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Home Environments Roomtones & Ext. Ambiences
Roomtones and exterior ambiences and recordings
Articulated presents here a careful collection of 100 Electric Fans, HVAC, AHU, and Mechanical Drones. After months of capture, we recorded, selected, and edited this unique library featuring rich, varied, and useful assets ready-to-use for any game or movie project.
These sounds can serve to inspire life inside environments, provide industrial tones, domestic houses, or back alleys, setting moods or atmospheres. They can also serve as elements to design mechanical machine or engine sounds.
The sonic quality extends a large spectrum from clean, modern, to old and rusty, on rooftop, indoor, flush ceiling-mounted, Bathroom extractor, or floor stand; along with many flavours like metal, plastic, smooth or raspy rattles with gurgling wobbles. Some of the Sounds have useful varied point of perspectives (Close-up, distance), and most of them are ‘loopable’.
WHAT’S INSIDE:
124 stereo files
Highly focused and meticulously edited sounds
Wide variety
Different perspectives are included as well
Discover nearly 7 hours of individually flavoured, hauntingly musical and ever-evolving drones, packaged neatly into 79 of the kind of audio files that you can never have enough of.
In many ways, Aberrant Drones is the sister library of the Augmentation Elements library, as it provides you with the creative tools required to augment your sound design.
Whilst the Augmentation Elements library arms you with tools such as whooshes, risers and stings, allowing you to sweeten specific elements of your sound design, the Aberrant Drones library allows you to augment the mood of an entire scene. Each audio file is populated with richly descriptive SoundMiner metadata, making it easier than ever before to sift through hours of abstract drones.
This is why the metadata is usually described in terms of feeling and mood, like so:
Drone,Sci-Fi,Abstract,Cacophonous,Glowing,Impending Doom
Drone,Sci-Fi,Abstract,Textured,Vibrating,Oscillating,Anxiety
Augment your creative tool-box with Aberrant Drones, and transform your sound design work!
For really in-depth reviews, check out the articles on 344audio.com and strongmocha.com
Abstract Ambiences gets you a collection of abstract and surreal ambiences, covering everything from Doomed Soundscapes, Dark Drones, Futuristic Dungeons, Alien Worlds, SciFi Horror, Weird Radio Messages and Interference to Disturbing and Terrifying Noises, Eerie Textures & more. The library is the first of many collaborations between SoundBits and Monte Sound. All sounds are royalty free – and several versions are available:
Abstract Ambiences – Stereo:
• 60 ready-to-use abstract ambiences in stereo
• 60 files, 5.18 GB
Abstract Ambiences 5.0 – Surround:
• 60 ready-to-use abstract ambiences in 5.0 surround (split mono) + stereo downmixes
• 300 split monofiles (60 ambiences in 5.0) + 60 stereo files, 13.08 GB
Ambiences Construction-Kit:
• 257 stereo layers/stems – source stems used to build the Abstract Ambiences library, offering 1000s of combinations
• 257 files, 13.33 GB
Abstract Ambiences COMPLETE Pack:
• Surround + Stereo Downmixes + Construction Kit bundle for maximum savings!
• 377 files, 31.59GB
More details about the packs below.
Abstract Interior Tones is a high-definition collection of synthetic, inharmonic room tones and drones, that are made exclusively to provide sound designers a truly diverse sonic palette for designing neutral, non-intrusive, and spacious soundscapes for science fiction, horror, fantasy, dramas and documentaries. Abstract Interior Tones features 80 24bit/96kHz seamlessly looping sounds, normalised to -23LUFS and embedded with Soundminer metadata.
African Jungle is a huge collection of unique ambiences recorded in Central Africa’s Congo Basin rainforests. To my knowledge, these are the first surround field recordings made in this area. Last year I spent a whole month off the grid, listening to and recording a variety of habitats at all times of day and night, at the height of the rainy season when birds are most vocal. It took me many days of travel to get to these places, from using trains, boats, cars and planes to hiking on foot in the jungle.
Ambiences of Markets, Skylines, a Café etc. from Agadir, Morocco, by award winning Sound Recordist and Sound Editor Rob Bourke, edited and mastered by Sound Designer Ian Macbeth.
