JezSound

Actually now is probably is the best time in the history of games to get into sound design.

When I started out over ten years ago, only the really big studios even had an audio department, the medium ones maybe a composer who also did sound effects. The idea of a 'junior' sound designer virtually didn't exist.

Now I work at a medium sized studio and there are five of us in house, with 4 temps helping us out and several outsource agencies involved in the production.

Jobs may not be everywhere, but they are certainly around and in far greater quantity than at any other time.

You'll get a great deal more experience in a much shorter time working in house somewhere, especially in terms of learning all the facets of games development.

SM7 isn't used that much in voice recording. Sennheiser MKH416 is pretty much the standard.

Seconding this. Been doing this over ten years and am barely proficient with PT. Hate it. Most places will let you use whatever tools suit you best, with perhaps a shared platform for work (like cutscenes) that might be worked on by many people - that shared platform is just as likely to be something like Reaper, Cubase, even Vegas as it is to be PT. Also PT is really expensive and budgets are often very tight in audio departments.

Also Reaper is really taking off. It has exceptional customisability with the ability to do deep level scripting that can automate a lot of the audio pipeline.