Asbjoern Andersen

Posted by Asbjoern Andersen in Sound design guides • 5 Comments


What’s the fastest, easiest way to get started using Soundly to add, find, and transfer sound effects into your projects?

This post is a quick-start guide to help you begin searching and using your sound library in minutes. It focuses on the broad strokes to complete tasks easily and swiftly. Future articles will share extra features, options, and detailed how-to guides.

Written by Paul Virostek.
Please share:
 

The Soundly How-To Series:

This is the second part in the Soundly series by SFX guru Paul Virostek – here are the other ones:

1. An introduction to Soundly
3. How to Organize Sound Libraries with Soundly
4. How to Find and Use Sound FX Clips with Soundly
5. 5 Killer Features in Soundly

If you want to take Soundly 2 for a spin, download it for free for Windows here, and Mac here.

Installing Soundly

Getting started with Soundly is easy. First, let’s begin by downloading the Soundly app to your computer.

MacOS

Soundly supports MacOS 10.6.8 and later.

  1. Visit www.getsoundly.com.
  2. Click the Apple icon beneath the “download for free” text. This will begin downloading the installation app to your default download location on computer.
  3. Go to your default download location.
  4. Double click Soundly.dmg. A new window will open.
  5. Drag and drop the Soundly icon to the Applications folder.
  6. Go the Applications folder.
  7. Double click the Soundly icon. This will launch Soundly.

Windows

Soundly supports Windows XP and later.

  1. Visit www.getsoundly.com.
  2. Click the Windows icon beneath the “download for free” text. This will begin downloading the installation app to your default download location on computer.
  3. Go to your default download location.
  4. Open Soundly-setup.exe.
  5. Follow the setup wizard and select the destination folder for Soundly.
  6. Go to destination folder for Soundly.
  7. Double click the Soundly icon.

Creating a Soundly Account

Soundly isn’t burdened by copy protection schemes. Instead, using the app requires only a simple email account. As soon as you launch Soundly you will be asked to create an account.

  1. Open Soundly.
  2. Click Register.

  3. Type your email and create a password.
  4. Click the button next to “I have read and agreed to the EULA.”
  5. Click Select Subscription. A new page will appear.
  6. Choose your subscription from the three options: Free, 24hr Pass or Pro Monthly.

    If you have selected a subscription with fee (24hr Pass or Pro Monthly):

    1. Fill out your Billing details.

    2. Click Payment.
    3. Fill out your credit or debit card information.
    4. Click Purchase.

Note: if you have selected Pro Monthly, a monthly fee ($14.99) will be charged to your credit or debit card.

An Introduction to the Soundly Workspace

Once you have created an account, the main Soundly workspace will appear. This is where you will spend most of your time using Soundly.

(There are other areas, such as the Store, News, and Settings pages, which will be discussed in later posts.)


Sound libraries and playlists are shown in the left pane.

This area is used to add and remove sound libraries and folders of sounds, and gather them in playlists or “Starred” favourite lists.

This area is a way to see entire sound collections, clip libraries, and global groups of sounds.

Search results are displayed in the large pane to the right. This shows sounds in a chart view that displays the name, description, and sound stats.

The bottom area presents a selected sound’s waveform, complete with play/stop and rewind transport controls, volume, speed, and selected sound file stats.

The window can also be organized in “Dock-Mode.” This presents all panes organized left-to-right at the base of the OS desktop. This is a helpful way of saving screen space. It is also a valuable way to allow Soundly and editing apps to work side-by-side.
 

Adding Sound Libraries to Soundly

The easiest way to add sound libraries to Soundly is to simply drag and drop them on the main Soundly window.

  1. Select a folder of sound files from a hard drive.
  2. Drag and drop the folder onto the main Soundly browsing window. A new window will appear.

  3. Release the folder on the Local area of the window. A new window will appear.
  4. Click Import. The files will be indexed and added.