This collection of Air Conditioners, Vents, and Ducts gives a collection of understated airs and room tones appropriate for most every day situations.
Need the ambience of airports, security areas or on-board a commercial airliner during an international flight?
This library delivers: Getting you 4 hours of crowds and atmospheres recorded at 10 different international airports – and on-board multiple airliners with different seat perspectives in-flight, landing, taxi and crew announcements included.
Amazon Jungle is a collection of unique ambiences recorded in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. The library was recorded during the rainy season when birds are vocal and humidity is at its highest. These recordings feature species such as the Screaming Piha, Toucans, Howler Monkeys, Trogons, Tinamous, Owls, very vocal Bamboo Rats and a multitude of insects and frogs.
City Life Ambiance is a small collection of ambisonic recordings performed at various locations of different cities. The recordings took place at both internal and external locations.
This collection is great for post production, VR/AR experiences, game developers and any real-time 3D audio engine.
All files are tagged and categorized for your convenience – supporting tag filtering browsing applications.
To create this product a Sennheizer Ambeo microphone paired with Zoom H8 was used.
This package includes 24 Samples – Total 67 minutes of content.
The library is also available in 360 Ambisonic version here.
The Ambiance Collection 1 aims to provide a complete solution for a wide variety of sound scenarios.
It features a range of ambience recordings such as cities, roads, parks, countrysides, shores, airports, shopping malls, underground parking lots, various room-tones and much more.
This package includes 71 Files – Total 3:23:00 hours of content, with an average track duration of 0:02:45 minuets.
The library is also available in 360 Ambisonic version here.
Since our beginning, we have the opportunity to travel around different places and record many ambiences. Here is a package that we have built with the better of them.
Recorded from City, Country, Forest, and outside and inside places.
The library contains 117 files, 2 hours 54 minutes and 5.74 gigs of stuff.
Each sound has been meticulously edited individually, all files were recorded and are delivered in 24 Bit 96 kHz Broadcast Wave files, all embedded with metadata information for easy import and ensure fast and easy workflow.
One hundred ambiences. From English pubs and cafes to Charles Bridge in Prague to a rooftop on Madison Avenue and the pastoral city ambience of Central Park. Great background ambiences for film, TV, games and many other uses.
This natural selection of seamless loops is a subset of our Nature’s Soundscapes sound library. Particularly suited for games, multi-layer environments, and backgrounds. The Ambient Earth Nature Loops sound FX collection includes traditional and alternative points of view on the sounds of wind, water, rain, thunder, forests, mountains, and nighttime. The collection is a fantastic complement to any sound designer needing to recreate organic environments or soundscapes.
All files inside Ambient Earth Nature Loops loop seamlessly. Most loops are 45-60 seconds in duration and can be played for as long as you need them to. This nature ambience loop library showcases sound effects from all across the beautiful rolling hills of Tennessee, the countryside of New York, The Rocky & Smokey Mountains. After 1 year of recording different locations with the aim of creating a valuable resource for game nature loops, we present to you this ultra-affordable and versatile library.
Western Wall | HaKotel is a small collection of recordings performed at the western wall located at the heart of Jerusalem. The recordings mainly includes Judaism prayers, but also presents Islam prayers, such as the Moasin.
The recordings took place at both internal and external locations.
This collection is great for post production, VR/AR experiences, game developers and any real-time 3D audio engines.
To create this product a Sennheizer Ambeo microphone paired with Zoom H8 was used.
This package includes 10 Samples – Total 24:00 minutes of content.
Supported formats: B-Format AmbiX and Stereo (Total of 20 files).
Want to hear an example of the included recordings? Download a B-format Demo here
Applause and Laughter recorded in various spaces in full B-Format Ambisonic surround. Over 90 tracks of audience laughter an another 40 of so of applause and audience reactions and chatter. 96 kHz / 24 bit recordings with full Soundminer-embedded metadata.
Transcode with the free SoundField SurroundZone 2 plug-in in your DAW of choice, or use Svein Berge’s brilliant Harpex-B for stunning results.
'American Public Spaces' is a library that focuses on North-American ambiences of English-speaking public areas. This collection is mainly recorded stealth in the cities of: Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, Miami, Trenton, Ottawa.
The library is available in stereo, and surround (Quad).
