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Free Sound Samples?
TwistedSquare asks: "I like to write small games from time to time, and have often wondered about adding sounds. Searching around on the internet, I can find loads of GPL sound libraries but no sound effects/samples that are both royalty-free and free (as in beer). Can anyone suggest how I could find such effects and does anyone else find it odd the contrast between the amount of GPL software and non-GPL-type items in areas such as sound effects?"
And everybody seems to need a custom sound.
For some effects, all you need is the item (horn, siren, wind) and a recording studio. Those are the canned effects. Most efects are auditioned. All I can say is they're expensive.
Home of the tracker instrument repository.
.xi instruments are in samples/ft2. Cheesetracker and Soundtracker can use them.
Free as in "get it now while it's still there."
The tracker instrument repository used to be mirrored all over but less and less mirrors can be found.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Doing creative video production can be a lot like creating a game, and in this particular instance, what you're searching for is pre-made foley.
A lot of effects can be made simply by rubbing/banging objects together and then tweaking them, e.g., a grandfather clock is a piece of thick, taught cable hit lightly by a tire iron, slowed down 300%, and repeated. A sizeable personal effects library can be made by going around with even so much as a tape/MD recorder and a good mic just getting sounds from anywhere and everywhere. I'd recommend a boom mic if at all possible to prevent picking up background noise. But you might look a little weird doing it.
For "artificial" effects and maybe a little music, Korg's Electribe series of synths (EA-1 Analog Synth, ES-1 Sampler, ER-1 Rhythym Synth, EM[X]-1 "Music Production Stations" -- does all of the above to a limited extent) can provide endless resources, when properly played with, at least. I remember being in a crunch for a project and synthing out a perfect submarine "ping" in ten minutes on the ER-1. Obviously, more expensive synths will do more.
If you're really going for pre-made (despite my lectures to the contrary), try Opsounds -- Copyleft for audio. Make sure and contribute back, mmmk?
And of course, Sounddogs. The sounds (and even short-length compositions) are incredibly cheap -- we're talking $0.30-2.00 or so depending on length and license, high-quality, downloadable OR they can burn a CD and send it to you, and it's royalty-free forever at purchase. Considering they merely resell licensed effects, you'll probably find more than a few effects that you're trying to imitate in the first place.
http://www.flashkit.com -- there are tons of sound clips and music loops with various licenses. I think most (if not all) of them are available as MP3. A lot of them are available as free-with-credits, some are public domain, some have to be purchased.
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
You might also get results if you turn to other online forums for musicians too - there's no point asking slashdot.org, when you could spend maybe 10 minutes to find some of the musician communities that are out there, and just ask there.
/files section, too ... you might spend some time browsing our archives, there are sound effects in there, and more importantly, contact details for folks who contributed such effects too...)
Come to ampfea.org, subscribe to the music-bar mailing list, and ask for folks on there to help you come up with original sound effects for free inclusion in your game. There are *plenty* of budding sound designers, musicians, and sound engineer types on this mailing list (music-bar) and more than likely you'll find what you need.
Maybe you'll even come up with some interesting new directions in sound design for your game engine too?!
(PS - we have free samples in the ampfea.org
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Says their samples are 'copyright-free'.
URL: http://www.samplenet.co.uk/
lots of drums/synth stuff, but also an 'effects' section with odd noises. Use your favourite sound editor to tweak to your desire.
They used to have an FTP site where I would often 'mget' loads of wavs, but now it just seems to be http and mp3 files.... Maybe the FTP wavs are hidden away somewhere...
Baz
I just read an article about Creative Commons and how their license is all about creating this sort of thing. Their stuff seems to be the like GPL.
Anyway - found this site with lots of Creative Commons Licensed effects - most of which are professional quality as they were used on the author's radio program.
http://www.leoville.com/sfx.shtml
First, since you're just playing around and not developing commercial games, you can use just about anything, depending on the public exposure and your tolerance for licence issues. There is alot of legally-useable stuff out there anyway.
Your options are:
Free stuff all over the net. Downside is often the quality may be lower,and you don't have 100% confidence that they can legally distribute the sounds.
Low-cost CDs. There's always been a alot of LPs and CDs available to the public. Go to any large CD store. I've picked up some great BBC sound effect CDs, and even the effects from Star Trek. Note that most but not all are licenced for re-use.
Multimedia CD-ROMS - I always see multimedia and clip-art CDR's in the $9.99 bin. Many of these have some reasonable effects.
High-end CDs (see www.sound-ideas.com) this is what most pro's use (as well as foley). These suckers are expensive!! but the ultimate. This market is dying so they often sell the libraries at a lower price - see their Blue-Plate special.
By the way, they have a $99 Flash effects CD geared to the Flash professional, which is good value if you use this sort of stuff frequently. Sound Ideas used to have a killer demo CD that was full of pro effects.
Recording your own. Takes time, but alot of fun. I use a portable MD recorder, then transfer to PC and edit the heck out of them.
Other sound-sample sites include: http://www.synthzone.com/sampling.htmo /
http://www.ilovewavs.com/
http://www.thewavplace.com
http://www.tintagel.net/resources/Multimedia/Audi
http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/
http://www.modarchive.com/ also has some assorted samples.
For instance, recording someone walking on a sidewalk usually sounds really fake, whereas simulating the same thing by banging (perhaps) two blocks of wood together can sound very authentic.
For similar reasons, quality movies have the actors record dialog in a studio and dub that sound track on top of the visual shot e.g. outdoors, because actual recording of dialog on location is rarely good enough quality...and a non-expert audience will instantly notice the difference.
There are a variety of reasons for this that professionals can attempt to compensate for, such as the processing effects of the outer ear, but the bottom line is that Foley (the art of using fake sounds by banging things together in a studio) has always sounded more realistic than actual recordings, in general.
Professionals can judge when this is not the case, and they can post-process samples to make them sound more realistic, but non-professionals should realize that they are just going to end up with non-realistic sounds, in general.
But my main point is, don't think that Foley techniques are obsolete techniques of the 1940s. They are still the choice state of the art technique (which professionals augment/enhance with every conceivable other source and technique... but not replace.
Professionals maintain a huge library of effects, create new ones via software and synthesizer, record new effects in the field for every new movie they work on, post-process everything with software, and still use Foley along with that. Or when time and budget are short, sometimes just Foley. But using just computer without Foley is a low quality last resort; big budget films never settle for that.
I'm replying days after this was posted, so maybe no one will see it, but hey, at least it's in the archives.
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