That’s it! The files will be added to Soundly. You can find them by clicking the arrow to the left of Local in the left pane, then clicking the name of the sound library. This will display all sounds from that folder.

Finding Sound FX in Soundly

How can you find the clips you need? The easiest way to find sound fx is:

  1. Click the white field next to the magnifying glass in the upper left of the main window.
  2. Type keywords for the sound you want to find.
  3. Press the return key. Results will be displayed in the right pane.

 

Auditioning Sound Clips in Soundly

Soundly has powerful tools to play and manipulate clips. The simplest way to listen to clips is to click on a row in the search results. The sound will begin playing immediately. Press spacebar to stop and restart playback.

Soundly also allows playback of a portion of a sound. Simply drag the mouse cursor across an area of the sound waveform. This will highlight the area that will be played. Press spacebar to begin playback of just this section of the whole sound clip.
 

Transferring Sound

Once you have found a clip you like, you can transfer it to other apps, such as video editing apps, desktop folders, or sound editing apps. Here’s how:

  1. Select the sound you want in the right pane of the search results.
  2. Select the part of the sound you want to transfer.
    • To transfer the whole sound, type CMD/CTRL+a to select it all.
    • To transfer part of a sound, drag across a portion of the sound to highlight the area you’d like to transfer.
  3. Click and hold the selected area.

  4. Drag the selection into the destination app or another folder. The sound or clip will be copied and placed in the app or folder.

And that’s it! Those are the basics to begin using Soundly to add and find sounds and transfer and use them in other apps.

Stay tuned for future articles that explore these and other features in detail.

Try Soundly 2 for free:

If you want to take Soundly 2 for a spin, download it for free
for Windows here, and Mac here.
 

Please share this:


 


 
 
THE WORLD’S EASIEST WAY TO GET INDEPENDENT SOUND EFFECTS:
 
A Sound Effect gives you easy access to an absolutely huge sound effects catalog from a myriad of independent sound creators, all covered by one license agreement - a few highlights:

  •
    Whoosh Sound Effects Swish and Flick Play Track 1992 sounds included $60

    Swish and Flick is a sound pack featuring a collection of high-quality whooshes, designed whooshes, whoosh source, and tonal content.
    This pack features 1992 sounds across 138 .wav files (20 Designed, 118 Source) exported at 192kHz/24bit. Aimed at professional sound designers and editors looking for clean, mastered, ready to use assets with plenty of variation for game audio or linear media.
    Recorded on the SD 788T with Schoeps MK 4 & 8 along with the CMD42 digital preamplifiers, as well as an MKH 8040 XY pair (among others), and meticulously cleaned up in iZotope RX while persevering optimal signal to noise and frequency content.
    Detailed UCS meta data is embedded.
    Thanks for taking a listen!

    20 %
    OFF
    Add to cart
  • Uncategorized Overkill – Gore And Splatter Play Track 3390 sounds included, 160 mins total $112.49

    Unleash pure audio carnage with OVERKILL – a brutally detailed 5.7 GB sound library featuring 3390 hyperreal gore sound effects across 607 files. Whether you’re designing subtle, skin-crawling tension or full-blown splatter mayhem, Overkill gives you the raw, visceral tools to cover the entire spectrum of gore – from nuanced realism to over-the-top brutality.

     

    DESIGN KIT (360 Sounds – 60 Files)

    A collection of brutally crafted, drag-and-drop sound effects, organized into game-ready actions and categories.

    • Stab: Precise, piercing attacks with bladed weapons like knives, daggers, and swords.
    • Hit: Brutal strikes using blades such as machetes, katanas, and sabres.
    • Cut: Clean or messy slices delivered by weapons like katanas, knives, machetes, and sabres.
    • Slam: Heavy, crushing blows with blunt weapons like warhammers, morning stars, flails, crowbars – and even axes used with brute force.
    • Crush: Full-on head or body crushes – whatever happens when too much pressure turns flesh and bone into pulp.
    • Explode: Full-on body explosions – when guts, bones, and blood violently erupt in every direction at once.

