Asbjoern Andersen


This is Part 2 of a guest blog post by sound designer Mark Camperell, Founder & Creative Director at Empty Sea Audio and its sister company, The Library by Empty Sea:

In Part 1, Mark shared his tips on how to come up with ideas for your new library, and finding great material to record. In this second part, he takes a look at post processing your sounds, and the things you have to consider when pricing your work:

 

Post process

Just as daunting as the recording process is the post process.

Most often times, this takes longer than the actual recording time. My go to steps are as follows:

1: Group related sounds on their own track. This will make your editing, processing and naming much easier from the start.

2: Listen to your raw material and reject any sound that doesn’t fit or doesn’t meet with your standards. You have to put on your customer hat. If you don’t like it, chances are someone else won’t like it either.

3: Your sounds should be cleaned from any pops, clicks and mic bumps. Top and tail your files to the first and last modulation so that you’re keeping file size to a minimum. If you tout the physical size of your collections when you advertise, your customers will thank you for not charging them for extraneous megabytes of silence.

If you need to improve your signal to noise ratio, do it in a way that’s transparent and that won’t detract from your recording.

EQ to taste to accentuate the interesting parts of the sound. Compress if needed to beef up a sound. Don’t brick the stuff, leave that to your customer. Some of us like to have dynamic range to play with when we design! Master your files so that categories of sounds are playing back at a similar perceived loudness and timbre. I try to have sounds playback at a level that makes sense for what it is. Foley gear doesn’t need to be mastered to -1db seeing as it’s usually going to be playing back well below that. Tire squeals on the other hand could be mastered to -1db no problem.

4: Name your files in a way that makes sense and makes it easy to search/sort.
I personally use a “collection_object_action_#” method. There are a million ways to name and organize your files. Pick one that works for your collection that you are comfortable with.

5: Finally… metadata. If you don’t know what metadata is, you should take the time to do some research. There are a lot of great articles out there about metadata. I suggest those written by Tim Prebble.

Most sound designers HATE when a library they just spent good money on doesn’t come with embedded metadata.

Metadata is quite powerful and it makes the library experience so much more enjoyable when the embedded metadata is well grounded.

Most sound designers HATE when a library they just spent good money on doesn’t come with embedded metadata.

It makes the investment harder to use because you end up spending so much time figuring out what each sound is and categorizing it yourself. Without naming naming names, there are some notable offenders out there that do not include this stuff. While they have great sounds, I find myself using them less and less because they’re less efficient to search.
 

Sell, sell, sell

I get a lot of questions about how I come up with a price for an individual collection.

Without getting too much into economics and supply & demand, this section should help you price your products.

Usually what I do is start by looking at comparable products that are available. This gives me a good baseline. Next, I look at my obvious costs. Did I have to pay for access to the item? Did I have to rent or purchase any specific gear for this collection? These are things that should be built into the price.

You should take into account the uniqueness of the collection also. If you were able to get access to something quite rare, then the price should reflect the scarcity of the item that you are recording.

The other thing to factor in is how much time you spent on the collection.
All-in if you spent 40 hours on it, price the collection so that 5 or 6 sales cover your 40 hours.

Make the lean times less lean by creating a passive income stream.

You don’t want to have to sell 300 copies just to make your rate on the time you put in.
My goal with selling sound effects packs is to make the lean times less lean by creating a passive income stream.

The quicker you can break even on a collection, the quicker you start realizing the benefits of passive income.

There are some costs associated with selling your packs beyond just the time you spend and gear required.

You have to have a web shop set up to sell the stuff so there could be web/graphic design fees. Hosting costs money. You’ll need to set up a merchant account so you can address issues like accepting credit cards, Paypal, worldwide currency among other concerns. A merchant account will take a small percentage on every transaction, price accordingly.

Additional things to think about… Your website may be hosted on servers located in Colorado or Texas. Your customer might be in the Czech Republic. To ensure reliable transfers for large files and fast rates of data transfer, you might want to consider placing your product with a worldwide storage service. Your product will be securely stored on redundant servers around the world and they will use the most efficient one for transfer to your customer.

