User Interface

User Interface sound effects galore: 96 minutes / 1.03 GB of mechanical and synthesized user interface sound effects.
1719 sounds in 287 separate files – recorded in 24bit/96kHz. All sounds are UCS-compatible.

User Interface is a collection of mechanical and synthesized sounds for designing UI sounds. With over 1700 sounds in 287 files, there are tons of different sounds, with several takes or variations of each.

The guiding principle behind the collection is to allow sound designers to combine these two types of sounds into something that has the edge from synthesis, and the authenticity or “body” of physical objects.

About half the sounds come from an array of physical objects struck, scraped, and otherwise manipulated, in front of a Sennheiser MKH 40 microphone. Covered in these recordings are everything from simple clicks and clacks, to more complex scrapes, shakes and rattles. The various materials used ensured good timbral variation too, ranging from overtone-rich, to more dull tonal characteristics.

The other half come from an analog modular synth, with a little bit of post-processing here and there. Many of these sounds have a slightly “retro” feel to them; they have a certain rawness of timbre. I feel this sets User Interface apart from the many polished or glossy sounding UI sound effects out there.

Types of interface sounds

During the design phase, another main principle was to produce sounds for a variety of user interactions. There are sounds for button presses and activations, for turning dials or moving faders. Additionally, there are also sounds to convey some sort of message to the user, such as alerts to errors or success.

Then there are the sounds that signal data being transmitted or processed (the abstract version of audible read/write cycles on old mechanical drives, perhaps). Not very realistic nowadays, but you can’t transmit data in a film or game without cool sounds, right?

Finally, and in the same vein, I also included a number of sounds in the “garbled audio communications” category. Nothing sets the scene for a tech-laden environment like unintelligible radio-voices!

You get:

• Mechanical & synthesized UI sound effects
• Alerts, activations, clicks, buttons, dials, data-transmission
• Searchable file names – UCS compatible
• BWF Metadata embedded – with more included in CSV format.