Behind the Sound
How Movies Really Sound
We've spent years interviewing the sound designers, editors, and engineers behind Hollywood's biggest films. This is what they told us.
Films featured in our interviews
Movie sound is not what most people think it is. It is not a microphone on set capturing what actors say. It is not a music track laid over the top. It is a meticulously constructed, layer-by-layer sonic architecture that takes months to build after principal photography wraps. Every footstep you hear in a film was individually recorded. Every explosion was designed from scratch. Every ambient texture — wind, room tone, crowd murmur — was placed with surgical precision in a three-dimensional sound field.
We know this because we have sat down with the people who do it. Over the past several years, we have conducted in-depth interviews with Oscar-winning sound designers, blockbuster sound editors, film editors, and supervising sound engineers across some of the most recognisable titles in modern cinema. These conversations were not promotional — they were technical, detailed, and honest about how sound actually works at the highest level.
What follows is a summary of what we learned, organised by film and by the professional who explained it. If you care about how your home cinema sounds — and you should, because sound is 80% of the cinema experience — this is essential reading.
Oscar Winner
Dune & Blade Runner 2049 — Mark Mangini
Mark Mangini won the Academy Award for Best Sound for Dune and was previously nominated for Blade Runner 2049. His approach to sound design is rooted in a principle that surprises most people: he avoids using pre-existing sound libraries. For Dune, almost every sound was created from scratch using organic, real-world sources — scraping metal, recording sand in specific desert environments, manipulating insect recordings to create the voice of the sandworms.
In our conversation, Mangini explained that Denis Villeneuve's approach to sound is inseparable from his visual storytelling. The director doesn't treat sound as a finishing step. He builds it into the architecture of the film from pre-production. The result is a soundtrack where the subwoofer is not just shaking your chest — it is communicating narrative information. The deep rumble of the sandworm is not spectacle. It is a character.
"Sound is not post-production. Sound is production. If you're thinking about it after the edit is locked, you've already lost half of what the audience could feel."
— Mark Mangini, Oscar-winning Sound Designer
For home cinema owners, Mangini's work is the gold standard stress test. If your system can reproduce the layered, full-range complexity of Dune's soundtrack — from the whispering Voice to the seismic bass of a sandworm emergence — your room is calibrated correctly. If it cannot, it is your room or your speakers that are failing, not the source material.
Read the full Mark Mangini interview →Action Sound Design
John Wick — Luke Gibleon
The John Wick franchise redefined how action sounds in cinema. Every gunshot has weight. Every impact has texture. Luke Gibleon, the sound designer behind the series, explained to us that the key to John Wick's sound is restraint mixed with hyper-detail. When Wick fires a weapon in a marble-floored lobby, you hear the shot, the mechanical action of the firearm, the shell casing hitting the floor, and the reverberant decay of the room — all as distinct, layered events.
Gibleon's philosophy is that action sound design should never mask itself. Each element occupies its own frequency band and spatial position. This is the polar opposite of the "wall of noise" approach used in lesser action films where everything is compressed into a single loud mass. In a well-calibrated home cinema, John Wick is one of the most revealing reference discs available. You can hear exactly how good (or how compromised) your surround processing and speaker placement are by how clearly those layered elements separate.
Read the full Luke Gibleon interview →"If all you hear is loud, we've failed. You should hear the room change. You should hear the distance. That's what makes it visceral."
— Luke Gibleon, John Wick Sound Designer
Immersive Sound
Top Gun: Maverick — Chris Burdon
Top Gun: Maverick was not just a box office phenomenon. It was one of the most important sound mixes in recent cinema history. Chris Burdon's work on the film was specifically designed to exploit the full potential of Dolby Atmos in ways that most blockbusters simply do not attempt. The flight sequences were mixed to put you inside the cockpit — G-forces, engine roar, radio crackle, and the subtle creaking of the airframe under stress all occupy distinct positions in the sound field.
In our interview, Burdon explained that much of the raw audio was captured using microphones mounted on and inside real F/A-18 Super Hornets during actual flight. This is not synthesised engine noise. This is the real thing, recorded at extreme altitudes and G-forces, then carefully processed to maintain fidelity while fitting within the dynamic range constraints of cinema and home audio formats.
For home cinema testing, Top Gun: Maverick is the definitive Atmos reference. The overhead channels carry real, meaningful content — not just ambient padding. If your ceiling speakers are correctly placed and calibrated, the opening carrier deck sequence alone will tell you everything about whether your immersive audio system is working as intended.
Read the full Chris Burdon interview →Oscar Winner
Star Wars — Paul Hirsch
Paul Hirsch won the Academy Award for editing Star Wars: A New Hope in 1978. While he is an editor rather than a sound designer, his perspective on how picture and sound interlock is unmatched. In our conversation, Hirsch explained that the original Star Wars was a case study in how editing rhythm drives the sound mix. Every cut creates a sonic event. The pacing of the trench run sequence was designed so that Ben Burtt's sound effects could build tension through increasing frequency of cuts and corresponding audio transitions.
Hirsch also gave us rare insight into working with Brian De Palma, the relationship between music editing and picture editing, and why the tempo of a scene is fundamentally an audio decision disguised as a visual one. His career spans from Star Wars to Mission: Impossible, and his understanding of how audiences process the interaction between what they see and what they hear is deeply practical.
Read the full Paul Hirsch interview →"The audience doesn't separate picture and sound. They experience a single stream. If the edit is wrong, the sound can't save it. If the sound is wrong, the edit feels broken."
