Emmy Award-winning sound designer Ryan Hobler has built a career spanning Super Bowl ads and national campaigns for brands such as Febreze, E*TRADE, and Applebee’s.
At the same time, he is an accomplished composer and musician, continually expanding his body of work as a singer-songwriter and producer. In both post-production and music, Hobler has found Krotos Studio to be an integral creative tool.
From designing and mixing sound for high-profile commercials to producing short-form promotional videos for his latest folk-pop EP, he uses Krotos to merge his dual identities as sound designer and musician, streamlining his workflow while opening new creative possibilities.
With nearly two decades in post-production, Hobler knows how important it is to move quickly without sacrificing creativity. Deadlines for commercials and branded content often leave little room for trial and error, making workflow speed essential.
“I find that for alot of the dynamic and moving elements, Krotos Studio is an invaluable tool, because it’s so easy to manipulate those sounds and make them work with the motion of whatever you’re designing,” he explains.
For Hobler, that efficiency translates directly into more time spent on creative decisions rather than technical hurdles.
“You want as little hindrance as possible, and with KrotosStudio, you can tap into that quicker. You can get to the idea in your headsooner.”
That efficiency has been critical in recent national ad campaigns that required quick, dynamic sound design. In one spot, the commercial opened with a person navigating a smartphone app, where Hobler drew on Krotos Studio’s UI library to create a synthetic palette of taps and text noises.
Later in the same campaign, he was tasked with bringing the sound of a sandwich deconstructing into its individual parts to life.
The sequence played like a non-destructive explosion that needed the right sonic detail to match the visuals.
“Krotos Studio is incredible for making the abstract sonically tangible,” Hobler says. “This explosive moment had no basis in reality, so I wound up using a variety of Krotos Studio presets to complement the bombastic music and visual effects.”
With each update, Hobler notes, Krotos Studio has continued to evolve. The software now offers not only an expanding library of sounds and features but also an AI-powered search that fuels discovery as well as efficiency.
“I use the search all the time, and I love what it comes up with, because sometimes it gives me these nice surprises,” he says. “It makes me curious — would that work in there? I’ll try that.
I love the suggestive nature of [Krotos Studio's] search and how it inspires me to try unexpected options.”
Beyond his commercial work, Hobler’s creative identity extends into songwriting and music production, and Krotos Studio has become a tool that helps him merge these worlds.
“I’ve been trying to bridge the gap between those two arbitrary columns for quite some time, making music that uses sound effects and sounds that weren’t necessarily strictly musical in a traditional sense.”
Over the years, he has sampled everyday objects like a switchblade comb, a clock, and even the click of a car’s turn signal to create rhythmic or melodic textures in his songs.
That crossover also extends into how he presents his music. On his latest single, “Paper Airplane Life,” one of several tracks released with recording artist Erik Blicker, Hobler applied his sound design skills to promotional video content, creating short teaser clips for social media.
He used Krotos Studio for expressive swooshes and transitions, pairing them with cues from the track to give the visuals a cinematic quality. The result demonstrates how he moves between post-production and music, using Krotos Studio as a bridge.
Krotos Studio invites Hobler to approach sound design as a performance, a perspective that connects directly to his background as a musician.
“I love the fact that it’s so interactive, how you can map it toyour keyboard, use your mouse, and put down a lot of dynamic material veryquickly in a way that feels performative,”
That mindset of play and discovery fuels both his professional and personal projects.