. We also make our own SFX libraries and sample packs when we're not working on someone else's project. Somehow, despite the odds, we're surviving as an audio craft service business in 2026. Maybe not forever... but we've done it for a while now.

Studio A is built around a Trident 88 console. The tracking area has a larger live room with three windowed ISO booths and a wall patch system with 32 sends and 8 returns. We tend to specialize in folk, classical, jazz, and live hardware electronic music production. Groups that do it live!

This gallery is a mix of sessions and studio life — strings, scoring dates, Foley setups, and whatever else ends up in front of a camera. Small working studio. Real work. Happy to answer questions about the room, the gear, surviving the biz, or the work we encounter. AMA

Sharing about libraries I built from foley/location recordings we made during our post-production gigs — recorded with Schoeps/Sennheiser field rigs and Sound Devices 633 or Sony D100, UCS-tagged for easy library management. Small and focused on the gaps in my PSE and BOOM sound effects.

If you need extra doors or urban ambience or UI sounds or just normal cars, grab a micro pack. Cars were a big one for me.... all the big commercial libraries had V8 or V12 sexy car sounds. I needed mini vans and Hondas. Normal cars, not super cars! Several complete "normal car sets" in our transportation pack. Human body sounds like eating and going to the bathroom were other gaps. lol

Happy to talk about the recording and editing process if anyone's curious.
Shop Design - The WAV Lab — code SFX50 for 50% off through the Fall.

And... Freebies for everyone! ARP2600 sound experiments. Love that synth. Tracked through a Trident mixer with neve compressors (fatty tones). Download any single sound or the whole sample set here: https://samply.app/p/D6eDV221qwOo9l4nHXOL?si=YDqVw9Ik0rcJIMghWcI7sNMxCyw1

Lucky to be in a commercial studio and working with mics on the daily. Here are some random pics from our collection.