You’ll pay a few bucks a month to store and a few bucks per transfer for a service like this, but I assure you that your customers will be thankful that your 3GB collection of sounds won’t take three days to download.

In the end, you aren’t really selling sound effects. You’re selling a license to use your sound effects.

I would encourage you to talk to an attorney or use a legal service like Legal Zoom for getting an End User License Agreement for your sound packs. You want to protect yourself and your intellectual property from those that are looking to take advantage.

Among other things, your EULA should be clear in how your customer is allowed to use the sounds that are purchased.

It should also be clear as to how many customers are allowed to use the collection per purchase. You really should have two license agreements. One for single user and one for multiple users.
 

Conclusion

Don’t expect to pull in thousands of dollars immediately with your first sound pack, especially if you are currently toiling in relative obscurity. Ben Burtt could probably rake it in with his very first pack, you probably will not.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try!

It may take a few collections before you start seeing profits. If you use your collections as a way to fill holes in your schedule you’ll start to have more and more offerings.

Having a diverse portfolio of products gives you more credibility. If your products are high quality and contain unique sounds people will start to notice.

Try giving away a few free copies to trusted friends, colleagues or people whose work you admire. They’ll use your sounds on projects and your stuff will be heard. Their colleagues might take notice and inquire where the sounds came from.

Word of mouth is very powerful. The more people that are familiar with your product, the more apt you are to sell it or other products. You never know who is looking for exactly what you are selling.

This could be a chance for you to try new things you haven’t tried before. You could use it as a personal showcase for your abilities beyond the usual projects you encounter. Maybe you’ve been pigeon holed into weapons or vehicles on your last three jobs.

Releasing a sound pack could give you a chance to show what you can do with creatures or environments.

Remember, make it something you’d want to purchase yourself. And, most of all have fun with it! No one tells us to “SHHHHHHH” so why not get out there and make some noise?

 

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About Mark Camperell:

Mark Camperell is the Founder & Creative Director at Empty Sea Audio and its sister company,
The Library by Empty Sea. Mark’s direction, along with his ability to assemble uniquely talented audio teams, is positioning Empty Sea as a leader in creative audio services ranging from sound effects libraries to original music composition to full service post audio packages. In addition to his position at Empty Sea, Mark is also a freelance Supervising Sound Designer, Re-Recording Mixer and Music Producer with over 100 titles under his belt. Mark is an active member of the Motion Picture Sound Editors and Motion Picture Editors Guild.

The Library by Empty Sea:

  • Drones & Mood Sound Effects Dronos Play Track 154 sounds included, 154 mins total $30

    Brand New Sci-Fi Ambiences from The Library by Empty Sea. 6+ GB, 150+ sounds, almost 3 hours of material, all 96k, all looped for easy use.

  • Tired of those same old door knobs and hinge squeaks that you hear in every single game, film and TV show? Well, Gateway aims to remedy that issue while providing you with a brand new palette of sounds.

    Gateway comes packed with doors, doors and more doors! Low end, high end, slow horror creaks and squeaks, huge slams and impacts, tiny compartment doors.

    The Gateway family now includes the just-released Gateway Part 3, with more than 1400 new sounds.

    Doors, gates, overhead rollups, cabinets, closets, drawers, garage doors, fireplaces, sheds, you name it!

    Latches and knobs, wrought iron and chain link! Metal, wood, glass and MORE! All of these doors were acoustically captured in the real world. You won’t find anything synthesized here!

    Did we mention doors? Yeah, Gateway has those too.

    Gateway Part 1 features 675 files, 1200+ sounds

    Gateway Part 2 features 365 files, 600+ sounds

    Gateway Part 3 features 772 files, 1400+ sounds

    The Gateway 1-3 Bundle features 1812 files, 3200+ sounds

    Special offer:Do you already have Gateway Part 1 or 2? Send a message here for a special upgrade offer for part 3.

    Choose your preferred version below – or land some great savings by getting all three in one handy package!