    All of these categories are featured in both a realistic, organic style and an exaggerated, highly stylized, over-the-top version.

    In addition the Design Kit features Projectile Impacts from Guns, Shotguns and Arrows.

     

    BUILDING BLOCKS (384 Sounds – 64 Files)

    The goal behind our Building Blocks is to provide pre-designed sound layers that streamline your workflow. We’ve created straightforward, easy-to-use categories that let you quickly build new sounds or enhance your own designs.

    All following categories are available in both Wet and Dry:

    • Impact: Ideal as punchy sweeteners for heavy weapon hits and brutal moments.
    • Whoosh: Quick, clean lead-ins to enhance any kind of gore sound.
    • Crack: Perfect for highlighting the snap of shattered bones and broken bodies.
    • Tail: Drag and drop to add lingering, gruesome sustain to your gore effects.

     

    CONSTRUCTION KIT (2653 Sounds – 483 Files)

    For our Construction Kit, we wanted to give you the best of both worlds to meet (or should we say meat) all your needs. You’ll get cleaned raw recordings for full flexibility in your own processing, plus pre-processed and layered sounds to spark creativity, fuel inspiration, and give you everything you need for hyperrealistic gore design.

    Our Construction Kit includes:

    • Blood: Vile drips, juicy splatters, and bone-chilling squeezes.
    • Gut: Rich with drops, impacts, squishes, and visceral movement.
    • Flesh: Brutal impacts, rips, strains, and movements.
    • Bone: Crisp breaks and sharp snaps.
    • Texture: Hyperrealistic wet and dry constant textures.
    • Weapon: Resonant metal slices, stabs, and hits, as well as whooshes for weapon hits and ricochets.
    25 %
    OFF
    Add to cart
  • Cinematic & Trailer Sound Effects Superheroes – Speed & Strength Play Track 3269 sounds included From: $135 From: $108

    UNLEASH THE SOUND OF UNSTOPPABLE POWER

    SUPERHEROES – SPEED & STRENGTH is the definitive superhero sound effects collection, capturing the raw intensity, high-speed movements, and groundbreaking impacts of cinematic action.

    Crafted for professionals, it delivers superhuman momentum and powerful action sounds ideal for film, trailers, AAA games, and post-production. Every superhero sound is engineered for precision, realism, and relentless cinematic energy.

    SUPERHEROES - SPEED & STRENGTH | Sound Effects | Trailer

    Pure Superhero Sound

    Go beyond generic action sound effects with the first dedicated superhero sound effects library. Every superhero sound is meticulously crafted to enhance speed, strength, and impact, delivering energetic whooshes and crushing hits that feel grounded yet extraordinary.

    Hybrid Sound Design Mastery

    Achieve a perfect balance of superhero energy and real-world authenticity. Expertly processed organic recordings, creating dynamic action sounds ideal for high-stakes cinematic scenes, impactful trailers, and immersive gaming experiences.

    Perfect for Professional Sound Designers
    Whether working on blockbuster films, action-packed trailers, or AAA game titles, SUPERHEROES – SPEED & STRENGTH is a professional-grade toolkit built for sound designers who demand powerful, cinematic, and impactful sound design at the highest quality.


    INCLUDED SOUNDS – KEYWORDS
    ABILITIES, AIR, BURST, COLLISION, DASH, EXPLOSION, FIGHTING PUNCH, FIGHTING WHOOSH, FLASH, FLIGHT LAND, FLIGHT SONIC BOOM, FLIGHT TAKE OFF, FLUTTER, HYPER SPEED, IMPACT, KNOCKOUT, LIGHTNING FAST, MOTION, MOVEMENT, ORGANIC ENERGY, PARTICLES, POWER PUNCH, SPRINT, WHOOSH, ZAP
    20 %
    OFF
    20 %
    OFF
    20 %
    OFF
    20 %
    OFF
    Select options
Explore the full, unique collection here
Latest sound effects libraries:
 
  • Cinematic & Trailer Sound Effects Superheroes – Speed & Strength Play Track 3269 sounds included From: $135 From: $108

    UNLEASH THE SOUND OF UNSTOPPABLE POWER

    SUPERHEROES – SPEED & STRENGTH is the definitive superhero sound effects collection, capturing the raw intensity, high-speed movements, and groundbreaking impacts of cinematic action.

