Sound library?

[bicilotti]

I'm working on a game and I'm in desperate need for sound effects: a friend of mine advised me to browse freesound, but I found that 90% of the SFX there are "dirty" or not polished enough.

I'm in desperate need for an alternative source: any hints?

[Nine Toes]

Google results: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=freeware+sound+effects&btnG=Google+Search

I think I also remember m0ds saying something a long time ago about being willing to record just about any sound effect if asked... you'd have to ask him first, though.

When you say "dirty" you mean crappy quality, or excessive background noise...?

[InCreator]

www.findsounds.com

There's really no ultimate way to get sound effects, most effective ways are:

* Know your way in music making. For example, I'm using fruityloops and for a simpler game, heavy amount of clicks and beeps can be done with synths, hi-hats, 3xoscillator and so on. Add a little of filters and you have your effects.

* Rip sounds from other games. In the Windows era, most of the games have game-specific data (images, sound, videos) in easily usable/accessible form. Browse data-folders in your games.  Even if sounds are stuffed into one huge pack file, most games have modding community and you can find extractor for these games native format -- either in game editor or webpage(s) commited to modding the game. For example, I ripped some better music tracks out of Half-life .gcf files (for casual listening), extracting tool was found by a quick Google search.

Of course, ripping doesn't have to be 1:1 and downright lame. Nobody's restricting you to cut, crop, add effects and so on in your favourite wave editor, so even fans of original game won't recognize those sounds.

* Use freesound project, findsounds.com, google until your hair will fall out and resample/repair/adjust those often awful clips that can be found freely. I've done this more that I would like to.

In other words, "dirty or not polished enough" is something that's your task this way or another. Free wav files vary in sample rate, compression, bitrate...

I suggest checking out major game-making tool sites though. Loads of AGS games got their music from RPGMaker resources, and I'm quite positive that there's loads of links to free sounds in other bigger game making communities, such as Game Maker (to check: forums), Flash (to check: major flash sites, such as flashkit.com boards) and other few. I won't do the search for you, though.

* Or, get creative with microphone. There's loads of tutorials on how to make a microphone muffler, how to get best quality with cheap mic, and good software to maximize the quality, such as GoldWave. Youtube and Google are man's best friends, right after the dogs and beer.

One line that always makes me laugh was from manual of "One Must Fall 2097", a  2D fighting game with building-tall robots. In the manual were quotes from game creators, and one was this:

"If I slap these two spoons together, then lower the
                sampling rate, it sounds just like..."

This obviously explains how the sound effects guy made the sounds of hundred tons heavy robots hitting each other, which in the game sounded like trains colliding...

[bicilotti]

When you say "dirty" you mean crappy quality, or excessive background noise...?

Crap quality. It is very difficult to get something good out of them (at least for me).

[m0ds]

I don't have the facilities to record many at the moment, but I have access to a lot of royalty free sfx. Let me know what you need, and I'll see what I can get you

[Nikolas]

www.sounddogs.com (<-best, commercial)
www.soundsnap.com (<-free)
www.freesound.edu

you know the rest pretty much.

If you head over to www.kvraudio.com and search for some plug-ins, you will detect some from coctos. These (one of them) is denoiser, and is free. All hiss will be gone.

Either way, taking a sfx as is and using it, feels at least lazy (for me that is). It usually needs a bit of reverb to put it to the right place, a bit of cleaning. Maybe from 1 sfx you can get dozes? Maybe the wind blowing fx, can give you also something close to rain, or an airoplane, etc?

From the above I would recomend soundsnap, it is the best (for a free site that is)

[bicilotti]

Thank you gentlemen, and thank you mods for the kind offer! Before asking for your help I'll check Nikolas' links and see if I can eke out something myself (I don't want to look lazy in the eyes of fellow forumers)!

[Nikolas]

LOL!

What I'm saying is that the people who make the sfx, have no idea about YOUR particular situation... Having, for example 1 wolf crying sound will sound dead boring after the 3rd play in a game. If you find 10, that's fine. If not, you need to find other ways to alter them.

A door creaking may sound like a huge gate, with chains and stuff. It needs EQ, it needs some time stretching, maybe tons of croping and cutting, maybe a bit layering...

Unless you want clean animal sounds, a yoof yoof sounds the same, wouldn't need much croping, at least, you are bound to have to do some work, or layer more than 1 sfx...

And no, I don't think you're lazy, I was just stating the above with one word (which of course didn't make sense to anyone else but me! )

[bicilotti]

LOL! [...]

Never thought you thought I was kind of lazy.
I'm just a |\|003 regarding sound effects and I felt that I must do something by myself before asking someone to do the job. Seriously, was not offended or anything (and didn't want to offend or anything)!
Btw, the libraries you pointed me at are way better than freesound, thanks again!

[Evil]

All of the links Nikolas posted are great. I also like SampleSwap.org, but those are mostly music and drum samples, but there are a few really SFX like doors and blips and the like.

[Nikolas]

I personally use www.sounddogs.com very much, but it does take a budget. I try my best to cut and create more out of a single sfx, but it still can be rather difficult. But soundsnap.com is also very very good for what it is. It's just really slow...

Here are the plug-ins I was talking about: http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php?mode=results&st=d&c=744

cockos and not coctos... Sorry 'bout that!

And they are the people behind reaper a shareware sequencer, which is, btw, very powerful and is being updated very very frequently! Shareware with NO limitations, last I checked, and the actual license is pretty cheap...

And btw, cockos is also the guy behind winamps, in the earlier times and before it was bought (by google I think? :S)

Enough history anyways...

[Dualnames]

Actually bic you should go for soundsnaps.com and nothing more. Quality is superb and there's millions of tons of millions of them.

[OneDollar]

Last time I wanted sound effects I went to some website, frowned over the licences, listened to most of the things that looked like they could fit then pulled out my microphone and made noises into it and dragged it along my desk for a bit. Sounded way better than anything the site had.

Seriously, download Audacity, get a microphone and experiment with the sort of sounds you can make with household objects and changing the speed and pitch.