However, as soon as Soundly launched it was doing things differently. How? In this post by sound effects guru Paul Virostek, he highlights five killer features that make Soundly break away from the pack.
Written by Paul Virostek
1. An introduction to Soundly
2. The Soundly Quick-Start Guide
3. How to Organize Sound Libraries with Soundly
4. How to Find and Use Sound FX Clips with Soundly
I just got word that Soundly kicked off a very special offer today, giving access to the full Soundly Pro version (with its approx 40.000 cloud sound effects & more) for free: All new and registered users can use the promo code SUMMER to unlock all the pro features for 14 days – no payment information needed.
New users, download Soundly for free for Windows here, and Mac here – and then enter the promo code SUMMER while registering. If you’re already registered, go to user -> profile within the Soundly app, and enter the code SUMMER in the promo box.
1. Organize Your Sound Library
What it does: Soundly makes it easy to add, sort, and search sound libraries. It can index local, cloud, and network clip collections. Adding sound fx is as simple as dragging and dropping them onto Soundly’s window. Each library is displayed separately, so filtering results is easy. The app provides search suggestions and tracks search history. Playback – including from the cloud – is fast and fluid. A slick waveform display allows playing and processing whole clips, and even smaller portions, too.
Why it’s cool: It’s a common problem. You have some sound fx on your laptop. Others are on an external drive on your desk. More still are scattered across a network NAS drive. It’s tedious to hunt and peck across a handful of locations to find the sound you need. It’s worse when you have the pressure of a deadline. Soundly keeps all your sounds in one place, lets you search them swiftly and audition them easily. It’s fast, effortless, and, with its new 2.0 interface, attractive, too.
2. Import Clips to Apps
What it is: Adding and finding clips is great, but sound pros need to use them, too. Soundly allows sound clips to be transferred to editing apps with a tap of a button. The app can send entire clips, or selected, small portions of longer files. It’s simple: just drag the section into an editing app and the clips is transferred. Pro Tools users have bonus features: single or multiple clips can be transferred with “handles” either to the cursor location in an editing timeline or the bin.
Why it’s cool: No one wants to be slowed down by digging through folders and navigating editing app file browsers. That slows work and kills creativity. With Soundly, a simple mouse drag can take the cool sound you’ve found and send it to any other app. It’s even quicker for Pro Tools and Reaper users: just click the Pro Tools icon to send the clip selection to the timeline cursor. That makes it faster to get clips into your project and get back to work.
3. Cloud Sound Library
What it is: Soundly doesn’t just manage clips, sort them, and send them to other apps. It launches with access to a professionally recorded sound library that is streamed instantly from the cloud. Any user can access 1000 popular clips, and Pro subscribers can choose from around 40,000. The sound library features everyday sounds that will are useful in any project, as well as elite recordings such as military vehicles, too. Want more? No problem. The Soundly store offers the Freesound.org library, as well as collections from independent community field recordists and sound designers.
Why it’s cool: Merely downloading the app gives users access to 1000 pro sound effects completely free of charge. That’s a good way for budget-conscious sound pros to enhance their existing sound collections. And, when you have a little more cash or are working on more demanding projects, getting instant access to 40,000 more clips is only a few clicks away. Soundly’s cloud library makes worrying about finding the right sound effect a thing of the past.
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“Old Engines Grab Bag” is a pack of numerous old, unique and characterful engines from early 1900s. It’s a massive collection of 56GB multitrack 192kHz recordings of old tractors and stationary engines, both diesel and gasoline fueled.
The intention wasn’t to cover vehicles driving, but to get isolated and very closely recorded mechanical elements of engines and exhaust pipes as a source material for sound design. There are many starts, idles, revs, offs, RPMs variations, backfires etc. Some are heavy and large sounding, some are small and funny. Tractors were captured EXT and most of stationary engines INT, but since they are very closely recorded there is just a little amount of reverb on most of them.
Most of engines are 1 or 2 cylinders and low horse power and their RPMs are also low. Thanks to this, many of those sounds aren’t tonal and can easily be used as additional layer with other design elements. They work great for adding vintage character, designing junky or funny vehicles, crazy huge steampunk machines or engines malfunction.
Sounds were recorded using multi-mic setup: Sanken CO-100k (most of the time pointing mechanical parts), Sennheiser MKH-8060 (mainly for isolated exhaust pipe), Schoeps CMC6XT mk41/mk8 (general image) and part also with Trance Audio Inducer contact mics (adding unique mechanical perspective).
The library is delivered as multitrack 192kHz files, as well as stereo mix of all microphones. Thanks to using microphones with extended frequency range, drastic pitch changes can be applied.
All files have extensive metadata created in Soundminer, including leg picker with microphone labels.
Demo files include pitched sounds, which are not delivered with library.
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4. Metadata Editor
What it is: Soundly can embed invisible bonus metadata text to sound files. It reads popular iXML, BWAV, and MP3 formats, and writes back to the universal BWAV standard description field.
Why it’s cool: metadata’s bonus text information helps organize sound collections and find clips within them. That eliminates mental clutter, speeds sound clip selection, and help you make better choices. For sound librarians, Soundly can apply metadata in batches, too, making it easy to enhance existing sound collections with helpful metadata text. Worried that it will cost hundreds of dollars to do this, like any other metadata app? Don’t be. Soundly embeds metadata free of charge.
5. Cloud Collaboration
What it is: You’re hooked on Soundly. You’ve converted your colleagues and friends, too. That’s how Soundly’s fifth killer feature helps: Soundly’s cloud collaboration tools allow you to share sound libraries and playlists of clips with others. You can even upload your own sound libraries to the cloud so they can be shared, too.
Why it’s cool: Did you find the perfect bird ambience for a studio project? Maybe you found a fighter jet pass that’s the ideal building block for a starship. It’s easy to save it to a playlist, then email the sound supervisor or other editors your list of selections. When they have a license to the same library they can start working with those clips right away. Are you a lone wolf working on your own? Soundly hasn’t forgotten you, either. Soundly’s cloud storage allows you to upload your own clips to the cloud. That means you can access them at other facilities, or at home, after work.
These are just five cool features in Soundly. There are many others: granular search results sorting, text file import and export, audio processing, and much more.
Soundly released a brand new version last week, and here are some of the highlights from the release notes:
• Related Searches
Traversing through millions of past searches, Soundly’s AI-powered search algorithm now suggest related keywords for you. That means less time searching and more time discovering!
• Multi DB Support
Soundly can now simultaneously connect to multiple shared databases, making file and database organization even easier.
• Channel Select
A much asked for feature is finally here with Channel Select, making it incredibly easy to extract one or more specific channels from multichannel files.
• Portable Mode
Copy the Soundly application to a USB stick or similar and take it anywhere you go. Great for professionals using multiple studios!
• Did you Mean
Google-style Did You Mean Functionality helps you spell your searches correctly! Combined with Related Searches and the Sound Effect Thesaurus, Soundly’s search capabilities now stands in a class of its own.
• Thesaurus Update
Soundly’s specially built Sound Effect Thesaurus has grown and is now even more accurate.
A big thanks to Paul Virostek for this Soundly guide!
for Windows here, and Mac here.
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