Cafe • Airport • Store • Hospital • Library • Metro • Bank • Courthouse • Museum • Terminal • Gym • Hall • Washroom • Post Office • Supermarket • Swimming Pool • Tramway • Zoo • Restaurant • Greenhouse • Arena • Market • Hall • Hotel • Shopping Mall • Hallway • and more!
'Asia Reminds II – Japan Ambiences' delivers a generous amount of recordings (more than 5 hours total) from a trip to Japan. It's divided into three distinct ambience types: City ambiences, Nature / Town ambiences and Trains / Stations ambiences & FX folder.
You obtain three format folders : Stereo / MS / 5.0 Upmix
'Asia Reminds II – Japan Ambiences' ambience types:
City ambiences include recordings from Osaka to Tokyo  such as geek Denden town & Akiharaba Arcade-Pachinko room, Stroll in Nishiki market, Kitanomaru Park, Famous Shibuya crossing and more.
Nature / town ambiences include recordings from famous Kyoto Bamboo Forest, Philosopher's path, Kibune-Kurama Forest and more.
Trains / Stations include recordings from Osaka / Kyoto / Tokyo Stations, Stroll in Fujikyoko Line, Railroad Crossing and more.
FX include gashapon machine, Crows & Birds, Train doors etc…
'Asia Reminds – Japan Ambiences' : with a total of 76 audio files in each of these folders: STEREO (48 kHz / 24 bit), MS & UPMIX 5.0 (96 kHz / 24 bit).
It also includes 117 FX sounds.
You have access to two download folder :
‘Backyard’ by Badlands Sound puts you right in the middle of America's backyard. You will hear in the morning the peaceful sounds of mourning doves, robins, and other song birds along and at night you will hear a distant American School Football Game with crowds cheering and a sports announcer among with crickets and distant dog barks and yelps.
It includes 30 high-quality 96k / 24-bit ambiences of the backyard, perfect for your projects. All sounds are long – Five and a half minutes each!
The library features four different times during the day; morning, afternoon, evening, and night.
Need ambiences from backyards and alleyways? This collection delivers more than 3 hours of atmospheric ambiences from places such as cementaries, gardens, churchyards, school yards, industrial alleyways, castles, apartment complexes, small cities and more.
Baltic Ambiences is a collection of 440 various ambiences across 7 countries: Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and Poland.
Recorded across several trips, Baltic Ambiences is a collection of ambiences from various cities and countries on or close to the Baltic. Really this is a collection of ambiences from my three lengthy trips around doing various lectures in said countries.
Here you’ll find city streets, museums, churches, restaurants, train stations and airports.
A general use ambience library of the larger area, you’ll also find some onboard train and ferry sounds. A general use collection of ambiences from Iceland, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Germany.
Equipment Used: Schoeps CCM MS Rig, Zoom H1, Zoom H5, Zoom H6.
BASEMENT CORRIDOR is a collection in 5.1 SURROUND (and stereo too) of 21 high quality recorded roomtoones, ambiences and SFX sounds from underground locations.
Quiet Room tones, room tones with additional hum, fan, blower, ventilations, water flowing in pipes, compressor engine with extinction and activations, and also big doors slammed with huge corridor reverb at distance. All those sounds can be used in an underground basement environment.
All recordings were made with a DPA 5100 microphone and are around 3 minutes long each. All files are meticulously meta-tagged and can be used in wide range of productions.
Berlin Ambiances I is 114 minutes/3,69 GB of pure Berlin in 31 separate files – recorded mostly in 24bit/96kHz quasi-binaural stereo, with Primo EM172 omni capsules.
This collection contains stealth recordings of various Berlin locations, including a good deal of train sounds and, well, Berliners!
I went to locations such as the Bodemuseum (crazy natural reverbs), the Hauptbanhhof (enormous, diffuse train station-ambiance) and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (great restaurant vibe and busy foyer). All this captured during January 2015, with a head-worn set of near- or quasi-binaural microphones.
Why quasi? Because the microphone elements are not entirely behind the Pinna (that thing protruding in front of the ear-canal), which means the true, 3-dimensional binaural experience isn't there. In this setting, my head shadow acted more like a Schneider disc or such, which means these recordings should translate better to speakers than, say, a Neumann dummy head. Btw: the non-binaural recordings were done in October 2013, using just my Sony PCM M10 recorder.
