Tim Larkin is a composer and sound designer for Valve. Previously the audio director for Cyan software company that produced the Myst series of computer games. Before working at Valve, he worked at Cyan, working as a sound designer for Riven, and as a composer for realMyst, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and Myst V: End of Ages.
He has 23 years experience in the game audio industry. He started in the game industry working as a composer/sound designer for Broderbund. He created sound design for Riven while working there and was later hired at Cyan to work on realMyst and Uru. Tim still performs session work regularly as a trumpet player as well as doing freelance sound design and composition outside Cyan. He created music and sound design for titles such as Middle-earth, The Incredibles, Pariah, The Lord of the Rings, and Prince of Persia. He won the Academy Award for sound design at the 75th Academy Awards for his work on the Sony Imageworks animated short film, The ChubbChubbs!. In the 2000s, Larkin was hired by Valve and worked on a number of their games, including Team Fortress 2, Portal, Portal 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Artifact.
Tim's experience in the music industry includes live performances as a trumpet player with artists Natalie Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Mel Tormé, Sheila E and Huey Lewis. He recorded on record albums for Ice-T and as a solo artist for Avenue Jazz. He worked on HBO's The Rat Pack, White Mile and Floundering. He has done the trumpet work for the documentaries National Geographic's Lost Fleet of Guadalcanal, Pearl Harbor and The White House, and American Experience documentaries on Galileo and the Wright Brothers.