A Free (or Cheap) Library of Sound Effects Online?
January 29, 2010 9:54 AM Subscribe
Is there a reliable sound effect library where you can download mp3s? short samples of "tea kettle", "girl coughing", "train"-- I'm picturing a creative commons kind of thing most likely. and google fails me miserably.
I assume there must be interest in some corner of the web where people have bothered to commit oodles of time into sampling things live with microphones, sampling from movies, anything, and have congregated to show them off and make them accessible.
A site where you can upload your own sounds would be ideal.
Even a paid, community-based thing like Metafilter would work, but I'm interested in knowing about anything that is out there.
I assume there must be interest in some corner of the web where people have bothered to commit oodles of time into sampling things live with microphones, sampling from movies, anything, and have congregated to show them off and make them accessible.
A site where you can upload your own sounds would be ideal.
Even a paid, community-based thing like Metafilter would work, but I'm interested in knowing about anything that is out there.
This might help, a question I asked last year. FreeSound was top of the list there, too.
posted by philip-random at 10:01 AM on January 29, 2010
posted by philip-random at 10:01 AM on January 29, 2010
Yep, the Freesound Project is exactly what you want.
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:02 AM on January 29, 2010
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:02 AM on January 29, 2010
SoundDogs.com is your friend. It's a paid service, but everything has free low-quality MP3 previews (but if you're going to use the clips, please pay for them and don't rip off the previews) and pretty cheap high quality AIFF files for download. The catalog is huge with both sound effects and production music, all royalty free for most reasonable uses.
A free community site would be nice, but their prices are eminently reasonable for this this sort of thing and people like to get paid for their work.
posted by zachlipton at 10:03 AM on January 29, 2010
A free community site would be nice, but their prices are eminently reasonable for this this sort of thing and people like to get paid for their work.
posted by zachlipton at 10:03 AM on January 29, 2010
Ah yes, there is Freesound too. Forgot about that...
posted by zachlipton at 10:05 AM on January 29, 2010
posted by zachlipton at 10:05 AM on January 29, 2010
Freesound is my friend and ally.
posted by bitterkitten at 10:21 AM on January 29, 2010
posted by bitterkitten at 10:21 AM on January 29, 2010
Never used Freesound, but I loved Sounddogs back when I had the necessity for such things.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:25 AM on January 29, 2010
posted by infinitewindow at 10:25 AM on January 29, 2010
I rather like soundsnap. The quality is good, and the prices are reasonable, imo.
posted by frecklefaerie at 10:28 AM on January 29, 2010
posted by frecklefaerie at 10:28 AM on January 29, 2010
(Children of Men used Freesound, by the way. The man screaming that is part of the 'screampunk' music Jasper plays right after the "strawberry cough" bit is from there.)
posted by MikeHarris at 10:56 AM on January 29, 2010
posted by MikeHarris at 10:56 AM on January 29, 2010
Seconding Soundsnap. I've had very good results with them. It's not free, but it's very inexpensive.
posted by alms at 11:21 AM on January 29, 2010
posted by alms at 11:21 AM on January 29, 2010
nthing Freesound. Found it for the first time last night while looking for sounds of crickets!
posted by puritycontrol at 11:37 AM on January 29, 2010
posted by puritycontrol at 11:37 AM on January 29, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by zsazsa at 9:58 AM on January 29, 2010 [5 favorites]