All in all, a collection of useful ambiances for your next Berlin-esque project.
You get:
Berlin Ambiances II is 115 minutes / 3,7 GB of pure Berlin in 32 separate files – recorded in 24 Bit / 96 kHz A-B stereo, with Primo EM172 omni capsules.
This collection is focused on lively locations such as markets, museums, playgrounds and shops, and features several takes from each location (in most cases). I wanted the sound of Berliners more than anything else, so here are sounds from Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain and Mitte. Whether it's drunks on Alexander Platz or the lunch crowd in Markthalle 9, I tried to capture a good spectrum of public, everyday life in Berlin.
As always, you get searchable file names and comprehensive metadata in CSV and ODS (OpenOffice) format. This allows you to import the metadata into your favorite librarian software.
You get:
Recordings from the German capital. A collection of  files containing a wide view of  Berlin ambiences: Parks, streets, undergrounds, city ambiences… 50 files of interior and exterior files recorded in the Summer of 2013.
A collection of ambiances, street sounds, nature ambiances and SFX recorded in Berlin, Germany between 2012-2019.
You will get recordings of airport and train stations with P.A announcements, High quality recordings of S-Bahn and U-bahn Trains both Interior and Exterior perspectives .Interior Bus Rides, Restaurants , Street sounds with German walla and voices, quiet residential ambiances, Rooftops and Roomtones, Supermarkets and Flea markets, Kindergarten, Playgrounds,Street traffic, Pedestrian areas, City Forest, and more.
All Files delivered in Stereo Wav 24/ 96
Gear Used:
Sound devices Mixpre 6
Sennheiser MKH 8040St ORTF
RODE NT4
TASCAM DR100MK2
British Stately Home is a collaboration between two award-winning sound designers, Stefan Henrix (Chernobyl, Batman Begins) and Steve Fanagan (Room, Frank). It is a collection of 256 files recorded at 24bit/96kHz, totalling 18.6GB. The recordings are a mixture of mono, stereo, LCR and 5.0 files. In some cases there are multiple perspectives on the same recording (close, mid and wide). There are also Impulse Responses from several of the building's more characterfully reverberant rooms, which have been recorded from different perspectives and edited for use with Altiverb.
Sounds for this library were recorded over two days in a beautifully maintained rural British Stately Home; a late-18th-century neo-classical mansion. We set out to record any and all aspects of the building and its surroundings. The collection includes doors, windows, fireplaces, clocks, drips, keys and various unusual, period specific props we came across.
The interior of the building was one of the quietest places either of us have ever recorded and the Roomtones we've captured here are some of the most still and neutral recordings we've both made.
All of the sounds are authentic and the spaces we recorded in are reverberant, have their own ambience, and have coloured each of the recordings with the natural acoustic of this magnificent building.
We often set-up with multiple mics to capture different perspectives of the same recordings and these will hopefully offer the user interesting options as they work with these sounds.
At times we have left our own movements at the beginning and end of recordings, as they captured something of the building's unique acoustic and have proven useful to both of us in our own film work with this library. This is a diverse and versatile library and the recordings take well to pitch and time shifting, and to other plugin manipulation.
Equipment Used: Sanken CMS-7S, DPA4060, Sennheiser MKH60, Rode NT4, Sound Devices 702T, Sound Devices USB Pre-2, Roland R26
We all know what central London sounds like. It’s noisy, crowded, and full of people trying to sell you watches. Ok, maybe that last point wasn’t that relevant, but have you ever wondered what lies beyond?
A short drive towards the suburbs will reveal a world filled with warm beer, cricket, and endless parks, where deer roam free.
When planning this library, the intention was to capture the quieter side of the metropolis, all year round! As a result, this library will receive multiple updates over the coming months. There will be one more summer update soon, along with an autumn update, winter update, and spring update.
So far, the first version of the library contains 15 .WAV stereo files at 96kHz/24 bit, recorded with a Sony PCM-D100/1, and contains approximately 35 minutes of summer ambiances in different locations throughout suburban London. Over the following months, I’ll keep traveling around the suburbs, collecting more and more ambiances, each update representing its own season.