    Crafted for professionals, it delivers superhuman momentum and powerful action sounds ideal for film, trailers, AAA games, and post-production. Every superhero sound is engineered for precision, realism, and relentless cinematic energy.

    SUPERHEROES - SPEED & STRENGTH | Sound Effects | Trailer

    Pure Superhero Sound

    Go beyond generic action sound effects with the first dedicated superhero sound effects library. Every superhero sound is meticulously crafted to enhance speed, strength, and impact, delivering energetic whooshes and crushing hits that feel grounded yet extraordinary.

    Hybrid Sound Design Mastery

    Achieve a perfect balance of superhero energy and real-world authenticity. Expertly processed organic recordings, creating dynamic action sounds ideal for high-stakes cinematic scenes, impactful trailers, and immersive gaming experiences.

    Perfect for Professional Sound Designers
    Whether working on blockbuster films, action-packed trailers, or AAA game titles, SUPERHEROES – SPEED & STRENGTH is a professional-grade toolkit built for sound designers who demand powerful, cinematic, and impactful sound design at the highest quality.


    INCLUDED SOUNDS – KEYWORDS
    ABILITIES, AIR, BURST, COLLISION, DASH, EXPLOSION, FIGHTING PUNCH, FIGHTING WHOOSH, FLASH, FLIGHT LAND, FLIGHT SONIC BOOM, FLIGHT TAKE OFF, FLUTTER, HYPER SPEED, IMPACT, KNOCKOUT, LIGHTNING FAST, MOTION, MOVEMENT, ORGANIC ENERGY, PARTICLES, POWER PUNCH, SPRINT, WHOOSH, ZAP
    20 %
    OFF
    20 %
    OFF
    20 %
    OFF
    20 %
    OFF
    Select options
  • Uncategorized Overkill – Gore And Splatter Play Track 3390 sounds included, 160 mins total $112.49

    Unleash pure audio carnage with OVERKILL – a brutally detailed 5.7 GB sound library featuring 3390 hyperreal gore sound effects across 607 files. Whether you’re designing subtle, skin-crawling tension or full-blown splatter mayhem, Overkill gives you the raw, visceral tools to cover the entire spectrum of gore – from nuanced realism to over-the-top brutality.

     

    DESIGN KIT (360 Sounds – 60 Files)

    A collection of brutally crafted, drag-and-drop sound effects, organized into game-ready actions and categories.

    • Stab: Precise, piercing attacks with bladed weapons like knives, daggers, and swords.
    • Hit: Brutal strikes using blades such as machetes, katanas, and sabres.
    • Cut: Clean or messy slices delivered by weapons like katanas, knives, machetes, and sabres.
    • Slam: Heavy, crushing blows with blunt weapons like warhammers, morning stars, flails, crowbars – and even axes used with brute force.
    • Crush: Full-on head or body crushes – whatever happens when too much pressure turns flesh and bone into pulp.
    • Explode: Full-on body explosions – when guts, bones, and blood violently erupt in every direction at once.

    All of these categories are featured in both a realistic, organic style and an exaggerated, highly stylized, over-the-top version.

    In addition the Design Kit features Projectile Impacts from Guns, Shotguns and Arrows.

     

    BUILDING BLOCKS (384 Sounds – 64 Files)

    The goal behind our Building Blocks is to provide pre-designed sound layers that streamline your workflow. We’ve created straightforward, easy-to-use categories that let you quickly build new sounds or enhance your own designs.

