How Stosh Tuszynski Daringly Captured The Sounds Of Massive Implosions For His Latest SFX Library:

Posted November 18, 2019 by Asbjoern Andersen in SFX interview, Sound community highlights

When it comes to taking independent sound effects to new heights, Collected Transients' Stosh Tuszynski is definitely up there with the very best. To name a few, he's done libraries that innovatively capture the sounds of extreme heat and cold, spinning and rotating objects, and combustion - and now he's done a library dedicated to the sounds of massive implosions.

It captures the sounds of 10 huge buildings and structures imploding, from multiple perspectives, and here's his story behind the making of the impressive Implosions SFX library:

Written by Stosh Tuszynski

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Wild Implosion Sound Effects Library - 10 Buildings & Structures Blasted To Bits

The launch trailer for Collected Transients’ Implosion SFX library

I was scrolling through my Google news feed one night when something piqued my interest. The roof of a stadium was to be imploded in Milwaukee, WI. I’d never seen an implosion and thought it might be a neat thing to see (and of course record!), so I made plans to drive up.

Before the drive, I did a bit of research via news articles and Google Maps. I scouted out a location I thought would work great for recording just outside the “exclusion zone” workers had mapped out.

I arrived about 30 minutes before the implosion was to happen and found a place to park. Before I got out of the car, I sat for a bit on my phone checking for any new stories about the implosion… making sure the implosion was still happening at the time I expected, and that nothing changed with the exclusion zone.

I came across one article that was just posted with a worker being asked about the implosion. I’ll have to paraphrase as I can’t find the article, but the worker essentially said “I just hope folks aren’t expecting some big show. You probably won’t be able to see much and and the explosion will just sound like a small firework.”

I was a little bummed reading that. I didn’t really care if I couldn’t see, but thinking that it would just be a tiny little “bang” rather than a big “BOOM” was a bit disappointing. Nevertheless, I was already there. No reason to turn around. I got out of the car and started walking to my planned recording location.

When I arrived, I was surprised to see a crowd of ~50 people standing exactly where I was planning to record. Without thinking about it too much, I set up my mics and camera and began testing things. The mics we’re sounding fine. The memory card had plenty of room. The camera angle was nice. The batteries were full. It was about 10 minutes before detonation when I hit record.

Until that point, I somehow had been oblivious to one of the toughest aspects of recording implosions: Crowds

I stood there among a now growing crowd of people monitoring my mics. For whatever reason, it took a couple minutes of me listening to the ambience and crowd chatter to put two and two together: When big things happen, people like to cheer… and people cheering probably wouldn’t be the best element to have so close to my mics when the implosion happened. Until that point, I somehow had been oblivious to one of the toughest aspects of recording implosions: Crowds

Crowds begin to gather at the University Hall implosion in Charlottesville, VA

I’ll blame not coming to this realization sooner on having to get up early. I’m definitely not a morning person! But not thinking about this in the earlier planning stages was simply a result of never having recorded an implosion before. I’m (obviously) not the only person who thinks seeing an implosion is cool. Lots of folks read the news, so lots of folks are going to show up.

I was greeted by a wonderful sight when I arrived. Not a single soul to be seen. On top of that, I now had a couple huge buildings between my microphones and the crowd I was in before, so cheering wouldn’t be an issue

With now just ~8 minutes before the implosion, I quickly went back to my familiar resource: Google Maps. I frantically panned around in satellite view, looking for alternate locations to record. I found a couple right away, but quickly surmised the views were too good, so lots of people would be there. I began looking for less likely locations and found one in a nearby alley. The view was just alright, but it would get me ~50 feet closer to the stadium, which never hurts when sound is the main goal. Now, with about 5 minutes to go, I hastily grabbed all my gear, and hobbled over to the alley.

The demo track for the Implosion SFX library

I was greeted by a wonderful sight when I arrived. Not a single soul to be seen. On top of that, I now had a couple huge buildings between my microphones and the crowd I was in before, so cheering wouldn’t be an issue. I quickly sat my gear down, set up my mics, bent down to hit record, and just as I was about to stand up… “BOOM”!