  • Robobiotics is an exciting new sound effects collection from The Library by Empty Sea. It delivers 3600+ original sound effects for scifi and robots. We’re talking about almost 3 hours of material here.

    We spent over a year recording and designing Lasers, Robot Vox, Impacts, Servos, Ratcheting Metal, Ambiances, Transformations, Foley, Vehicle Bys and much much more!

  • Sea Monsters from The Library by Empty Sea is a collection containing over 4000 sound effects for creature vocals. This collection weighs in at a whopping 9GB!

    A must-have for any sound designer looking to level up on creature sound design.

  • The Roll from The Library by Empty Sea contains over 750 original Wheeled Object sound effects for all your rolling needs!

    We set out to record objects that roll in a similar manner to how one would record cars. With multiple tracks recording simultaneously and synced to one another, intercutting between perspectives has never been easier. Onboards, Passbys, Cornering. Some of the objects were even loaded down with weight to change the sonic profile! It’s all here! Toy Cars, Strollers, Wagons, Scooters, Luggage, Carts, Hand Truck. Part 1 has a great selection of rolling objects for all of your sound design needs.

    The Roll was recorded exclusively at 96k24bit. We utilized several different recorders and microphones for this project including Zoom F8n, Roland R-07, Zoom H4n, and Oktava MK-012. The Roll also utilizes UCS for easier cataloging in sound effect database management software.

  • Looking for authentic ambient sounds of Japanese transportation? Look no further! Field recordist and composer Ryan Ayers travelled to Japan in April of 2019 and captured this wonderful collection. His journey took him from Osaka to Tokyo to Fukuoka and all points in-between. Travel aboard the trains of the JR, the famous Shinkansen, the Hanyu Ferry and more! Explore the train platforms and station terminals of Osaka. Get lost in the Kansai International Airport. There is a subway noodle shop as well as specialty food markets. Authentic walla and natural activity give this collection the ear candy necessary to be an integral part of great soundscapes.

    This is a purely recorded sound pack. Nothing is synthetic or layered here. What you hear is exactly what was captured on location. We edited and mastered the files to bring out the best parts of the recordings. Most of the recordings have been ready-made into loops for ease of use. As always, we have embedded the files with detailed metadata for easy database searches.

  • This collection contains over 1400 original sound effects for user interfaces, telemetry, gadgetry and more.

  • User Interface (UI) Sound Effects Ui Two Play Track 377 sounds included $45

    Ui Two is the sequel to our overwhelming popular Ui One collection, this collection contains 377 original sounds uniquely crafted for creating user interfaces, telemetry, gadgetry and more.

    Empty Sea’s Mark Camperell, carefully crafted these sounds using a variety of beepers, boopers and other sonic tools. A sample of which include synths, samplers, spectral editors and more. Each sound was recorded at 48k/24bit. Planned, processed, mangled and otherwise destroyed, every single tone was tweaked until it was something new, original, and exciting.

    As usual, we meticulously edited, mastered and embedded the files with metadata. This collection is priced to move, so don’t hesitate. If you’re tired of the your same old UI inspiration, Ui Two from The Library by Empty Sea is a great addition to your library.


 

   
 
 
THE WORLD’S EASIEST WAY TO GET INDEPENDENT SOUND EFFECTS:
 
A Sound Effect gives you easy access to an absolutely huge sound effects catalog from a myriad of independent sound creators, all covered by one license agreement - a few highlights:

  • Cinematic & Trailer Sound Effects Four Elements – Elemental Magic Play Track 3050 sounds included, 251 mins total $112.49
    FOUR ELEMENTS - Rock The Speakerbox Professional SFX

    Master the Art of Bending the Elemental Forces

     

    Unleash the raw power of fire, water, earth, and air with this comprehensive 9 GB sound library featuring 3050 high-quality sound effects across 630 files. Whether you’re designing cinematic soundscapes or enhancing video games Four Elements delivers the tools you need to harness the energy of the natural world.