— Paul Hirsch, Oscar-winning Editor (Star Wars)
Television Sound
Cobra Kai — Patrick Hogan & Abraham Martinez
Cobra Kai is one of Netflix's most successful series, and its sound design operates under constraints that film sound designers rarely face. Television budgets are tighter. Turnaround times are faster. Yet the fight choreography in Cobra Kai demands a level of sonic detail that rivals theatrical releases. Patrick Hogan, the show's sound designer, walked us through how he creates the impact and energy of tournament fights within these constraints.
Abraham Martinez, the show's Director of Photography, gave us the visual counterpart — explaining how camera movement, lighting, and lens choices are all designed to work in concert with the sound mix. His perspective on how cinematic television has evolved from the era of flat multicam shooting to the single-camera, film-grammar approach used in Cobra Kai is a masterclass in how modern streaming content is made.
For home cinema owners, Cobra Kai is a reminder that reference-quality sound design is no longer exclusive to theatrical releases. Streaming series now deliver mixes that demand serious speaker systems and proper room treatment to appreciate fully. If your system makes Cobra Kai's fights feel thin or flat, your surround processing or subwoofer integration needs attention.
Epic Television
The Rings of Power — Sound & Production Design
Amazon's The Rings of Power is one of the most expensive television productions ever made, and its audio is treated with a respect that matches the budget. We spoke with both the sound design team and the production designer Ramsey Avery to understand how the sonic and visual worlds of Middle-earth are constructed to feel like a single, coherent reality.
The sound team explained their approach to creating the soundscapes of entirely fictional environments — how do you decide what a Numenorean harbour sounds like? What does the wind sound like in the Southlands before Mordor? Every environment in the show has a bespoke ambient bed constructed from layered field recordings, processed organic sources, and occasionally synthesised elements that are blended so carefully they feel completely natural.
Ramsey Avery's production design perspective added a dimension we rarely hear: the physical sets are designed with acoustics in mind. Wall materials, floor surfaces, and room dimensions are chosen not only for visual authenticity but for how they photograph and how they inform the sound team's approach to reverb and spatial character. This integration between physical design and audio design is what separates truly premium production from everything else.
What This Means for Your Home Cinema
Every single professional we interviewed — without exception — said the same thing when we asked what matters most for home playback: acoustics first, speakers second, electronics third. The room you watch in is the most important piece of equipment you own. No amount of spending on speakers will overcome a room that has not been acoustically treated.
These conversations also reinforced something we tell every client: your home cinema should be calibrated to reproduce what the filmmakers intended. Not what sounds impressive on a showroom floor. Not what a retailer wants to sell you. What the sound designer mixed on a reference-calibrated dubbing stage. That is the target, and reaching it requires independent advice from someone who understands both the equipment and the creative intent behind the content. If you are wondering what it costs to build a cinema that achieves this, we have published real numbers from real projects.
| Film / Show | Key Sound Professional | What It Tests |
|---|---|---|
| Dune / Blade Runner 2049 | Mark Mangini | Sub-bass extension, dynamic range, LFE precision |
| John Wick | Luke Gibleon | Surround detail, transient clarity, spatial separation |
| Top Gun: Maverick | Chris Burdon | Atmos overhead channels, immersive panning, bass weight |
| Star Wars | Paul Hirsch | Edit-to-sound sync, musical timing, mid-range clarity |
| Cobra Kai | Patrick Hogan | Fight impact, dialogue under action, streaming fidelity |
| The Rings of Power | Sound Design Team | Ambient detail, world-building, reverb accuracy |
We use these exact titles when calibrating and demonstrating our clients' home cinemas. They are not just entertainment — they are diagnostic tools. If your system can handle the full dynamic and spatial demands of these soundtracks, it can handle anything Hollywood throws at it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is movie sound different from regular audio?
Movie sound is built from the ground up in post-production. Every footstep, explosion, and ambient rustle is individually recorded, designed, and placed in a 3D sound field. Music, dialogue, and effects occupy separate stems that are mixed to work together in a calibrated cinema environment. Regular audio — streaming music, TV broadcasts — is a stereo or compressed surround signal that does not have the same spatial precision or dynamic range.
What is Dolby Atmos and why does it matter for home cinema?
Dolby Atmos is an object-based audio format that places sounds in three-dimensional space, including above your head. Instead of assigning audio to fixed channels (left, right, centre), Atmos lets sound designers attach audio to objects that move independently. In a properly calibrated home cinema with ceiling speakers, you hear helicopters pass overhead and rain fall around you exactly as the mixer intended.
Can you recreate cinema-quality sound at home?
Yes — and in many cases you can exceed commercial cinema quality. A dedicated home cinema room with proper acoustic treatment, reference-grade speakers such as Steinway Lyngdorf, and correct calibration will outperform most commercial multiplexes. The advantage at home is complete control over room acoustics, seating position, and system calibration — things a multiplex cannot optimise for every seat.
Why do sound designers say acoustics matter more than speakers?
Because even the best speakers sound terrible in a bad room. Untreated parallel walls create flutter echoes. Hard surfaces cause excessive reverberation that smears dialogue clarity. Bass builds up unevenly, making some seats boomy and others thin. Acoustic treatment — absorption panels, bass traps, diffusion — shapes how sound behaves in the space. Every professional we have interviewed emphasises room treatment as the single most impactful investment.
What equipment do Hollywood sound designers use?
Most Hollywood dubbing stages use JBL or Meyer Sound main speakers, Avid Pro Tools for editing, and calibrated near-field monitors for detail work. The tools vary — some designers use custom Foley rigs, while others rely on field recorders like the Sound Devices MixPre series. The consistent thread is that professionals prioritise acoustics and calibration over any single piece of equipment. The room matters more than the gear inside it.
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