Animal Sound Effects

This bundle was built with 5 different sound libraries.

Experience the sound of the honey bees‘ hive. All files were recorded outside the town, far away from the roads to capture the clean sound of hard working bees. 14 stereo files were recorded with Sound Devices 702, Sony PCM-M10 recorder, two DPA 4061 microphones hidden inside a hive and two Sennheiser MKH 8040 to capture the ambient in front of the hive. Every stereo AB interior recording can be split to mono to isolate the single buzzes. Recording those sounds was one of my dreams as a field recordist. I always wanted to hear the interior sound of a hive. This session wasn’t the easy one, because of my strong allergic reaction to bees, but thanks to a proper clothes and suit, I was able to walk through the bees for 2 hours without any harm. My main goal was to capture different sounds, not only the ambients but also some close ones, like the sound of the bees landing on their landing zone or just the interior sound of the hive. The overall character of the sound really depends on the time of the year and time of the day. I had a chance to record those insects before the feeding time. They were hungry and really active. The total length of recorded files is 44 minutes.

The Cat – Meow Library features 130 files ( 51 192kHz, 79 96kHz ) recorded with Sennheiser 8040 / Rode NTG3 and Sony PCM-D100. This small bundle contains different sound effects made by two very vocal cats. From subtle squeaks and digging in litter box, through eating and purrs to loud meows.

The Cormorants sound library was recorded during 4 recording sessions spread through the course of two months. As you can hear in the preview file, the sounds of cormorants are really detailed, because of the super close perspective. In some cases, cormorants were literally walking on my DPA microphones. All files were recorded in 96kHz and 24bits with equipment like: Sound Devices 702, Sony PCM-M10, Rode NTG3, two Oktavas MK012 with different adapters and capsules and two DPA 4061. When it comes to the usability of this library, I think that it’s a great source material for designing sound for different creatures. The textures of nestling recordings are perfect to start designing sounds of small out of the world animals. Some of the files also contain seagulls, which unfortunately are a part of cormorants colonies. The amount of those ‘unwanted’ sound effects in my files is really low though, and some of them were left on purpose. Even though it’s all about cormorants, the single squeaks those seagulls can make are really great. This library contains 32 files with total length of 119 minutes.

The Eurasian Cranes sound library was so far the hardest to record. Eurasian cranes, also called common cranes are beautiful and really easy to scare big birds. This library features the sound of more than 1000 birds singing their song at the same time. If you’r not familiar with those birds, here’s a link to wikipedia. I finally got a chance to record them. It wasn’t my first attempt. More than one year ago I’ve tried to do the same thing, but because of the lack of experience, I’ve ended up with bad recordings. I did not wanted to repeat my mistakes, so I’ve spent the whole night in the wild, testing my gear and patience, got bit by mosquitoes to record those animals. You can hear the results in the preview. All sounds have HPF set to cut out anything below 100Hz, because of the trains passing by from time to time somewhere in the distance. It doesn’t affect the sound of the cranes since there’s no informations in the lows. When it comes to recording wild animals, you have to accept and take whatever you’ve been given. It was impossible for me to come closer to those birds, or avoid the sound of wind going through the reed, because few more steps would scare the birds. All the files were recorded with Sound Devices 702 and two Oktavas MK012 set into ORTF. All the hardware was set in the reed in deep mud, and cranes were standing about 40m away.

The Roaring Stags contains 45 files recorded with Sound Devices 702, two Oktavas MK012 set in XY pattern, and Rode NTG3. All files sounds different, because I was recording everything in the middle of the forest during different times of the day. Recording wild animals is not something you can plan, and I had to record whatever I could, no matter what was happening around. About 90% of the files were deleted, and this 65 minutes of audio is 10% I got left with. In this sound library you’ll find reverberant sounds and ones that has less of the reverb. The distance between me and stags was changing, and that’s the reason of different amount of reverb. Also the animals were constantly moving, and sometimes they turned in completely opposite direction, so roars sounded more distant. Sometimes between roars you’ll hear subtle sounds of me moving close to microphones. I left those sounds so anyone can make cuts in desired places, but those subtle sounds happens very rarely.