    Construction Kit – 2443 Sounds

    A treasure trove of raw, organic, and processed sounds including seamless loops divided into Fire, Water, Air, Earth and Explosion categories. Customize every detail with an extensive selection of sound components.

    • Organic Fire: Campfire sizzles, torch whooshes, and flame bursts.
    • Processed Fire: Distorted impacts and unique crackles.
    • Organic Earth: Rock crashes, gravel scrapes, and heavy stone hits.
    • Processed Earth: Stylized rumbles and granular textures.
    • Organic Water: Ocean waves, hydrophone bubbles, and fluid splashes.
    • Processed Water: Underwater whooshes and stylized liquid smashes.
    • Organic Air: Bamboo swishes, cloth movements, and pressure bursts.
    • Processed Air: Filtered gusts and dynamic noise sweeps.
    • Explosion: Firework detonations, Butane bursts, and cinematic impacts.

    Building Blocks – 416 Sounds

    Game-ready sound layers featuring Impacts, Whooshes, and Textures as seamless loops. Elevate transitions and enhance atmospheres with loops and pre-designed sound layers.

    • Fire: Explosive bursts, blazing infernos, and warm embers.
    • Earth: Ground-shaking impacts, crumbling terrain, and heavy collisions.
    • Water: Cascading waves, serene rivers, and underwater ambiences.
    • Air: Whispering breezes, stormy turbulence, and slicing gusts.

    Design Kit – 192 Sounds

    A collection of ready-to-use sound effects divided into Attack, Bend, and Explosion categories for quick integration into your projects. Perfect for high-energy scenes and immersive storytelling.

    • Fire: Crackling flames, fiery bursts, and roaring infernos.
    • Earth: Crushing impacts, shifting ground, and massive land eruptions.
    • Water: Splashes, fluid manipulations, and crashing tidal waves.
    • Air: Slicing winds, swirling currents, and thunderous gusts.

     

    Four Elements gives you complete creative control, blending organic recordings with processed sound layers to meet the demands of any project. Master the forces of nature with Four Elements. Let your creativity ignite.

     

    Keywords:

    Elements, Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Wave, Water, Liquid, Rock, Cast, Stone, Pebble, Torch, Gas, Flame, Campfire, Sizzle, Burst, Scrape, Whoosh, Impact, Texture, Attack, Bend, Bending, Explosion, Processed, Surge, Quake, Hit, Flow, Burn, Ignite, Drop, Smack, Destruction, Rumble, Hiss, Blow, Wind, Cloth, Movement, Underwater, Bubble, Ocean, River, Lake, Firework, Firecracker, Bang, Blast, Detonation, Magic, Fantasy, Forces, Fire Magic, Water Magic, Earth Magic, Fire Air, Fire Effect, Fire Whoosh, Water Whoosh, Seamless Loop, Loop, Fire Cast, Water Cast, Earth Cast, Air Cast

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  • Bicycle Sound Effects Skid and Drift Play Track 755 sounds included, 78 mins total $56

    Are you looking for skid sounds for your next action movie? Well, this sound library is made for you.

    “Skid and Drift” is the result of 4 years of recording work. It is a complete collection of skids from various vehicles, recorded from multiple perspectives, on all types of surfaces, and in high quality (dirt, dry and wet concrete, gravel, etc.).
    You will find skids from race cars recorded during the French National Drift Championship, skids from go-karts, motocross bikes, bicycles, skateboards, ice skates, rollerblades, as well as foot skids.
    These sounds were recorded in both stereo (XY and ORTF position) and mono, depending on the case, using the following microphones: Schoeps CCM4, Neumann U87, DPA4061, Lom MikroUsi. All sounds are recorded in 24-bit. The sampling frequency is 48kHz for scuffing footsteps sounds, and 96kHz and 192kHz for other recordings.

    The metadata is precise and complete. All sounds are in UCS format.

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  • Mechanical Sound Effects MicroMech Play Track 1800+ sounds included, 72 mins total $40

     MicroMech is an expressive collection of tiny, non-motorized mechanisms.

