Just what is wrong with sound effects these days?
There’s nothing wrong with sound effects per se – but a few years ago we realized that hearing the same old recordings over and over again was simply getting too much. Everyone uses the same sound effect libraries, and frankly, they’re getting REALLY long in the tooth. So I joined forces with Halfdan Auðrifýur to create the LiveSFX plugin.
What exactly is the LiveSFX plugin?
It’s a plugin that, in our humble opinion, can change the very understanding of what a sound effect is.
When you think about it, most sound effect libraries these days are all recordings of stuff like wind, birds, water sounds etc. They’re all the same. And they’re old. So what if you want something a bit fresher – something truly unique? What if someone could get you those sounds, recorded LIVE as you needed them?
That’s exactly what our LiveSFX plugin is all about.
We’ve spent the last three years building a complex, yet intuitive system that connects DAWs running the plugin directly with our team of field recordists (Auðrifýur and myself), live on Iceland. You tell us what you need – through the plugin -, and we’ll be out there, recording it real-time and sending it back via email.
But why Iceland? Well, A) because we live here, and B) think about those wind sounds etc I mentioned earlier. What would be a great – LIVE – source for all those? That’s right. Iceland.
We’ve got hot springs for bubbly sounds
We’ve got lots of shoreline, we’ve got wind, we’ve got hot springs for bubbly sounds, sea lions for Chewbacca sounds – and even volcanoes, for when you need those crazy explosions.
So what’s your process?
The process is actually quite simple, at least for the end-user: Using the plugin’s UI and a microphone, you simply shout the name of the sound you’re looking for; ‘EAGLE!’, for example. This request is then beamed up to our Reykjavík HQ, where we swiftly engage our entire team of field recordists (Auðrifýur and myself).
Finding an eagle is the easy part
If you need it to cry a bit louder – or just differently -, you simply tell that to the field recordist on the scene, via the plugin. He’ll then try to direct, or “coach”, the eagle accordingly.
The field recordist also comes carrying speakers, so you can talk directly to your target via the plugin, in case that works better.
We haven’t actually gotten this bit to work quite yet – but we envision that, using a combination of praise, scolding and reason, you’ll be able to almost “play” targets like the eagle, as a kind of living virtual instrument.
The recorded sounds are then sent directly to your email in real-time, ready to be used in the project you’re working on. Simple as that.
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Nature & Countryside High Desert Ambiences 1: Essentials Play Track 10+ sounds included, 94 mins total$34.80$17.40 incl. vatIn High Desert Ambiences 1 – Essentials, get the desolately beautiful sounds of the American Southwest as the sun brings to life the songs of desert wildlife. This collection features sounds that will make you fall in love with the desert with the trickling of distant rivers, smooth cricket chirps, echoey caws from ravens so close you can hear the details in their wings flaps, snorts from a cautious yet curious mule deer, choruses of birds at dawn, and much more. Most recordings are well over 4 minutes, with one half-hour night-time track that will make you want to take out your tent immediately. For lush, peaceful nature sounds from the heart of the American Southwest, here’s High Desert Ambiences 1 – Essentials.
2% for the Planet:
Two percent of the price of this library is donated to an environmental cause. I view it as an “artist royalty” for the planet!One Year Anniversary Sale:
• A huge THANK YOU to all customers who purchased my sound libraries this past year! Sale ends Monday 8/21.
KEY FEATURES:
• Featured on Designing Sound: “Our Favorite Sounds of 2016”
• Desert dawn and evening choruses
• Distant flowing river, songbirds, and insects
• Ravens soaring and squawking in a stark and resonant valley
• Lengthy night-time cricket chorus
• Partially audible and ultrasonic bat clicks up to 70kHz
• Ghostly distant animal calls
• Mule deer warning snorts and jumping movement
• Files ranging from 31 seconds to 30 minutes
• Rio Grande dawn chorus along the Texas/Mexico river border
• Locations: Near Marfa, Texas (in a mountain valley at an altitude of 6,000 ft) and Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grande River, Texas/Mexico border.
