Where can I buy professional sound effects?
- Thread starter Indyreel
- Start date
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
There are a lot of libraries, it depends a lot on what you are looking for. Professional libraries generally run around $100/ CD so they are not cheap.
Assuming you don't plan on dropping $7000-$10,000 (for that price you can get the SoundStorm library and be pretty covered), the general purpose libraries that are decent are "The Edge" and the "Premiere Edition" from Hollywood Edge. They also have a "Super Single" (maybe two now?) that is just one CD but covers a lot of ground. Sound Ideas is a big name but I'm not too excited about the sets. The BBC sound FX library is pretty extensive and sound really good (and it's cheap) but it's a bit dated (might be a plus) and it's a bit british (ie the phones don't ring like american ones).
Digital Juice is a mixed bag. I have two of them. The plus side is they have a LOT of sounds and they are pretty cheap (get on their mailing list and buy them when they are on special - around $200). The down side is they have a lot of cheesy stuff in there. Something like 1/3 - 1/2 the sounds are voices saying things in various languages. Things like "On sale NOW!", in english spanish german and french. I bought them partially for this because I had a need to make a bunch of fake TV commercials and they had a perfect cheese factor. Figure 1/3 - 1/4 of what's left are generally worthless things like "Monster walking" and other "created" sounds. They are "generally worthless" for sound post because you need to make that sound so you can customize it for the various shots of YOUR monster walking. If your doing something really short like an ad then maybe you can use it?
The rest is OK. Some are very good and some are just OK. I have 1 & 2 and the later ones may have improved the good to junk factor. Even if 1/2 the library is no use to you they are still a good price.
If your looking for sounds because you want to do sound post for a living then you probably want a little general stuf and then get more focused libraries.
I'm also a BIG proponent of recording your own. Don't go and buy a city background if you live in a city, record the one you live in.
Assuming you don't plan on dropping $7000-$10,000 (for that price you can get the SoundStorm library and be pretty covered), the general purpose libraries that are decent are "The Edge" and the "Premiere Edition" from Hollywood Edge. They also have a "Super Single" (maybe two now?) that is just one CD but covers a lot of ground. Sound Ideas is a big name but I'm not too excited about the sets. The BBC sound FX library is pretty extensive and sound really good (and it's cheap) but it's a bit dated (might be a plus) and it's a bit british (ie the phones don't ring like american ones).
Digital Juice is a mixed bag. I have two of them. The plus side is they have a LOT of sounds and they are pretty cheap (get on their mailing list and buy them when they are on special - around $200). The down side is they have a lot of cheesy stuff in there. Something like 1/3 - 1/2 the sounds are voices saying things in various languages. Things like "On sale NOW!", in english spanish german and french. I bought them partially for this because I had a need to make a bunch of fake TV commercials and they had a perfect cheese factor. Figure 1/3 - 1/4 of what's left are generally worthless things like "Monster walking" and other "created" sounds. They are "generally worthless" for sound post because you need to make that sound so you can customize it for the various shots of YOUR monster walking. If your doing something really short like an ad then maybe you can use it?
The rest is OK. Some are very good and some are just OK. I have 1 & 2 and the later ones may have improved the good to junk factor. Even if 1/2 the library is no use to you they are still a good price.
If your looking for sounds because you want to do sound post for a living then you probably want a little general stuf and then get more focused libraries.
I'm also a BIG proponent of recording your own. Don't go and buy a city background if you live in a city, record the one you live in.
robotsound
Well-known member
There's also www.sounddogs.com. You can buy sounds individually online for a project.
I actually met the Sound Dogs guys once when a friend and I wandered onto a dubbing stage on the Sony lot in the 90's. They were doing predubs for the movie Mumford that day. Nice guys, and it was fun to see them work.
I actually met the Sound Dogs guys once when a friend and I wandered onto a dubbing stage on the Sony lot in the 90's. They were doing predubs for the movie Mumford that day. Nice guys, and it was fun to see them work.
unclebob6958
Well-known member
The General 6000 is a very popular collection - 40 CDs for around $1,500. There are also "extension" libraries totaling another 80 CDs for $250 to $700 per extension set. The entire collection on hard drive is $3,700; a special this month for $2,500.
Many of the "studios" have released their collections - 20th Century Fox, LucasFilm, Universal, Disney and Sony.
There a lots of "basics" collections; you'll have to decide which one is best for you and your budget.
