Sound Designer
CarstenRojahn
Everything you hear was something else first.
Sound designer with twenty years giving a voice to creatures, weapons, machines and things not from this world, built from original recordings and the unlikely ideas behind them.
See selected workMost of what I record is literal. What interests me is the moment it stops being literal.
Statement
The sound is not there yet
I start with a microphone and something from this world. A hinge, a voice, a sheet of metal under tension, a bird, a broken toy. Something with emotion already in it.
Almost none of it sounds like the thing it will become. Slowed down, layered, pushed through a device it was never meant to go through, an ordinary object gives up a performance nobody knew it had. That moment of recognition is the reason I do this, and it has not worn off in twenty years.
The goal is never just loud, and it is not polish either. It is finding the one specific sound that makes a world feel inhabited, gives a character a body, and lets an audience feel something a beat before they understand why. Sound reaches people ahead of language. That is the part of the craft worth being careful with.
I do not want a project to sound real. A creature should have a voice that exists only in that story. A weapon should have a mechanism you could almost draw from listening to it. A machine should sound like it was engineered by people who never existed. That takes original recording, real time in the edit, and knowing when to stop.
Technology is an instrument in this work, not a shortcut through it. I will use whatever gets me closer to the sound, then use my ears and my understanding of what works emotionally to decide whether it was worth keeping. The judgement is the job. The recording is where it starts.
Carsten Rojahn
Selected work
Twenty-three
worlds
Every project I have shipped sound for. The rows move on their own and stop the moment you touch them. Open any piece for the role, what the sonic problem was, and the clip where there is one.
-
Destiny 2
Bungie / Lead Sound Design
Award-nominated sound design across multiple major expansions.
The interesting problem
Destiny is a game people hear for thousands of hours. A weapon cannot simply sound powerful once, it has to stay satisfying on the ten thousandth shot, sit inside a mix with dozens of other sources, and still be recognisable to a player who is not looking at it. Recognition without fatigue is a much harder target than impact.
What I contributed
Weapon design across expansions including Forsaken, Warmind, The Witch Queen, The Final Shape, Renegades and Monument of Triumph. Hive creature vocalisation and the oppressive Moon soundscapes on Shadowkeep. Enemy archetypes and the Tangled Shore and Dreaming City on Forsaken. Finisher and cosmetic sound design on Curse of Osiris and Lightfall.
-
Last Sentinel
Tencent / Weapon & Combat Sound
Player and NPC weapon sound design, combat systems, and melee and finisher design.
-
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep
Bungie / Sound Design
Hive creature vocalisation and the oppressive Moon soundscapes.
-
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft / Audio Supervision
Audio supervision and cross-studio Wwise integration across an open world.
The interesting problem
Pandora is a place audiences already believe they know the sound of. An open world has to keep that biology alive in every direction at once, across teams in different studios, without the seams becoming audible. Consistency at that scale is a creative problem before it is a technical one.
What I contributed
Audio supervision and cross-studio Wwise integration, keeping one coherent sonic identity across an open world built by multiple teams.
-
Destiny 2: Lightfall
Bungie / Sound Design
Finisher and cosmetic sound design.
-
Hitman: Absolution
IO Interactive / Sound Design
Tension-driven audio systems and signature weapon design.
The interesting problem
Stealth is the one genre where silence does most of the work. The sound has to tell a player exactly how much trouble they are in without ever announcing it, which means designing restraint and dynamic range as carefully as the loud moments.
What I contributed
Sound design for tension-driven audio systems and signature weapons.
-
Destiny 2: Warmind
Bungie / Sound Design
Weapons, Hive enemies and Rasputin's arctic stronghold.
-
The Order: 1886
Ready At Dawn / Audio Direction
Full audio direction and cinematic sound design.
The interesting problem
A world of imagined nineteenth century machinery has no reference recordings, and it cannot sound modern. Every mechanism had to feel engineered from brass, steam and pressure by people who did not have electricity to fall back on, and it had to hold up in cinematics where the camera never looks away.
What I contributed
Audio direction across the project, setting the sonic language and holding it consistent from weapons and mechanisms through to cinematic sound design.
-
Destiny 2: Monument of Triumph
Bungie / Sound Design
Weapon design across 20 weapons and cinematic audio.
-
Ire
ProbablyMonsters / Sound Design
Original creature vocalisation and horror atmospheric design.
-
Destiny 2: Forsaken
Bungie / Sound Design
Weapons, enemy archetypes and the Tangled Shore and Dreaming City.
-
Deformers
Ready At Dawn / Sound Design
Distinctive character audio and dynamic movement and ability sounds.
-
Destiny 2: The Final Shape
Bungie / Sound Design
Weapon design and cinematic audio for the Destiny 2 finale.
-
Far Cry 6
Ubisoft Toronto / Co-Audio Direction
Co-audio direction and sound design for the Special Operations DLC.
