India, Nov. 29 -- The right soundscape can make you buy something you don't need, convince you that a horrific scene has a comic side, and make you question what you're seeing. "It's what makes Tom Cruise hanging off a plane seem even more believable," says Ganesh Gangadharan, 47, a Mumbai-based sound designer. "You take in the heavy breathing, the scrape of his hands against metal, the rush of wind, and the roar of the plane." More sound artists are sharing their secrets on Reels and clips. And, judging by the Likes, we're all in awe. India makes the job especially complicated. We're a noisy nation. We take in and tune out more than we realise: The traffic jam filtering in, Alexa mishearing a command, and the ASMR of the cook preparing dinner, the elevator dings carrying through the office floor, the cat covering his business in the adjoining bathroom... So, when shows on streaming platforms such as Netflix follow global standards, it might sound too quiet in Indian homes. And when your home TV plays the hero's whisper and an explosion at the same volume, it's often because sound engineers have a tougher time squeezing sounds into an OTT platform than a cinema hall. Until the 2000s, "dialogues, music, and effects all sat on a single track. There was no depth or spatial direction," says Karan Arjun Singh, 53, a longtime foley artist. Updates came with Dolby Atmos in 2012 and 7.1 surround sound in 2014, allowing sound to now move freely from ceiling to floor, and front to back. If you've watched a Christopher Nolan movie on the big screen, you know how sound rushes past like an arrow, crashes into you like a wave, or floats across the cinema like a cloud. If Nolan's The Dark Knight is a mood, it's because Richard King picks every sound with care, no two thuds sound the same. Even Bruce Wayne's footsteps sound different from Batman's. These days, each sound is recorded separately and placed precisely to match the moment on screen. "In Krrish 3, there was a character who could extend his tongue," recalls Arjun Singh. "To create that effect, we used a thick nylon rope, spun it like a lasso, and matched the sound to the tongue's movement." Many engineers work closely with foley artists to recreate everyday sounds in the studio, for greater realism and emotional impact. The sound of blood splashing? Likely created by a thick, sharp piece of wood cutting into a watermelon. Punches? Likely a fist wrapped in wet cloth, hitting a goat carcass. Gunfire? Legit recordings of specific guns are available in sound-effect libraries, but the click of the trigger - that's actually the sound of a door latch. It's why BTS Reels, breaking down a tense scene through audio, are such fun. Would you be afraid of The Hulk once you knew that the sound of his victims' bones cracking are celery stalks being snapped in two? And through it all, one genre poses the biggest challenge: How to make advertisements pop. in your ear. Aditya Arya, 36, music director, sound engineer, and founder of The Indian Audio Company, says that ads are built on sounds that don't exist in real life but are crafted to grab attention: The fizz of a cola, the sparkle when a logo appears, the ting-ting-ti-ting at the end of a Britannia ad. Arya worked on an ad for JK Tyres in 2020, featuring an Indian Formula One driver and a theme of alien transformers. "Every sound was created organically: Metal rods, plates, spoons and random studio objects were struck, scraped and layered to simulate other-worldly machinery," he says. And, as ads hop over to Insta, their sounds must match the faux-authenticity of the platform too. Foley and engineering teams have swapped heavy layering for clean on-set audio. Music and effects are deliberately toned down, live instrumentation feels more real to the ear. The next time an ad interrupts your doom scroll, or a scene gives you the chills, close your eyes and listen - art, tech and trends are at it again....