When I started out I downloaded every free sound I could find, and yup, it took a lot of time to find them and weed out the garbage. I also picked up the Hollywood Edge Super Single collection, the BBC collection (I got a great bargain at the time) and a couple of cheapies I can't even remember the names of. I now custom record a lot of stuff, buy individual sounds I don't have the time and/or budget to custom record, and buy a CD or two for each project - on one feature I'll need weapons, on another I'll need extensive police cars, etc. As you do projects it all adds up. One of my next purchases will be another terrabyte drive and Sound Miner.
Many of the "studios" have released their collections - 20th Century Fox, LucasFilm, Universal, Disney and Sony.
There a lots of "basics" collections; you'll have to decide which one is best for you and your budget.
When I started out I downloaded every free sound I could find, and yup, it took a lot of time to find them and weed out the garbage. I also picked up the Hollywood Edge Super Single collection, the BBC collection (I got a great bargain at the time) and a couple of cheapies I can't even remember the names of. I now custom record a lot of stuff, buy individual sounds I don't have the time and/or budget to custom record, and buy a CD or two for each project - on one feature I'll need weapons, on another I'll need extensive police cars, etc. As you do projects it all adds up. One of my next purchases will be another terrabyte drive and Sound Miner.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
There is also one other "catch" with the Digital Juice SFX I forgot to mention. They are all named with numbers and not descriptive names and they are all at 96k/24.
The first is a problem because the only way to really search is with DJ's app "The Juicer", it's ok but pretty slow and very limited - you can't add your own sounds. The second is a pain because your not going to be using these sounds at 96 so you will end up converting everything. The later libraries have SoundMiner metadata built in so it's OK if you have SoundMiner but that is not a cheap purchase unless you do a lot of sound. It's still not cheap but almost essential. And if you use JUICER to find and convert it's going to name the files the same as the original so what you get in the time line is still something like DJFX123567, not too informative. So I bulk converted and renamed the first one and use SM to rename the second one on export.
RE: Sound Dogs. They are very good, though buying sounds one at a time is $$$. They have just about all the comercial libraries and they also do a lot of recordings them selves and those are very good. SONOMIC is another buy one at a time place but the pricing is different and is better for longer cuts. FreeSound.org is a mixed bag but a lot of the contributors are good recordists so a fair amount is of high quality.
The first is a problem because the only way to really search is with DJ's app "The Juicer", it's ok but pretty slow and very limited - you can't add your own sounds. The second is a pain because your not going to be using these sounds at 96 so you will end up converting everything. The later libraries have SoundMiner metadata built in so it's OK if you have SoundMiner but that is not a cheap purchase unless you do a lot of sound. It's still not cheap but almost essential. And if you use JUICER to find and convert it's going to name the files the same as the original so what you get in the time line is still something like DJFX123567, not too informative. So I bulk converted and renamed the first one and use SM to rename the second one on export.
RE: Sound Dogs. They are very good, though buying sounds one at a time is $$$. They have just about all the comercial libraries and they also do a lot of recordings them selves and those are very good. SONOMIC is another buy one at a time place but the pricing is different and is better for longer cuts. FreeSound.org is a mixed bag but a lot of the contributors are good recordists so a fair amount is of high quality.
I have all 4 of the Digital Juice libraries. Libraries 3&4 don't change much from the eariler ones. There is always a lot of filler. But for the price (I never paid full price for anything) it's not a bad collection. One of it's strengths is the great library of motion graphic effect sounds. Beeps/swooshes/etc. These can be really handy and a lot easier to use than having to make your own with synths. Of course if you are trying to do library Foley on a film that won't help you much.
The 96k/24 thing isn't a big deal to me, I use Vegas and Sonar so I never have to convert anything. In fact if you're converting sounds to use them, I'd think you need to use better apps. Maybe that's a Mac thing.
The Juicer is the biggest problem with the sound libraries. It's, well, awful. I've been tempted to write some software that would just mass rename these files just to fix it. They are using a SQLlite database for the Jucier metadata. It wouldn't be hard to make an app (might even be able to put it together with Perl/PHP) that would mass rename the files. And maybe a better search/preview engine.
Sounddogs have some nice small downloadable collection packs. They will never have the sound effect you need, but they are fairly nice for the price.
The 96k/24 thing isn't a big deal to me, I use Vegas and Sonar so I never have to convert anything. In fact if you're converting sounds to use them, I'd think you need to use better apps. Maybe that's a Mac thing.
The Juicer is the biggest problem with the sound libraries. It's, well, awful. I've been tempted to write some software that would just mass rename these files just to fix it. They are using a SQLlite database for the Jucier metadata. It wouldn't be hard to make an app (might even be able to put it together with Perl/PHP) that would mass rename the files. And maybe a better search/preview engine.
