TECH TIPS
When Only a Specific Sound Will Do
Online Audio Effects Publishers to the Rescue
by Larry Jordan
The best thing you can do to improve the quality of your picture is to improve the quality of your sound.” This old adage still holds true today––especially as distribution proliferates well beyond traditional theatrical and broadcast outlets into podcasting and mobile phones. This article focuses on one method you can use to make your audio sound better: commercial-grade sound effects. The last time I counted, there were over 61 kajillion free effects on the web, most of which sound like they were recorded with a tin can and a string.
So, if your budget as a picture or sound editor demands free, the web has
lots of options. However, if you are striving for believability and quality
in your production, a much better choice is to use professionally recorded
effects. There are essentially two different sound effects approaches available
to the editor: Purchasing individual sounds via direct download online, or
purchasing effects libraries on CD/DVD through a wide variety of online and
retail vendors.
The first approach is an obvious choice for the editor who is only looking
for a few specific effects and doesn’t want to spend $300 just to acquire
a couple of AIFF files of footsteps. The second approach can be relatively
inexpensive (with some smaller titles priced under $50), or can cost over
a thousand dollars for a multi-disc industry standard. Products range from
the interest-specific to the general.
A sample of some of the more significant sound effects publishers includes DigiEffects, NoiseFuel, SoundVision, Hollywood Edge, Sound Ideas, Big Fish Audio, and many, many others. What follows is a quick thumbnail profile of eight publishers with a lot to offer.
Audio Network PLC (www.audiolicense.net)
 Audio Network PLC |
This website offers both music as well as an extensive selection of over 50,000 effects. Created by Oscar- and BAFTA Award-winning sound supervisors, its catalogue, Soundstorm, contains a wide variety of effects available for direct download.
Audio Network’s effects are organized by category, with most categories containing at least two levels of detailed subcategories. Categories include “Living Creatures,” “Mechanical,” “Foley” and “Earth Elements.” Once you get to the actual sound files, you are provided with a detailed description of the sound, as well as length, channel (stereo/mono), and price (in pounds sterling). Sounds can be previewed with prices ranging from £2 (about $4) to £6 (about $12) per sound. Effects are not available on disc, but you can contact the company to discuss loading the entire catalogue for distribution via your own internal network if you don’t want to download individual effects over the Internet.
Big Fish Audio (www.bigfishaudio.com)
 Big Fish Audio |
Big Fish Audio, a company long associated with sample libraries, has close to a hundred sound effects libraries available for purchase on CD. Libraries range from categories-only to comprehensive collections. Prices vary, with many titles in the $60-$70 range. Most of these, such as Discovery “SFX 1-All Living Things,” are category-specific, but there are a couple, like “Sound Spiral” and “Virtuosos Sound FX,” that offer a diverse assortment of sounds on one title. In the $100-$250 range, you find more obscure titles such as “Sounds of War” or “Just Birds and Animals,” as well as effects from well-known brands “Hanna-Barbera Lost Treasures” and “Disney Ideas.”
At the high-end of the price spectrum ($250-$1,495), you find comprehensive, multi-disc collections such as “The Library-FX Starter Package,” as well as collections from famous movie studios, such as the “Lucasfilm Sound FX Library.” The most comprehensive and most expensive is the $1,495 40-disc “Series 6000––The General.”
The Big Fish website offers convenient features such as reviews, audio demos and the ability to look inside the categories offered on each disc. For a higher premium, some titles offer versions with additional format options. For example, a title might cost $49.95 for just audio, and $199.95 if you want the clips as audio and in AKAI format, or audio + SampleCell format, etc.
Digital Juice Sound FX Library (www.digitaljuice.com)
 Digital Juice |
This 10-DVD set by Digital Juice provides 10,000 effects, with sounds organized into four classes and over 170 categories. Clips are in high-quality 24-bit/96kHz lossless .WAV format. It includes Juicer 3 Sound FX Edition software that allows you to browse, search, preview and export clips to WAV or AIFF format (this software works with both Windows and Mac), and prices start at $249.
Hollywood Edge (www.hollywoodedge.com)
 Hollywood Edge |
The wide variety of this company’s titles seem targeted for use in television or film, with genres such as “The Car Chase Scene Set,” “Sci-Fi––The Library,” “Martial Arts and Human Impact” or “The Foley Sound Library.” Catalogue titles range from specific areas of interest to a comprehensive sound library approach, with demos available on each title.
In general, the prices for these libraries are a bit higher, with only one or two titles available for under $200 (“Laughs, Cheers and Applause,” “Lon Bender’s Wacky World of Robots”). Notably, the company has two titles, “Super Single I” and “Super Single II,” that cost only $55.80, and each promises to provide a wide variety of precision effects. Aimed at the home recordist and small project producer, these might be the most promising-sounding budget items that I found.