• These desert ambiences are extremely quiet, so I have included descriptive markers to signal interesting events in an otherwise featureless waveform. These markers can be read in programs such as RX, Reaper, and Soundminer. The markers are also included as .txt files in the sound files folder.
GEAR USED:
Sennheiser MKH 50/30 MS pair
Mid/Side recordings decoded to LR stereo
Sound Devices 702
Rycote AG MS BlimpNeed more than the essentials? Listen to High Desert Ambiences 2 – Dawn and Morning Choruses ($79, 94 stereo WAVs, 20 GB, 4 hours 47 min, 192 kHz / 24-bit).50 %OFFEnds 1503360000 -
Be sure to check out Soundlister - you'll find 100s of audio professionals there already.
How about the pricing?
To us, it’s not the duration or number of sounds that matter. We simply charge by the distance we need to travel to get you a particular sound. Say you need a recording of an Atlantic Puffin, and we need to drive 3 kilometers to get that. That’ll be three dollars, then.
Does your system always work?
Halfdan Auðrifýur does some amazing bird impressions, and his elk sounds are simply breathtaking.
Well, if it’s really lousy weather, we’d rather stay in, to be honest. Halfdan Auðrifýur does some amazing bird impressions, and his elk sounds are simply breathtaking.
Personally, I’m quite the expert at imitating the sound of glass. We use those as fall-back sounds when we’re in a tight spot, or if it rains too hard.
What’s next for your project?
An early prototype of an A.F. Drone with Very Long Boom and WHA Tech installed. This could be the future of field recording
Also, space is a goal for us. There’s a huge market for sci-fi sounds in movies and games, so having having one or several recordists out there doing live recording is obviously a no-brainer.
Long-term, we’d like to get rid of the human element altogether and simply replace the recordists with drones. And, using a device called an A.F.D., or ‘Autonomous Field Drone’, experiments are already well underway.
Thanks to Ingi Hjálmtýr and Halfdan Auðrifýur for sharing their insights. The LiveSFX VST plugin will go into beta next month – and as mentioned, there are plans to make it open source, allowing field recordists everywhere to take full advantage of their local surroundings and wildlife.
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Ringing Rocks has the chiming, beautiful tones of an ancient boulder field. As hammers strike stone, the powerful clangs resonate like church bells and bring to life a natural sonic wonder. Plus, you receive many types of melodic tones, hammering rhythms, grinding metallic stone, resonant scrapes, and much more. If you need rocks unlike any you’ve heard before, listen to Ringing Rocks.
2% for the Planet:
Two percent of the price of this library is donated to an environmental cause. I view it as an “artist royalty” for the planet!One Year Anniversary Sale:• A huge THANK YOU to all customers who purchased my sound libraries this past year! Sale ends Monday 8/21.
Key Features:
• Featured on Designing Sound: “Our Favorite Sounds of 2016”
• 237 files, 500+ natural chime and bell-like rock sounds
• Captured in 192 kHz for exquisite detail and sound designing potential
• Location: Near Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania
• A small hammer, medium sledgehammer, and crowbar were used to create a variety of timbres
• Audio files with single rock strikes alone
• Audio files with many sequential, varying strikes
• Resonant scraping of hammers on rock for tactile textures that are perfect source material for rich metallic dronesHow It’s Made
Read the full story of these mysterious rocks on the – A Sound Effect Blog!Gear Used:
Sennheiser MKH 50/30 MS pair
Mid/Side recordings decoded to LR stereo
Sound Devices 702
Rycote AG MS Blimp
50 %OFFEnds 1503360000 -
Animals & Creatures High Desert Hummingbirds Play Track 290+ sounds included, Approx. 30 min total mins totalGet the stunningly detailed sounds of one of nature’s tiniest aerial acrobats flapping and fluttering in one of the quietest outdoor places in the continental United States. With their ultrasonic chirps, mesmerizing flight abilities and evolution-exhibiting beaks, this library captures the sounds of these rarely heard creatures from a mere two inches away.
