SoundGym Community for Music Producers

Kevin Koelzer
May 08 in SoundGym Cafe

No one asked but here’s my ranking of the SoundGym games based on practicality. This is MY subjective view as a mixing and mastering engineer. The value may differ from person to person

1. EQ Mirror - Super practical, a great way to figure out how to solve and match EQ problems

2. Kit Cut - Great for training but only if you don’t use the on/off button and learn to hear what different lack of frequency bands sounds like

3. Filter Expert - Like all of the EQ games combined but good at learning the difference between shelving and filtering

4. Compressionist - How I learned about attack and release settings affecting audio (wish they had more than just drum sounds)

5. Peak Master - Simple, and effective. Perfect for beginners

6. EQ Cheetah - Harder, but effective. Perfect for people looking to train their instincts

7. Bass Detective - Bass frequencies can be harder to differentiate but this game helps

8. Distorted Reality - Definitely good for hearing whether you’re pushing your limiter too hard

9. Dr. Compressor - Difficult but I did learn how to hear when transients are being squashed and killing the depth of drums

10. EQ Knight - Not bad but not my favorite EQ game. In most cases you only need to identify one frequency band change and you’ll have the answer

11. Reverb Wizard - Good for hearing and identifying reverb tails. Wish they would focus more on
identifying certain types of reverbs

12. Sonar Beast - Cool game but I find the others more practical in a real world setting

13. Feedback Eliminator - I only find this useful as a live sound engineer

14. Stereohead - Not exactly super important to be able to identify specific panning settings, especially since a lot of panning is just LCR

15. Pan Girl - Same as above

16. DB King - Never had to apply this skill in a real world mix/master setting but I guess it’s interesting

17. Balance Memory - Same as above but this one is seriously pointless because when have you been in a situation where you had to set volume levels from memory?

18. Delay Control - Absolutely useless. Knowing the exact numbers of different delay settings by ear does nothing to make you a better mixing/mastering engineer

21 いいね

Kevin Koelzer (author)
May 09, 18:18

Linda - Sonar Beast is the newest game they added. Not sure if it shows up in the free version or not because I pay for my subscription
Doctor MojoTrip - Yeah knowing the exact numbers just by hearing just seems like a pointless parlor trick when it comes to audio heh
Stelios - No problem, and yeah I feel like your approach is maybe better for artists/producers while mine is geared towards mixing/mastering for business. It's interesting how the value can change depending on what a person does in audio

2 props

Jay Kay
May 09, 19:46

I don't disagree with the ranking at all but a part of me disagrees with the list as a whole.

It's kinda like ranking math disciplines. Is trigonometry more useful than calculus? Maybe, idk. But what people gain by studying both of them is nearly identical - it teaches you to engage your brain, shift your perspective and find a path through.

I think that all the games force you to focus on something different or at least to flex the mental muscles you've built in a new way. I certainly love a few and hate a few but I'm not gonna skip leg day cause I hate the exercises 😅

3 props

Morgan Belle
May 09, 22:05

As a (mostly) live sound engineer, i think delay control is quite useful for sharpening your ears for timing issues. Sometimes it is needed to hear if your loudspeakers are delayed correctly or if your pa sound is delayed correctly to the speakers/singer/musicians on the stage. For this you need a certain awareness of how different delays sound.

1 props

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