Seconds after the Bradley Center stadium roof in Milwaukee, WI was imploded

A massive concussive blast froze me in place. This was no firework. Not even close! I heard glass shattering and metal falling. A huge cloud of dust and debris formed and began blowing my direction. I kneeled there in a little bit of shock. First for how loud the explosion was, and second for how close I came to missing the implosion. I’m not exaggerating about the timing. The raw recording has about five seconds of ambience before the implosion, and two of those are from pre-record.

A massive concussive blast froze me in place. This was no firework. Not even close! I heard glass shattering and metal falling. A huge cloud of dust and debris formed and began blowing my direction. I kneeled there in a little bit of shock

A huge feeling of joy came over me as I packed up before the dust got too bad. I think I smiled the entire walk back to my car. I got in and realized I should probably check playback as I didn’t even get a chance to look at my meters. I hit play and was happy to see the levels were great. Luckily I had recorded some pretty loud things with the same gear, so I was well prepared in that regard.

After that, I was hooked. The rapid sequence of events gave me quite a rush! It was one of those moments where I instantly realized I wanted to make a sound library. And over the course of about a year, that’s what I did!

Cooling Towers ready to be imploded in Somerset, MA

For each of the nine other building implosions I attended, I did quite a bit more preparation than I had for the first. I didn’t stop at finding one location to record, I found four or five possibilities for each distance I planned to record at. I showed up at least a day before each implosion and surveyed the potential locations for their positives and negatives.

More about Stosh Tuszynski’s approach to extreme sound effects recording:

We interviewed Stosh Tuszynski for the A Sound Effect podcast about the making of his Thermal Flux sound effects library – hear the interesting story behind that one below – the interview starts around the 4:40 mark.

Other SFX highlights from Collected Transients:

Fire Sound Effects Combustion Play Track 685 sounds included $100

Combustion is a sound effects library exploding with combustible sound design material. It encompasses explosions, chemical reactions, fires, and various other forms of combustion. It provides a vast scope of sound design elements for weapons, whooshes, vehicles, impacts, and so much more.

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Mechanical Sound Effects rOtation Play Track 182 sounds included $45

rOtation is a sound effects library built for sound design centered around things that spin. It contains nearly 200 exceptional sounds and is the first of its kind. If you’re looking for brand new sound design source material, rOtation is the ticket.

Several months of research and recording has led to this very unique collection. It’s props range from ball bearings to trash cans; magnets to fireworks; water to nuts – all in the realm of rotation.

It contains sounds of things that have never been included in a sound effects library before: The sound of a Euler’s Disk speeding up exponentially fast – the whir and chatter of Hurricane balls spinning to 5000+ RPM – Nuts and quarters zipping and buzzing by in a rumbling balloon – The power of neodymium magnets bending the tones of vibrating glass.

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Materials & Texture Sound Effects Thermal Flux Play Track 206 sounds included $60

Thermal Flux is a sound effects library formed by extreme temperature reactions. With materials ranging from -119°F to 1900°F all captured at 192kHz/24bit, it’s a fiery (and icy) collection of unique sound design source material.

In each recording, props with vast temperature differentials interact with each other… Red hot ball bearings vaporize liquids, melt ice, and destroy various household products. Extremely cold metal instantly freezes water. Molten metals and glass pour into water, groaning, chirping, and crackling, as they solidify. Dry ice causes coins to viciously chatter. Water beads bounce, whine, and buzz on blazing hot pans. White hot sand roars and erupts upon contact with water. All of this and more was recorded with mics capturing quality frequency information up to ~65kHz. This ultrasonic content allows for extreme pitch shifting without compromising fidelity.

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Even with all that, it never failed that on the day of each implosion I was thrown massive curve balls. Unannounced streets would be closed so I couldn’t park near by. Locations would be closed off, or I would get kicked out at the last minute and have to scramble. Random crowds would show up to my prime spots.

What was left of the Pasadena State Bank building after it was imploded in Pasadena, TX

However, with each implosion… with each curve ball… I got more bold. I hid my mics in bushes, cars, alleys, and rooftops. I left thousands of dollars of gear sitting in public locations with no visibility for hours at a time. Multiple times, I talked security/police into letting me leave my gear inside the exclusion zone. One time close enough that the shock wave destroyed a microphone! I waded across a tiny river at 3am in 40°F temps to hide mics in a tall grass field. All of this, just to avoid crowds and get the best recordings possible.

