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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?"
Use a microphone and an audio recording device.
To sample the sound of a person falling use a strategically placed bannana peel.
The sound of an automobile accident can be generated by using a wrench to unbolt a stop sign.
The sound of spectacular space battle explosion can be created by unplugging the microphone.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
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.
I have sat through hours of DVD extras and have come to the conclusion that sound effects are done from scratch by sound gurus for every single movie. It's almost like professionals ALSO don't have a huge library to draw upon.
Ok, so maybe they don't do it from scratch every time, but they always talk about how they record everyday sounds and modify them, from swooshes for punching to clangs and ching sounds etc. I'm sure for a few dollars you can record your own high-quality sounds. Look at the "inside the matrix" DVD for one guy who describes the sound made by the keanu power-plant sphincter door (the one that keanu is 'flushed' through') as a 'choonk'ing sound comprising a heap of different sounds, everything from a tyre iron hitting an empty tire to a wet fish hitting a bench.
Try a search for 'foley' for a host of groovy techniques to make sounds.
/* affect != effect */ void affect(int *thing,int effect) { *thing += effect; }
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.
Why not generate them? A sound, after all, is just an amplitude as a function of time. True, you won't get much that sounds like complex real-life objects (say, a cat or a corporate executive) but you should be able to come up with things that sound like simple natural (e.g. a waterfall) or artificial (e.g. a door bell) objects without too much difficulty. More importantly, you should also be able to come up with a wide range of weird, other-worldly sounds that might be useful.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. As an added bonus, you may be able to come up with sound families that give you a wide range of effects with almost no storage required.
(Responding to myself)
In case you need some ideas to get you started:
- Simple musical notes -- m(f) = sin(t/f) where f is the frequency. IIRC, 440hz = A natural below middle C, and you multiply by 2^(1/12) for every half-note higher.
- More realistic notes -- M(f) = (m(f) + c1*m(f*3/2) + c2*m(f*4/3) + c3*m(f*4/2)
... )*k1/(k1+t*k2), where the c's provide harmonics and the k's give a fade out.
- I'm sure a little googling will give even better formulas...
- White noise -- w = random
- Equipment -- w*c1*sin(t/f1) + w*c2*sin(t/f2)
..., where the c's & f's are used to modulate the white noise (because machines typically cycle)
- Rain -- w*w*w
- A waterfall -- c1*w + c2*w*w + c3*w*sin(t/f1+k*rand)
..., where you have 1) a steady roar, 2) some random splashes, 3) random, quasi-periodic fluctuation in flow, etc.
Heck,this could be more fun than writing the game!-- MarkusQ
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.
There are a variety of stock sound effect cds that can be used. Some are royalty free, others require license for certain usage (need to read the agreement).
Sound designers, like any other artist, enjoy making unique sounds that fit the usage exactly. It represents their craft.
Instead of looking for stock SFX cds. Try hooking up with a young Sound Designer looking to get into games. (try colleges/schools with music engineering programs - Berklee, Full Sail, etc). When I was in school, I would be more than happy to work for just a screen credit so I could put it on my resume.
This sort of thing is not similar to OS development - it is more of an art form. Clip art might be something that could be open source, but good art will never be. Sound design is much closer to art than coding.
Before you disagree, think about good code being usable in as many places as possible, and then think about whether sound effects for your favorite movie or game can be leveraged into every other movie or game and give you the same feeling.
Many people could produce random noises, but there's no point. "Here's a game over sound. I think it works for most every game I've played, so I'm releasing it."
I forget what 8 was for.
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
Well, except for that trademark explosion sound you hear in almost all eighties action movies and TV series. And the Dirty Harry Magnum gun too, I think. You all know what I'm talking about, right? :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
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.
Why do we still use sound samples? It seems to me that a sound engine or chip that could generate sounds by using physical laws to simulate real materials producing sound in a computer would be able to create a far wider range and more unique sounds.
For instance, instead of recording the sound of a door slamming, the device could simulate a large wooden slab turning on hinges and hitting the door jamb. In most games that have doors slamming, its a prerecorded sound that doesn't vary. A simulation could produce the sound of the door a various velocities and types of material, ie. if you slam a door really hard versus just nudging it, it'll produce a very different sound, and the same goes for a metal door versus a big heavy oak one.
I have no idea if this is possible, but it just seems odd that we're still using recorded samples, and PC gaming audio technology doesn't seem to have advanced very much, especially with respect to the pace of graphics development.
For many years now, sounds for movies and television were created by a specialized studio and a Foley Artist. This harkens back to the days of radio, when sound was the special effects area du jour.
These days, creating new sounds isn't very difficult, since the investment in a Foley studio has been completed and most of the materials are everyday items: An old pair of shoes walking in various boxes of glass, gravel, tile, etc. A cardboard box of broken glass and screws. An old bakelite telephone for handset noises. Creaking boards, squeaky doors, etc are all kept in a large prop area and rolled into the recording area when needed.
It can take a long time to put all the environmental sounds of a single scene together, but you'll not miss the poor audio a shot will sometimes deliver from location. Wind noise, planes flying overhead, horribly wimpy explosion pops or crappy gunfire are all part of getting the visuals correct.
Digital sounds are also used more widely though: Storms, gunshots, car crashes, screams, plus all the alien and ghostly noises we've come to take for granted. Think of how overused the "reversed echo" voice is for Voices From Beyond. People have come to make simple associations between the chosen representional sound and it's source, even if it's totally fake. Most people won't question lasers making noise, space carrying sound, or a silent underwater scene. All bogus, but part of the entertainment. Funny how people will scoff at these libralizations while watching Star Trek, as if the rest of it is even close to reality.
If you're creating you're own game, sounds are just another piece of the design like drawing sprites or capturing and cleaning up cutscenes. If you're taking photos for good textures, then you can record your own sounds. If you're not using anything realistic at all, just go to a music store and tinker with the electric synths in the corner and bring your tape recorder. Lots of clean funky presets ready for the taking.
mug
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.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary