We Need To Talk About Sound Design...

Listen up (literally), because it's time to have a serious discussion about Sound Design. Every Awards Season, voters kind of tell on themselves with the same pattern: the loudest movie wins. This year, it was F1.
 

The racing blockbuster took home Best Sound at the 2026 Oscars , a result that, on paper, makes sense. It’s a movie built around engines, speed, and spectacle. Of course it’s loud. Of course it’s immersive. But that’s also kind of the problem. Loud ≠ Good Sound Design.

There’s a difference between sound design and just… having a lot of sound. Good sound design isn’t about how loud something is. It’s about:

- How sound is used to build tension

- How it shapes perspective

- How it tells a story without dialogue

It’s subtle. It’s intentional. It’s often the kind of thing you don’t consciously notice, but you feel. And historically, that’s not what the Academy rewards. Instead, the pattern is pretty consistent:

- War movies

- Action movies

- Anything with explosions, engines, or chaos

Those tend to win, and F1 fits that mold perfectly. To be clear, though, F1 didn’t win out of nowhere. The film’s sound team had already been cleaning up during awards season, including major industry wins leading into the Oscars . It was widely predicted to take the category, and it did. But that actually reinforces the issue. Because what voters are responding to isn’t necessarily the most interesting use of sound. It’s the most immediately noticeable use of sound. Engines roaring. Tires screeching. Crowds swelling.

It’s impressive, sure. But it’s also obvious, and "obvious" tends to win. The frustrating part is that, every year, there are films nominated that do something far more creative with sound.

This year’s nominees included films like Sirât, Sinners, and One Battle After Another, projects that use sound in more psychological, atmospheric, or narrative-driven ways. Sound design is one of the hardest crafts to evaluate if you’re not actively thinking about it. You can see cinematography. You can notice acting. But sound often works invisibly. So when voters are filling out ballots (many of whom aren’t sound professionals), it makes sense that they gravitate toward what stands out the most. And what stands out the most is usually volume and intensity.

This has been a recurring conversation for years. The idea that the Oscars reward the "loudest" film in Sound categories isn’t new; it’s just one of those things that keeps happening often enough that it’s hard to ignore. Even in years where more subtle work breaks through, it tends to be the exception rather than the rule, And every time a big, spectacle-driven movie wins, it reinforces that same perception.

At its best, sound design is storytelling. It’s:

- The way a room feels empty

- The way tension builds before something happens

- The way a character’s world shifts without a single line of dialogue

It’s not just about realism or intensity. It’s about point of view. The best sound design doesn’t just make things louder. It makes them meaningful. That doesn’t mean F1 didn’t do impressive work. It did. But it does raise the question of whether the award is consistently going to the most thoughtful use of sound, or just the most overwhelming one. It starts to feel like a pattern in how the category is judged altogether, and until there’s a shift, whether in how voters engage with the craft, or how the category itself is evaluated, it’s hard to imagine that changing anytime soon.

Because if the loudest movie keeps winning, then the conversation around sound design never really moves forward; It just gets louder.