It also never failed, that when each implosion was finished, I was overcome with that same feeling of joy I had after almost completely screwing up the first one 😉

A big thanks to Stosh Tuszynski for the story behind his new Implosion SFX library! Be sure to check out the full release below:

Implosion

Destruction & Impact Sounds Implosion Play Track 42 sounds included $100

Implosion is a sound effects collection of buildings being destroyed with explosives. It features 10 unique building implosions recorded across the country.

Each implosion was recorded with 4 to 14 channels of audio. To offer multiple perspectives, mics were placed as close as 150ft (~50m) and as far away as 2000ft (~600m) from the various explosive demolitions.

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Here's Collected Transients' own description of the library: Implosion is a sound effects collection of buildings being destroyed with explosives. It features 10 unique building implosions recorded across the country.

Each implosion was recorded with 4 to 14 channels of audio. To offer multiple perspectives, mics were placed as close as 150ft (~50m) and as far away as 2000ft (~600m) from the various explosive demolitions.

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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:

Car Sound Effects Extreme Drift Play Track 360 sounds included, 220 mins total $49

The Extreme Drift SFX library includes 360 HQ (24bit/96kHz) close and distant range perspective, auto racing recordings. Audio material of vehicles, drifting and maneuvering around race tracks at various speeds and densities taking corners and speeding on long straightaways.

You will find idle engine sounds, powerful engine revs, slow and fast starts, crazy accelerations and wild breaking, roaring overtakings, tandem battles, tire screeches and skids echoing beautifully in the air. The audio found in our library is not limited to startups, shutdowns and gear shifts, but also offers ambiences of pit lane and working team crews.

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Mechanical Sound Effects Old Engines Grab Bag Play Track 486 sounds included, 265 mins total $129

“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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Footsteps Sound Effects Ultimate Footsteps Play Track 1176-3056+ sounds included From: $160

Need footstep sound effects? Get 5 Shoes, 25+ surfaces, 15+ variations – created by Foley Supervisor Joshua Reinhardt and professional Foley walker Lara Dale.

Deep heavy metal, crunchy snow, old boat wood, crisp grass, gritty dirt, clean tile – this library has it all. Not only does this library contain walking but it's got pretty much every performance you can think of, from scuffs to jumps and lands and scrapes. With this library you can cut Foley for pretty much any film or game that comes your way.

Highlights:

• 17 different Performances – From slow walk to RUN, 5 scrapes, bodyfall/land, stomps and more
• Every file is labeled with a description of the shoe, surface and performance type.
• Every folder has a picture of the shoe and surface plus a description of the distance of the mic from the Foley walker.
• Combine wood creak sweeteners with Ultimate Interiors wood for scary creaky wood or add grit to a clean interior to give character.
• Same recording studio mics and preamps used in over 50 major motion pictures
• Same boots that were used for Sylvester Stallone in The Expendable
• Mix and match shoes, surfaces and sweeteners to make your own custom characters
• Can be used as a stereo or separated and mixed/matched as a mono depending which mic works best for your project

Specs:

Foot wear type:
Boots, Dress Shoes, Flats, Heels, Sneakers.

Performances:
Extremely Slow Walk, Medium Slow Walk, Walk, Jog, Run, Stairs Slow, Stairs Fast, Stomp, Land, Scuff, Scrape 1, Scrape 2, Scrape 3, Scrape 4, Scrape 5.

Surface Types:
Asphalt, Carpet 1, Carpet 2, Concrete, Hardwood, Hardwood house, Hardwood deep, Hardwood parquet, Hardwood boat wood, Hardwood Dock, Lino, Marble, Tile, Dirt, Grass, Metal grate, Diamond plate Metal, Metal Slab, Wood Creak 1 old, Wood Creak 2, Gravel, Rocks, SNOW!!, Puddle, Water shallow, Water Deep.

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Explore the full, unique collection here

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