Another affordable title that offers a wide variety is “The Edge Edition.” With over 800 effects, this is a good, all-purpose, mid-level collection priced at $295. The five-disc set “The Edge Edition Vol. 2” is a more expensive follow-up at $460.35 and includes sounds from a multitude of categories created by the award-winning Soundelux sound design team.
Hollywood Edge’s flagship title is the “Premiere Edition.” There are seven installments in this series, with prices ranging from $460-$832. These huge, multi-disc collections promise the highest quality sounds, often with many variations of the same effect, so that you can choose the version that best fits your application.
Pro Sound Effects (www.prosoundeffects.com)
 Pro Sound Effects |
This website offers an extensive collection of royalty-free sound effects, audio imaging elements, and sound library products for purchase. They also offer a lowest-price guarantee, and will match any competitor’s price. Most libraries have an MP3 preview.
Pro Sound offers products on Audio-CD, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, hard drive, software
download, and Enterprise Data Servers. The company offers the services
of its audio editors to perform format conversions if you can’t
find something in the format that you like. A nice feature of the
site allows you to browse by media type if you’re looking for
something specific. You can also browse by category, publisher, library
or price range. Prices range from less than $90 to over $1,000, with
most products in the $100-$299 ballpark.
Sonomic (www.sonomic.com)
 Sonomic |
Sonomic offers instant access downloads of individual sound effects from a number of popular and critically acclaimed libraries. Their catalogue of over 250,000 sounds is searchable by category or keyword, with all effects priced at $4.99 each. Sonomic offers two subscription packages, each with a one-time set-up fee of $10. The first package costs $29.99 and entitles users to 10 downloads per month. Unused downloads are rolled over to the next month. The second package is called the “Annual Sound Effects Package” and offers up to 5,000 downloads a year for $2,999.99.
The company also offers downloadable CDs with hundreds of well-known library titles available for download. Prices for these titles are usually less than they would be to purchase them as off-the-shelf CDs. For each downloadable CD, you can preview sounds and view a list of all the files that come with the purchase.
Sound Ideas (www.sound-ideas.com)
 Sound Ideas |
Sound Ideas markets itself as the largest publisher of professional sound effects, royalty-free music and production elements. Their signature product is the Series 6000 and its multiple “extensions” (updates and add-ons). They also offer a huge variety of other collections by category, including a number of libraries from recognized film studios like Hanna-Barbera, Turner Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Universal Studios, Jay Ward Productions and the Saul Zaentz Film Center.
One of the standout features of the website is the Blue Plate Specials. These are monthly discounts on a number of their products, sometimes for as much as $300 off. Sound Ideas has no downloadable items available, but their products are also available on many other vendor sites around the Internet.
Sounddogs (www.sounddogs.com)
 Sounddogs |
Sounddogs.com is the first and largest sound effects library available
only online. It offers individual downloadable sound effects in 64
different main categories, each with multiple subcategories. Prices
are based on length of clip, quality, channels and supplier and range
from $1 to $9 each. A discount is provided on large purchases, with
details available by e-mail. One quirk of the site is that you can’t
see the price until you select the sound and view it in your shopping
cart. In order to select sounds to purchase, the website also requires
that you set up a profile. You can, however, search and preview sounds
for free without a profile.
Sounddogs.com offers all its sounds in multiple formats: AIFF, WAV,
MP3, WMA and AU. The choice is offered at the second checkout page.
An MP3 preview is offered to help you search for the right sound.
Sounddogs.com also offers sound effects libraries from other vendors
for sale on their site.
Other sites to see
If you don’t find what you are looking for on the above-mentioned sites,
here are some more you might want to look into:
Audio Sparx (www.audiosparx.com)
British Library Historical Sound Effects (www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/soundeffects.html)
DeWolfe (www.dewolfemusic.com/sound_effects/default.asp)
DigiEffects (www.digieffects.com)
Futurity (www.futurityfx.com)
Library of Congress Historical Sound Effects (memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/chautauqua/subject.html)
NoiseFuel (www.noisefuel.com)
Point One Sound (www.pointonesound.com)
Sound Effects Pro (www.soundefx.com)
SoundFX (www.soundfx.com)
Soundrangers (www.soundrangers.com)
Valentino (www.tvmusic.com)
The Bottom Line
With hundreds of thousands of professional audio effects to choose
from, there’s no reason to resign yourself to using sub-standard
audio. And with the power of today’s editing systems, adding
sound effects to your productions is trivial. So, add some high-quality
sound effects and bring your picture to life!
You can find a list of major publishers, along with brief descriptions, at www.prosoundeffects.com/publishers.html.
Larry Jordan is an LA-based, Apple-certified trainer in digital media with over 25 years experience as a television producer and director. He is also founder and editor-in-chief of Edit Well, the rich-media newsletter for Final Cut Studio, published by Peachpit Press, and the author of several books on Final Cut Pro. Visit his website at: www.larryjordan.biz. Also, Nathan Dugi-Turner significantly helped in researching this report.
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