Meet Soundly – a revolutionary new cloud-based approach to sound effects:

Hi Peder, just what is Soundly?

Soundly is an app for Mac and Windows that gives you access to a big 96kHz, 24-bit sound effects library in the cloud, and let’s you drag and drop sound effects from the cloud library straight into your project. It works with every sound and video editor that we have tested it with, and we’ve tested it with a lot. You can also add effects like pitching, reversing, summing, hear it in real time and have it instantly printed to the sound when you drag it out.
 

When did you get the idea for Soundly, and how long has it been in the works?

I started doing more and more sound design on my laptop, and it was a drag to always have to have a hard drive of sound effects with me, so I started researching if it was possible to solve this all in the cloud. I’m a decent coder and tested different ideas, and when I got the first test version running, I really felt I was onto something big. I was amazed at how fluent and fast everything was feeling and I just went from there.

I was amazed at how fluent and fast everything was feeling and I just went from there

I’ve been working on this on and off for the last 5 years, and we have been running beta tests for the last two years so it feels like it’s ready to meet the rest of the world.
 

Soundly offers a unique cloud based approach to sound effects. How does it work, and how about performance?

Files come down blistering fast from the cloud in very high quality and people often won’t believe it’s possible to do it that fast, but we have done some very smart things to make this work as fast as it does. The servers are running on Google’s own infrastructure so this is very fast wherever you are, and scales perfectly when we are doing stress loads – so I’m very confident the servers will hold up even under heavy load.
 

Soundly comes with librarian features too, so you can manage your existing catalog too – how does the librarian aspect work?

Yes, you can also use Soundly to index your local sound effects or music and use it as a regular librarian tool.

You can also use Soundly to index your local sound effects or music and use it as a regular librarian tool

It supports meta data in many different formats and you can also import your entire library from other sound library tools.

A cool feature is that you can monitor a local folder, so if you add new sound effects to your sound effects folder they will be indexed by Soundly and instantly available.
 

There’s also a premium SFX library included. What’s the story behind that one?

The idea behind the app was to join a librarian app and sound effects in one tool. So from the very beginning I’ve been trying to get a good sound library on board. It’s been a lot of work as most people with a good library won’t sell it as a subscription. They want to sell the whole thing for a high sum instead of what we are doing, selling a subscription at $14.99 a month. I knew Christian Schaanning from the sound design community and he has done some great films here in Norway and has also been doing some work in LA on films like Transformers 3. You can check out his imdb here.
I had just lost another Library and met him randomly and drunkenly late at a bar in Oslo… Mid week. I had been to an award show – I do sound for tv and radio adds – and he had had a seminar with some junior sound designers. We made one of those drunken deals where we where going to meet tomorrow and discuss this further, and we actually did.

As it turned out, he has made one of the best sounding sound libraries I’ve ever heard

As it turned out, he has made one of the best sounding sound libraries I’ve ever heard. It wasn’t organized yet, but he promised to get it named and tagged, and he did. We uploaded the library to the beta testers in March, and they instantly loved it. As the library is in the cloud we are constantly adding new sound effects and it’s growing every day. Christian has now joined the company and we are trying our best to save the world, together.
 

Popular on A Sound Effect right now - article continues below:

 

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Latest releases:  

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  Ships Tugboat Deutz VM 145 Play Track 582 sounds included $249

  Recording of a 1927 tugboat with a Deutz VM 145 4-cylinder engine with 200 horsepower at 300 RPM in 30 synchronized takes.

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  Environments London Ambisonics : Exteriors Play Track 20 sounds included, 127 mins total $79.99 $59.99

  This is a collection of sounds recorded at various locations in London, UK. Recordings of landmarks such as Trafalgar Square and Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben), various London streets, and green spaces are all featured, totalling 127 minutes of ambisonic audio, with an average length of 6 mins 22 seconds.

  The files have been decoded to AmbiX, but can be converted to FuMa with Ambi Converter from Noise Makers, or decoded to any format from mono to 7.1.2 Atmos using Harpex-X or the free Røde Soundfield plug-in.

  No noise reduction has been used, apart from on the recording of Big Ben, and the unprocessed version is also included.

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  Drones & Moods Domestic Drones Play Track 34 sounds included, 138 mins total $12 $8

  Domestic Drones is a collection of 34 distorted and disturbing drones not for the faint-hearted. Each drone was created from recordings of domestic appliances and household items, such as fans, ventilation, taps, kettles and even coffee machines. Each one was then torn apart and treated using the finest plugins (and no virtual instruments) creating a collection of winds, howls, mechanical textures and alien winds.

  This abstract collection is useful for anyone creating soundscapes for distant planets, submersed landscapes or even just a house of horrors.

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  Horror Mutation Play Track 200 sounds included, 40 mins total $20 $8

  “Mutation” is a collection of 200 mutation sound effects aimed to be used in horror/sic-fi productions.
  The pack is focused on bloody and creepy transformations where you can hear how the flesh, blood and bones of the subject are being transformed and reshaping into something else.

  Uncommon sources like plastic and scrap movements, dry leaves and metallic guitar picks were used to create this collection.

  The library contains 20 files (WAV, 24 Bit / 96 kHz), 10 variations each, summing a total of 200 sfx.

  As a bonus I included the sources (32 sfx) used to create the sounds in the library.

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  Ships Narrowboat Gardner 4LW 1960 Play Track 371 sounds included $249

  The 1960 British Narrowboat sound fx library of a Northwich trader-
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What’s ahead for Soundly?

We have a lot of stuff coming out the door, and upgrading will always be free as this is subscription based. We like to keep things secret before we release new features, but I can say that we are working on a revolutionary way for sound designers and video editors to work together in the cloud. Get on board now and join the revolution :)
 

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