New sound effects: Crowds in restaurants, parks, sports arenas, wheels – and malfunctioning hard drives

Unless you're Peter Jackson with a Lord of the Rings budget, recordists are at the mercy of how the games unfold when capturing crowd reactions. But the gods must have been smiling down upon Gaël Nicolas at Spheric Collection when he captured an hour of clear responses from the masses for his library 'Large Crowd Reactions'. This library contains group emotions of every sort with loud applause, boos, cheers, whistles, building 'oohs', disappointed 'awws', laughs, stomps, and more, all in the ambisonic format so you can make your audience feel they are truly in the center of the crowd. It also has calm ambiences of people chattering, finding their seats, and waiting in the stands which make great beds and transitions. For the power of thousands of voices acting as one, give this library a listen.

'Annihilated Hard Drives' by Norsonant has the malfunctioning sounds of mistreated hard drives. These storage devices were hit with hammers, intruded with foreign objects, drilled, bent, and just plain abused to create the distinct sounds of RPM gone haywire. The hard drives whirl, whine, screech, grind and rattle as they start up, power down and spin, creating sounds of labored friction. Using pitch shifting, spectral editing, sample-based synthesis, or whatever tools of manipulation you have, you're sure to find or design a sound like no other!

'Surround in the Park 5.1 + Stereo’ by 2496 Sound Effects has over two hours of peaceful park ambiences. These sounds include quiet breezy parks interrupted only by crows, distant voices in a golf course, children playing in a playground, softball games, tennis games, and distant trains, traffic and construction. Most recordings take place in the center of the parks to capture the widest and most complex sound field, plus stereo versions of the sounds are included with the surround files. If you are looking for the happy tune of humans enjoying the urban outdoors, check out this library.

'Wheels' by Textures Sound is a library dedicated to one of humankind’s greatest inventions. This library features many sounds of wheels attached to carts, stretchers, gurneys, IV stands, wooden tables, wheelchairs and more rolling down hospital hallways. It also has sounds of the buttons, slides, and latches attached to these transportation devices as well as recordings of various load sizes, speeds and lengths of movement. But this library not only for hospital scenes and equipment, it can also inspire the sounds of Steampunk machines, creepy ambiences, and whatever else your imagination conjures up!

If you design sound for film, especially romantic comedies, then you understand the frequent need for restaurant ambiences. These scenes are often peppered with a range of sounds from light conversation and the pattering of dishes to heavy crowds and busy waitstaff. If you're on a tight deadline and you need these sounds now, then check out 'Crowds at a restaurant' by Spheric Collection. This library features bakeries, diners, cafeterias, bars, halls, self-serve eateries, canteens and more, all in the immersive ambisonics format. It also features both French and English-speaking crowds from Paris and New York. For an hour of content that will live in your Pro Tools sessions, listen to this collection.

Get the humming, rotating sounds of a a 3-bladed Wind Turbine with this SFX library from Norsonant. It's been recorded a five different positions, and features the wind turbine sounds at varying intensities. At total of 25 mins of spinning sounds are included.

Need the sounds of rain and thunder? That's what you get with the Rain and Thunder SFX release from Double Trouble Audio, including soft, hard and pouring rain, indoor and outdoor rain loops, rain-on-umbrella recordings, thunder and more.

If you've ever recorded crowd ambiences, 'City Plaza 1' seems like an anomaly with its traffic-less crowd ambiences. How is it possible? Urban crowds and traffic go hand-in-hand. However, Gaël Nicolas over at Spheric Collection was able to capture crowds in several environments, both indoors and outdoors, untouched by the intrusive booms and honks of city traffic. These crowds enjoy Bruges from its pedestrian streets, city plazas, nearby islands, narrow alleys, stairways, and more. And as an Ambisonic library, this collection can fit your project—whether it be binaural, surround or stereo — using the free SoundField SurroundZone 2 plugin.