-
Destiny 2: The Witch Queen
Bungie / Sound Design
Weapons, Hive Guardians and Throne World environments.
-
No Rest for the Wicked
Moon Studios / Sound Design
Visceral combat and creature sound design for a hand-painted action-RPG.
-
Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris
Bungie / Sound Design
Finisher audio and cosmetic sound design.
-
Lone Echo
Ready At Dawn / VR Sound Design
Spatial audio for the acclaimed zero-gravity VR experience.
The interesting problem
In VR the listener owns the camera, so nothing can be faked from a fixed perspective. In zero gravity there is no floor to push against and no footsteps to carry movement, which removes the sound designer's most reliable tool. Everything the player feels about motion has to come from contact, breath, suit and the structure around them.
What I contributed
Spatial sound design for a project where the sense of physical presence is the experience.
-
Destiny 2: Renegades
Bungie / Sound Design
Weapon sound design, combatant abilities and cosmetic content.
-
Crimson Moon
ProbablyMonsters / Sound Design
Creature-ability sound design, cinematic audio and trailer sound.
The interesting problem
The creatures and their abilities carry the game's identity, on screen in gameplay and in every reveal. A new world has no established sound, so the first thing an audience ever hears of it has to be the right thing, and it has to still be the right thing years later in the game itself.
What I contributed
Original creature-ability sound design, cinematic audio and trailer sound. One coherent sonic voice across gameplay and marketing, built entirely from bespoke, never-reused material.
-
Destiny: Rising
NetEase Games / Mobile Sound Design
Mobile sound design and interactive audio for the Destiny universe.
-
BattleBlock Theater
The Behemoth / Sound Design
Sound design for gameplay and cutscenes.
-
Destiny 2: Edge of Faith
Bungie / Sound Design
Weapon sound design and cinematic audio.
Drag a row to move it yourself. Hovering or tabbing to a tile stops it. Open any tile for the full credit.
Studios and companies the work has been made with
A creature should have a voice that exists only in that story.
How a sound gets invented
From an object
to a world
This is not a pipeline. It is closer to the way the same seven things keep happening, in a different order every time.
Listen
Before anything else, to the thing being built. The animation, the concept art, the way a creature carries its weight, the pause a director keeps returning to. The sound is usually already hiding in the movement.
Record
Then go and get the source. Objects, mechanisms, voices, materials, environments, whatever holds the right physical character. Almost nothing I need for a specific world already exists on a shelf.
Experiment
The best material comes from treating a recording badly on purpose. Wrong speed, wrong device, wrong direction, too close, too hot. I keep the accidents. They are usually more alive than the plan.
Transform
Editing and processing until the source has disappeared and something else is standing in its place. A hinge becomes a jaw. A cable under tension becomes a weapon. The trick is stopping while it still has its body.
Compose
Layers are chosen, not stacked. Every element has to be doing a job: weight, size, threat, intent, distance. Anything that is only there for volume comes back out.
Place in context
Sound only really exists in a scene, against picture, music, dialogue and silence. This is where most of my favourite decisions get overturned, and where a design either supports the story or quietly competes with it.
Refine
Then the long part. Balance, contrast, dynamic range, restraint. Knowing what to take away is most of the craft, and it is the part that separates something impressive from something believable.
In interactive work the same design carries on into the engine, where a sound has to learn how to behave. I work in Wwise, Unreal and MetaSounds, and in FMOD. For linear work the same material is delivered to picture. These are useful things to be fluent in. They are not what the work is about.
The studio
A quiet place
to make loud things
Between the mountains and the sea in Spain, running on solar power. The room matters because it is the only place I can trust what I am hearing.
None of this is here to be impressive. A reference-grade room and a proper listening space mean that what I hand over sounds the same wherever it lands, and the location means I can walk out of the door with a microphone when a project needs something that does not exist yet.
Recognition
In other
people's words
Award-nominated by GANG, MPSE, DICE and NAMM TEC.
One of the most creative and innovative sound designers I know, consistently my first recommendation for every project, in games and film. He overcomes any technical or creative obstacle.
Palm Tree Audio represents the same passion, creativity, and attention to detail that made working with Carsten one of the highlights of my career. Studios looking for a trusted audio partner will find a team that genuinely cares about making games sound extraordinary.
Working with Carsten on Avatar was a truly outstanding experience. His ability to bring fresh ideas and new perspectives significantly enhanced the project's overall quality.
He knows what he wants and gets it fast, and to a high quality standard. A brilliant collaboration on Hitman: Absolution.
Creative, quality-focused and reliable. A great manager, inspiring as a creative and audio lead. I'd happily work with him again.
Contact
Tell me about the world you are building
Feature films, trailers, animation, advertising, cinematics, games, immersive work, or a single sound nobody has been able to find. Send a picture, a script, an animatic, or just a description of the feeling you are after. I read everything myself and I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.
Based in Spain, working internationally · Replies within one business day · NDA first, always