Another thing that’s really exciting: Soundly founders Peder and Christian are huge fans of A Sound Effect, so they brought me on board to be their exclusive distributor of premium independent sound effects! I’m currently working on bringing the libraries from the independent SFX community into Soundly.
So how does Soundly work? Check out the video introduction, read my interview with founder Peder Jørgensen – and download it for free below, so you can try it yourself:
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.
Download Soundly for free below:
Download for Windows • Download for Mac
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.
I’m really happy to have A Sound Effect on board for the Soundly app – and the independent SFX libraries are gradually being added. The A Sound Effect website will continue to work just as before, of course, and I have lots of exciting things coming up here, too. I look forward to sharing them with you!
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.
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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 :)
• FREE TO DOWNLOAD and comes with 300+ free sound effects, hand-picked from the exclusive Soundly PRO premium SFX catalog
• 2 PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS: PRO ($14.99/m, 5000+ SFX), 24HR pass ($9.99)
• ACCESS sound effects in the cloud from anywhere in the world
• DRAG-AND-DROP whole sound files – or snippets – from the Soundly cloud straight into your DAW, video editing suite or to your desktop
• TWEAK AND EDIT pitch, speed and reverse on any sound, and hear the results in real-time
• IMPORT LOCAL FILES – including metadata -, to easily manage your existing SFX collections
• INSTANT SEARCH to quickly find the sounds you need, across cloud libraries + local files
• THE STORE allows you to get additional free and premium sound effects libraries – immediately delivered as you need them
• BUILT FOR SPEED, as Soundly uses Google’s infrastructure for unparalleled redundancy, safety and speed
Visit getsoundly.com for more
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License agreement for users of Sound Examples downloaded through A SOUND EFFECT (www.asoundeffect.com) (as “Distributor”).
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In consideration for the download of the Sound Examples via the Distributor, the Licensor grants the Licensee a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty free license to use the Sound Examples (“Sounds”) on the terms and conditions set out in this Agreement.
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The license granted in this agreement allows the Licensee to:
a. install and use the Sound Examples on one workstation at a time, although the Licensee is permitted to make and keep backup copies of the Sound Examples on other storage devices, and
b. distribute and publicly perform reproductions of the Sounds, where these are incorporated in and synchronized with other media productions, which shall mean products that contains at least one additional media element to the Sounds (music, voice, image, etc.), including but not limited to radio and television broadcasts, film, music compositions, web sites, podcasts, mobile apps, advertising, multi-media presentations, video games and similar.
3. Restrictions
The Licensee is not permitted to distribute or perform reproductions of the Sounds where these are not incorporated in and synchronized with other media productions, including but not limited to in toys, product design, greeting cards, ringtones, applications such as soundboards, hardware devices, media authoring tools etc.
To the furthest extension permitted by law, the Licensee is prohibited from adapting, modifying or repackaging any Sounds, except as permitted in Clause 2.
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All rights to the Sound Examples are owned by the Licensor and other than the license rights granted in this Agreement all rights in the Sounds and Sound Effect Libraries remain the property of the Licensor. The Licensee must not claim ownership or authorship of the Sounds or the Sound Examples.
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sorry for my language, but this is fucking amazing!! drag and drop works perfectly, playback is fast, the only thing right now is lack of sounds, but that is ofcourse will change in the near future as i imagine. Again amazing app!! Will be going for paid subscription asap.
Fantastic, thanks Linas, glad to hear that! And indeed, there’s much more content and features on the way – stay tuned :)
Just curious about adding libraries. Is that only for the Subscription version?
Is there any way to get my Filemaker database into your program? I have a ton of sound effects that are using the Filemake as the search engine. But I see i can drag my folders into your program but how do I get my database to link to it?
Just got word from Peder at Soundly that he might be able to help with that Filemaker database :) You can email him at mail@getsoundly.com
Awesome app, thank you
Hi there, I am very impressed with what I had seen of this software and I am extremely interested in using this in my workflow, but have a few questions. I have a pretty extensive sound library on a server and was wondering if your software will allow me to add all of libraries and then search them locally? I was also wondering if the the metadata feature allows you to add metadata to preexisting libraries? If you could answer these questions for me, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Hi Anthony,
Thanks so much for checking out Soundly!
Yes, there is no limit on the amount of local files you can index if you subscribe to Soundly. In the Soundly Free version, there is a limit of 2500 local files.
You can add metadata to whatever audio file you have indexed in Soundly, and Soundly will also print this meta data to the wave file itself.
Thanks for your interest in Soundly! We are very happy that you like it!!
Best Christian
Soundly