Each file has been carefully edited in iZotope RX in order to remove as much unwanted noise as possible, such as random shouting, barking, etc. This will provide you with clean ambiences that will add character to your projects, without distracting the audience. That being said, do please note that the recordings contain some amount of traffic noise, and some also contain airplane noise. This is, of course, unavoidable when recording in a city such as London.
In addition to that, each file has been filled to the brim with SoundMiner metadata, allowing you to quickly search through the files, waste less time and dedicate more time to what you love doing!
The Bunkers sound effects library features roomtones and ambiences captured inside old World War II shelters (at the historic WW2 complex known as Wolf’s Lair in Poland).
The ambiences were captured in small rooms deep inside bunkers, in hallways, inside old rusty water pipes and outside, between bunkers.
The library includes room tones with water dripping from ceilings, small pieces of wall falling on the floor and wind getting through destroyed walls. The Bunker Ambients library features 23 files with a total length of 57 minutes, recorded with a Sony PCM-M10 and Sennheiser MKH 8040 plugged into Sound Devices 702 recorder in ORTF configuration.
The Calm Crowd SFX library will add some discreet life to your backgrounds. Calm background ambiences are tricky to do in sound editing, so this library gives you a hand with those surround sounds.
Sounds for the Castles library were collected in four castles – museums (medieval, renaissance and baroque) in southern Poland. My intention was to record sounds of old doors, furniture and every interesting prop I could find, in authentic acoustic environment. Some of the spaces were very reverberant, some just have a bit of ambience, but all are authentic and add specific colouration to sounds. Also, part of the sounds was recorded outside.
As always, visiting those places, I found many interesting characterful objects – most of them are heavy wooden or metal. So expect a lot of creaks and squeaks. Where I could, I recorded variations and versions from different POVs.
Another important part of the library are Background Activities.
Editing sound for films, I always find myself in need for adding some background life to scenes. We all love great foley, but having isolated background activities recorded in real spaces adds another level of realism. So wherever I found interesting spaces, we performed some activities and movements on old stone or wooden floors.
It’s not supposed to substitute foley, syncing it step by step. But it will help to create separate layer of atmospheres.
We also found medieval Torture Chamber, which inspired us to record some of the tools, distant movements of chains etc. but also some screams, all with real dungeon reverb.
Objects and activities include:
A chest • chain • crate • door • floor • footsteps • handle • locks • metal objects • movement • stone • tool • trapdoor • window • wooden objects
Sound categories:
Doors – 145 files • BG Activities – 49 files • Props – 20 files • Furniture – 16 files • Screams – 12 files
We visited Chicago last summer and once again, we recorded it, capturing 17 beautiful tracks in ambisonic format, 48Khz and 24 bits HD. As always, top quality recordings specially designed for film audio projects. The library was decoded and mixed in Dolby ATMOS at AdHoc Studios.
With A Sound Effect, Asbjoern has created a web site where our international community can browse, learn, and share the vast fruits of our labors. Together we are accelerating the very real potential power of sound design as a recognized art form.
A Sound Effect is an excellent resource for us to keep our animated films sounding unique and exciting.
A Sound Effect is a great asset to have discovered.
We found the site very easy to navigate, purchasing and downloads were effortless and the effects themselves are awesome! Asbjoern has done us all a great service.
We’ll definitely be back!
There are many great independent sound effect libraries available these days. The main problem with having so many, is keeping track of them!
A Sound Effect is a great hub, and is one of the first places I visit to look for sounds by category or genre. I started coming here to see if I could find libraries that I knew I had heard, but forgot WHERE I had heard them.
And in the process discovered libraries I never would have found otherwise. Great work! Keep it up!
We're always looking for new sounds to mangle, so when A Sound Effect had a holiday sale, I tried them out.
The purchase experience is really smooth and quick, and delivery is almost instant.
I'll definitely come back to them again in the future!
A Sound Effect is a wonderful resource for indie sound effects libraries. On top of that, it has some of the finest sound design, film and game audio interviews!
I often need very specific types of sounds so I've become a big supporter of independent recorders.
Until now I've always had to go to their individual websites. Now I can find them all in one place.
And, Asbjoern is great to work with!
A Sound Effect is a well curated boutique sound effects shop and a great place to find industry interviews and learning resources.