Sounddogs have some nice small downloadable collection packs. They will never have the sound effect you need, but they are fairly nice for the price.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
No it's not a Mac thing. And it's not a "better apps" thing. It's a practical and workflow issue. Your carrying files that are three times the size you will out put at because? It's true that Pro Tools want's everything in a session at the same sample rate but I actually think that is a good thing. Any app that "converts on the fly" just took that control away from you and is also processing all your sound through some converter you don't have any choice about. Some of that opinion may just be "old school" but FCP which is another of those "I don't care what you put in the timeline" apps ends up causing problems all too often down the pipe. I will admit that part of this bias is based on the fact that I am almost always in a multi step post chain, so it's very important that all the players play well with each other. If your a one stop shop and your doing sound and picture in the same app and not dealing with others then the rules are a lot more flexible.
I agree with the whooshes and such I forgot about those. They also toss in some royalty free music that can be useful.
I always try to keep content at the highest quality throughout post. Every time you down sample something you lose something. Sometimes you have no choice but that's not a healthy workflow.
I also don't think the Juicer's converter is all that good. Vegas and Sonar were both built to be audio apps and offer a fair bit of control over the process. I trust them to do the final conversion. I also have the storage, memory and CPU's to easily handle 96k audio(it'a actually not that hard). But at least for me the pain of trying to convert everything to make a fully consistent workflow is really the killer. I avoid extra processing as much as possible.
I also don't think the Juicer's converter is all that good. Vegas and Sonar were both built to be audio apps and offer a fair bit of control over the process. I trust them to do the final conversion. I also have the storage, memory and CPU's to easily handle 96k audio(it'a actually not that hard). But at least for me the pain of trying to convert everything to make a fully consistent workflow is really the killer. I avoid extra processing as much as possible.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
It's true if you can hear 40K then there is "quality" you are loosing. If your human on the other hand it makes no sense to work at 96K.
I don't know about the Juicers conversion though I suspect your right. I'm doing conversion with either SoundMiner or a dedicated conversion application. QuickTimes conversion is none too good either.
If you can afford to work with a not "fully consistent workflow" then it's not really a problem for you. It is a problem if your working on a team with others though.
Ironically apps that don't make you keep to a fixed sample rate run all the sound through a converter so you are "processing" more of your sounds than folks who are working at a fixed rate. In sample rate agnostic systems everything is converted internally to some neutral format (32 bit float is one I have seen a number of times) and then converted back to whatever you have set you output to. If I'm working at 48k then only sounds that didn't start at 48k are run through a conversion. These day I don't think it probably makes much of or any difference since the power of the computers and the quality of the interfaces and algorithms is so much better than it was when the mantra of "no processing' was king.
Anyway we are not really in disagreement. Since we don't know what environment the OP is working in 96 is either a problem or not.
As a side note, I am not universally opposed to 96K. I slow down sounds all the time and if any of the DJ stuff is something I think I might manipulate a bunch I will leave it at 96. But the lions share of the library doesn't fit that bill (for me) so 99% of it I convert. I could leave it all at 96 and PT would convert on import and that is extremely fast. But A) I hate the waste of space and time (backups and transfers) and it need to rename all the files anyway. A year from now I could decide that it's a waste of time to convert - it almost is now. But for me today it's a little issue.
I don't know about the Juicers conversion though I suspect your right. I'm doing conversion with either SoundMiner or a dedicated conversion application. QuickTimes conversion is none too good either.
If you can afford to work with a not "fully consistent workflow" then it's not really a problem for you. It is a problem if your working on a team with others though.
Ironically apps that don't make you keep to a fixed sample rate run all the sound through a converter so you are "processing" more of your sounds than folks who are working at a fixed rate. In sample rate agnostic systems everything is converted internally to some neutral format (32 bit float is one I have seen a number of times) and then converted back to whatever you have set you output to. If I'm working at 48k then only sounds that didn't start at 48k are run through a conversion. These day I don't think it probably makes much of or any difference since the power of the computers and the quality of the interfaces and algorithms is so much better than it was when the mantra of "no processing' was king.
Anyway we are not really in disagreement. Since we don't know what environment the OP is working in 96 is either a problem or not.
As a side note, I am not universally opposed to 96K. I slow down sounds all the time and if any of the DJ stuff is something I think I might manipulate a bunch I will leave it at 96. But the lions share of the library doesn't fit that bill (for me) so 99% of it I convert. I could leave it all at 96 and PT would convert on import and that is extremely fast. But A) I hate the waste of space and time (backups and transfers) and it need to rename all the files anyway. A year from now I could decide that it's a waste of time to convert - it almost is now. But for me today it's a little issue.