As part of Phase Plant's 7th Anniversary, we ran the Seven Second Sound contest and asked people to show us how much one Phase Plant patch could do in around seven seconds.
The response was excellent. We had loads of strong entries, and this year there was a particularly big showing from the FX and game audio crowd, which makes a lot of sense in hindsight. The format really suited people building whooshes, impacts, ambiences, generators, and other short-form patches with lots of movement and utility packed into them.
As always, narrowing things down was not easy. We ended up with a long shortlist of genuinely great entries, and in a lot of cases the final decision came down to the combination of the audio example, the impressiveness of the patch itself, and how usable it felt once we got our hands on it.
So, first of all, thank you to everyone who entered. And if you did not make the final seven this time, better luck next time. The overall standard was high, and there were plenty of entries that made this much harder to judge than you might think.
The seven winners below will each receive seven Kilohearts Content Banks of their choice plus a $70 coupon. Winners will also have been emailed directly on the email address they used to submit their entry so we can arrange prizes.
If you want to dig into the results for yourself, all the winning entries, including both the patches and the audio examples, can be downloaded from the sidebar.
If you want to hear the winning sounds, check out the video below.
The Winners
Here are the seven winners, in no particular order:
OCTO8R
Preset: RiseAndDown
OCTO8R submitted a versatile multi-use riser and downer generator, along with a video showing it off and even a set of custom skins to give away with the preset. It is a smart utility patch with a lot of replay value and plenty of room for variation. They also made a neat overview video, below.
Ferenc Bátri
Preset: TheSeven
Ferenc delivered a deep sci-fi generative cinematic patch with loads of movement and plenty of macro action. It is rich, well thought out, and full of interesting detail. A very deep patch with lots to explore.
Signal Distortion Audio
Preset: SDA_Modular_Explosion
An excellent modular cinematic explosion patch with lots of clever internal structure and macro control. This one stood out for how detailed and tunable it felt, with a lot of thought clearly put into making it flexible as well as impressive.
Matt J Hart
Preset: 7YearsofPhasePlant
Everything is sequenced inside the patch, and while this one definitely made us laugh, it also took a very real amount of effort and commitment to pull off. We have to admire that.
Pablo Palomino Gomez
Preset: Whooshenstein
Pablo submitted a really neat sci-fi whoosh generator with simulated doppler movement and lots of macro control. It is a fun patch, a practical one, and a very good example of how much mileage you can get out of a focused design.
Daisuke Katagiri
Preset: RandomGranularMusical
Daisuke's patch sits somewhere between musical tool and creepy cinematic effect generator. It is chaotic, organic, dissonant, and genuinely fun to play with. A very strong entry.
Ryna Lau
Preset: FXthundersynth
Ryna's patch aimed to synthesize a thunder sound from scratch without samples, and the result was seriously impressive. It is thoughtful, expressive, surprisingly convincing, and full of useful macro control. A really strong piece of synthesis work.
One extra note before we wrap up: the intro audio in the demo video was the example submitted by ewd, and the outro music was made using the patch submitted by Eduardo Casas. Both were great entries that just missed out on the final seven.
Thanks Again
Thanks again to everyone who entered. You made this one fun, difficult, and inspiring in equal measure.
And if you are only just discovering the contest after the fact, the broader Phase Plant's 7th Anniversary series is still well worth a look. We spoke to seven Phase Plant Power Users about seven different areas of sound design, and there is a lot of good stuff in there.