2% for the Planet:
Two percent of the price of this library is donated to an environmental cause. I view it as an “artist royalty” for the planet!One Year Anniversary Sale:• A huge THANK YOU to all customers who purchased my sound libraries this past year! Sale ends Monday 8/21.
Key Features:
• 255 clean sounds of hummingbirds recorded in the resonant mountains of west Texas
• 35 sounds of hummingbirds with other songbirds
• Humming, buzzing, popping, fluttering, and purring drones
• Wing slaps and wing contact movement
• Ferocious territorial dogfights
• Laser-like chirps
• Ultrasonic chirps up to 30kHz
• Wild vocalizations
• Swift fly-bys, whooshes, and dive bombs
• Multiple species with a variety of fundamental “hum” frequencies
• Categorized into high, mid, bass, and sub-bass hummingbirds
• Clips ranging from solo hummingbirds to six-bird feeding frenzies
• Microphones placed 6-8 inches from hummingbird feeder with flybys as close as 2-3 inches
• HD videos at 60 fpsHow It’s Made:
Get the full story behind the High Desert Hummingbirds SFX library on the – A Sound Effect BlogNational Museum of Wildlife Art:
Recordings from this library are featured as part of Iridescence: John Gould’s Hummingbirds at the Nation Museum of Wildlife Art.
GEAR:
• Sennheiser MKH 50/30 MS pair
• Mid/Side recordings decoded to LR stereo
• Rycote AG MS Blimp
• Sound Devices 702
• GoPro Hero450 %OFFEnds 1503360000 -
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Hmmm… I’m all for recording new sounds as often as possible, though as anyone who records sound in the field knows, the best sound you record on a field trip is rarely the sound you thought you went there to record. In other words, the accidental encounters with sounds are usually the best encounters. The downside is that those sounds, cool as they are, are often not useful on the current project. So they are not valuable to the project that hired you to make the field trip. Another problem I have with this model for getting sound effects is that “freshness” is a nice characteristic in a sound, but it is not the only, and maybe not even the most important characteristic. Filling your project with “brand new” sounds is fine, but if they are brand new mediocre, not particularly interesting, or noisy sounds… that’s not so fine. Most of the sounds we record in the field are not full of life, and they aren’t particularly evocative. Only a few have magic. We gradually acquire those year by year, and we often find unexpected and fresh ways to use them.
Let’s say I ask you to go record an eagle for me tomorrow. With some luck you can find an eagle. With some luck the eagle will vocalize. With some luck that vocal won’t be obliterated by wind, rain, another bird, etc. With an incredible amount of luck that vocal will be the kind of vocal actually need for the project.
Basically my point is that field recording of sounds is ALWAYS unpredictable. Being in Iceland, or at a Ranch in northern California, doesn’t guarantee anything except that there will probably be fewer ambient noise problems than there would be in an urban area. But it could be windy, or rainy, or undesirable flocks of birds or swarms of insects may interfere. Sure, go out to the ice field and try to record the eagle for me, but I expect you’ll tell me the best sound you got was the demonically squealing fan belt on the old Land Cruiser you encountered at the gas station. And unfortunately, I don’t need that sound for my film.
Best,
Randy
Thanks, Randy, for being a voice of reason in all this April Foolery!
Goodness gracious… I was reading this today and I was a way through the article when I realized, “How can this be profitable at $1/km?” HAHAHAHA.
Might be sci-fi now, but just like people are readily using hobbyist quadcopter drone cameras to take impressive videos and panoramas, many sounds could be cultivated from those environs! Even the thought of taking robots into environmentally hazardous areas to record unique ambience.
And to have Randy Thom weigh in too… what a day!