    Recorded by Nathan Moody in great ultrasonic detail, this collection of quiet and delicate sounds can become robotic limbs or fingers, weapon mechanisms, gun reloads, crafting or equipping sounds in a game, high-tech gadgets, superhero armor, clockwork steampunk artifacts, door latches, or any other metallic articulations you can think of.

    It pairs perfectly with Studio Obsidian’s Analogue Ordnance library for high-tech weaponry mechanism sounds.

    An hour of clicks, rattles, ratchets, trills, clacks, and slides will fill your sonic projects with mechanical filigree and mechanized finesse. Props include antique and vintage cameras, can openers, dictaphones, high-end fidget toys, and much more. Each recording in MicroMech has many performance variations, making them perfect for game audio projects.

    All sounds were recorded dry with a hypercardioid microphone and an ultrasonic-capable omni microphone into Millennia preamps, blended together for a punchy, full-range tone while preserving ultrasonic content.

    Get big sounds from small sources with MicroMech!

Explore the full, unique collection here

Latest sound effects libraries:
 
  • Car Sound Effects Golden State Mustang Play Track 130 sounds included, 28 mins total $44.71

    This sound library is a collection of various actions with game audio in mind from a Ford Mustang 2021 Ecoboost convertible, recorded in parts of rural California in November 2024.

    The Mustang features a 2.3L Inline-4 (I4) turbocharged engine, which was quite the character captured with a lot of emphasis in the multichannel recording session.

    For help to record this beauty I enlisted the aid of my friend Diego Hodge who helped with both his arsenal of microphone options, rigging up the ‘Stang, and planning for the session. You can learn more about Diego’s work here: https://diegohodgeaudio.com/

    The library contains captures of idling, all the way up to 5000 RPM and beyond. Both single rev cycles as well as laying on the pedal for a consistent, sustained loop was a key part of our capture log. We even tried some sporadic flares of the engine in the style of Fast and the Furious, so your scene/game can be complete with that classic aggressive turbo-charged muscle sound to signal to the competition that you mean business.

    For the rest of the session, we captured some burnouts, some close-miked details of the tire on dirt roads, the classic passbys at various speeds, as well as the typical foley and actions associated with vehicles: doors, windshield wipers, buttons, etc. The microphones used: Clippy EM272M and Primo EM258 capsules from Micbooster for the car interior, a pair of Tascam TM-78 condenser mics in the engine bay, a pair of ND468 dynamic mics on the exhaust, and the Rode NTG5 shotgun mic.

    The content is offered in 96 kHz 24 bit for the engine recordings and 192 kHz 24 bit for the actions performed inside the vehicle. Polywavs are naturally provided for the multichannel mic arrays. This library is fully UCS compatible and Soundminer-friendly with richly embedded metadata. It contains 25 WAV files in total with a runtime of close to 28 mins of audio.

    Thank you for listening. I sincerely hope you enjoy my work and have lots of fun making new creations for the world to hear! Also be sure to post or send me what you’re working on with the assets. Attribution is appreciated, but not required.

  • Drones & Mood Sound Effects Electromagnetic Drones Play Track 171+ sounds included, 108 mins total $49

    Electromagnetic Drones is a collection of 171 recordings that capture the invisible electromagnetic landscape produced by electronic devices. Using the Soma Ether, a specialized wide-band receiver, we captured hums, pulses, and static produced by phones, microwaves, fridges, TVs, computers, Wi-Fi routers, and more. Unlike traditional radios that filter out interference, Ether acts as an “anti-radio,” capturing a broad spectrum of electromagnetic activity from hertz to gigahertz, revealing the sonic textures generated by electronic equipment.

    The library features both raw recordings directly from the Soma Ether device, as well as designed sounds, giving you a versatile range of textures to work with. These recordings were transformed into deep, evolving drones, ranging from gritty industrial hums and eerie, synth-like tones to rhythmic machine pulses and dissonant, unsettling tones.

