Hi. I have a project coming up where I want to do a bit of the sound mixing myself. I need a few samples, car revving, thunderclap, crowd cheering, that sort of stuff.
I wouldn’t mind just buying a whole massive collection if there’s a good one. So I was just wondering if anyone had any experience/recommendations?
Cheers
Rufus
You’re about to go down a fun, deep, and expensive rabbit hole.
Yes, they all exist and are fabulous. As I do related work, I have accumulated various libraries with more than 100K sounds together, which is only a fraction of what others use and exists.
Regarding car sounds, there are libraries for every specific car model, various vantage points, interior and exterior. Pass-bys at different speeds in 10mph increments, ignition on/off, button pushes, door close/open, etc. etc. You need a sneezing penguin, that exists (I once needed that once). All professionally recorded.
You’ll also quickly need a library management software - Sound Miner used to be the king of the hill, but a lot of folks now use Soundly, which conveniently comes with it’s own cloud library that may be the first and easiest place to start with.
Other big purveyors of comprehensive libraries are ProSoundEffects , Boom Library and A Sound Effect.
Several of these also have subscription libraries or pays as you go online libraries. A good way of using ProSoundEffect is to buy one of their base libraries for the average stuff and then buy as you go for specific sounds, which are $5/ea.
There are also a long list of smaller specialty collections you can find via Google. But these four should get you there most of the way. The only question maybe, how good is your Amex. These libraries aren’t cheap, depending on size they run between $200 - $5K a piece, which though gives you royalty free usage licenses. Pricier if you need the surround or ambisonic editions. The Soundly subscription is a much more basic but affordable starting point.
The option of course is to collaborate with a sound designer who already has the libraries and practice on how to search them and use them. You may need to EQ them or add reverb to properly integrate them into the scene, at which point you may start buying more expensive plugins and Impulse Response (IR) libraries to drive the reverb for the specifics of your scene.
Happy to do a Discord screen share to answer questions and show you.
If you need some simple stuff I could suggest Artlist
Subscriptions start at around 10€/$. They also have bundles with sfx+music, footage and some templates. Handy if you want to start on the lower end.
@allklier and @Sinan You legends! That’s an awesome bunch of info to get me kicking off with.
Thanks so much, absolute gold dust!
Hi mate,
make sure to search for Foley sound libs, this is what you want.
Hire a sound editor.
if you want to get libraries and collections, rather than single standalone sounds, then a great source for purchasing many of the big sound collections is www.sound-ideas.com.
I have bought a licence from them that covers such libraries as : Warner Brothers, Hanna-Barbera, Hollywood Edge, BBC, Frank Serafine, LucasFilm. Its great because we can now use all those sounds without worrying about getting caught out. If i do need something unique, i have a few mics and a recorder - always fun making your own!
Check out audio design desk. Seems like a captivating product. Looks like once you buy the software (perpetual license ~$600) you get access to their entire ever growing library.
Looks like a lot of fun!