    Captured at 192kHz, these sounds maintain exceptional clarity, allowing for extreme pitch manipulation and creative sound processing. With its dark, atmospheric qualities, Electromagnetic Drones is well-suited for horror, suspense, drama, sci-fi, and experimental sound design in film, television, and video games. Whether you need haunting ambiences, dystopian textures, or immersive low-frequency drones, this collection provides a rich sonic palette drawn from sounds of the electromagnetic world.

  • Explosion Sound Effects Massive Fireworks Play Track 815 sounds included, 350 mins total $29.99

    Massive Fireworks – 815 files of Commercial Fireworks sound effects, at varying distances and intensities. From small pops and sparkles in the distance to screeches and bombastic mortar fire front and center. Massive Fireworks comes in at over 5 hours and 50 minutes of short and long displays of fireworks for every occasion. Recorded during several New Years and Holiday Celebrations. Massive Fireworks’ filenames are in the Universal Category System format with additional Metadata baked-in.

    Don’t need a Massive amount of Fireworks sound effects? We offer ‘Mini’ sound effect libraries as companions for all of our ‘Massive’ sound effect libraries. All recordings are unique to each library with no overlap. Go Mini today, and upgrade to the corresponding Massive library later, when you need more of that particular sound effect.

    Visit Us At: www.MassiveSoundFX.com

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  • Forged in Fury Vol. 1: Modular Sounds for Epic Combat

    Break down, customize, and master every detail of your combat effects with Forged in Fury Vol. 1, a collection of 394 brutal sounds in 192kHz/24. Includes katana, heavy axe, metal claws, and layer-by-layer edited vocals for total control.

    🔪 Katana (193 sounds):
    Double whooshes, precise slashes, impacts, blood splatters.
    Mix layers of edge and secondary effects (e.g. combine a quick whoosh with a feminine scream).

    🪓 Heavy Axe (96 sounds):
    Powerful whooshes, crushing blows, equip sounds, blood effects.
    Combine the roar of metal with the sounds of breaking bones.

    🔗 Metal Claws (37 sounds):
    Mechanical opening/closing, scratching, cutting whoosh.
    Ideal for fast movements and surprise attacks.

    🗣️ Male & Female Voices (68 Sounds):
    War cries, moans of pain, grunts of effort.
    Use them alone or synced with weapon effects.

    ✨ Key Feature:
    Each sound includes its own editable layers (e.g. whoosh + impact + blood). Do you want a bloodless ax swing? only the whoosh of a katana?, only blood? Modify it instantly.

    🎚️ Studio Quality:
    Recorded in 192kHz/24-32 bits, delivered in 192kHz/24 bits. Perfect for toning down, adding distortion or manipulating without losing clarity.

    More about the pack
    – Intuitive file naming
    – All you’ll ever need regarding katana, heavy ax and claw [Use them again & again]
    – Use the sound effects over and over, in any of your projects or productions, forever without any additional fees or royalties. Use the SFX in your game, in your trailer, in a Kickstarter campaign, wherever you need to, as much as you want to.
    – Totally mono compatibility
    – All sounds have several variations.
    – Use your imagination and feel free to use any sound for a other than the one described, remember that the world of sound is totally subjective.

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  • Explosion Sound Effects Mini Fireworks Play Track 40 sounds included, 24 mins total $6.99

    Mini Fireworks – 40 files of Commercial Fireworks sound effects, at varying distances and intensities. From small pops and sparkles in the distance to screeches and bombastic mortar fire front and center. Mini Fireworks comes in at over 24 minutes of short and long displays of fireworks for every occasion. Recorded during several New Years and Holiday Celebrations. Mini Fireworks’ filenames are in the Universal Category System format with additional Metadata baked-in.

    Looking for a Massive amount of Fireworks sound effects? We offer ‘Massive’ sound effect libraries as companions for all of our ‘Mini’ sound effect libraries. All recordings are unique to each library with no overlap. Go Mini today, and upgrade to the corresponding Massive library later, when you need more of that particular sound effect.

    Visit Us At: www.MassiveSoundFX.com

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