    All following categories are available in both Wet and Dry:

    • Impact: Ideal as punchy sweeteners for heavy weapon hits and brutal moments.
    • Whoosh: Quick, clean lead-ins to enhance any kind of gore sound.
    • Crack: Perfect for highlighting the snap of shattered bones and broken bodies.
    • Tail: Drag and drop to add lingering, gruesome sustain to your gore effects.

     

    CONSTRUCTION KIT (2653 Sounds – 483 Files)

    For our Construction Kit, we wanted to give you the best of both worlds to meet (or should we say meat) all your needs. You’ll get cleaned raw recordings for full flexibility in your own processing, plus pre-processed and layered sounds to spark creativity, fuel inspiration, and give you everything you need for hyperrealistic gore design.

    Our Construction Kit includes:

    • Blood: Vile drips, juicy splatters, and bone-chilling squeezes.
    • Gut: Rich with drops, impacts, squishes, and visceral movement.
    • Flesh: Brutal impacts, rips, strains, and movements.
    • Bone: Crisp breaks and sharp snaps.
    • Texture: Hyperrealistic wet and dry constant textures.
    • Weapon: Resonant metal slices, stabs, and hits, as well as whooshes for weapon hits and ricochets.
    25 %
    OFF
    Add to cart
  • Bundles MASTERGUN – NSV Play Track 872 sounds included $125

    The Master Gun NSV Sound Effects library is recorded using a large array of various microphone configurations, we recorded shots from several distances in an open shooting range in the Nevada Desert.

    Raw Recordings

    Our raw shots features a total of 26 channels including 12 Stereo and 2 mono sources. All of our close and mid spaced pair Microphone options can be used as two independent mono microphones. The right side of every spaced pair will have more Mech than its left side counterpart.
    Every single gun has been recorded using the same gain settings on the same recorders, and we have level matched each microphone option between the same calibers so your 50ft microphones will be the same or similar across all libraries that share the same calibers. This makes mixing large amounts of weapons easier as the loudness and character of each gun is predictable.

    Our foley features a total of 4 audio channels with 1 Stereo and 2 mono sources, including the Sanken CO-100k which captures frequencies above 100kHz for extreme pitch shifting workflows.

    Designed Mixes

    Created from the ground up we’ve designed a collection of game-ready mixes for your next project. If you are creating your own custom weapons system and would like to use our designed mixes in your project, you can use our no-tail options which are our realistic designed mixes without our tail layers. Just drag, and drop.

    UCS compatible metadata embedded

    All files contain extensive metadata to provide you with the fastest and easiest workflow possible. Metadata can be read and processed by audio management tools. Some digital audio workstations feature an included search tool that can also read embedded metadata.

    Add to cart
  • Whoosh Sound Effects Swish and Flick Play Track 1992 sounds included $60

    Swish and Flick is a sound pack featuring a collection of high-quality whooshes, designed whooshes, whoosh source, and tonal content.
    This pack features 1992 sounds across 138 .wav files (20 Designed, 118 Source) exported at 192kHz/24bit. Aimed at professional sound designers and editors looking for clean, mastered, ready to use assets with plenty of variation for game audio or linear media.
    Recorded on the SD 788T with Schoeps MK 4 & 8 along with the CMD42 digital preamplifiers, as well as an MKH 8040 XY pair (among others), and meticulously cleaned up in iZotope RX while persevering optimal signal to noise and frequency content.
    Detailed UCS meta data is embedded.
    Thanks for taking a listen!

    20 %
    OFF
    Add to cart
  • Bundles MASTERGUN – HK21E Play Track 1521 sounds included $60

    The Master Gun HK21E Sound Effects library is recorded using a large array of various microphone configurations, we recorded shots from several distances in an open shooting range in the Nevada Desert.

    Raw Recordings

    Our raw shots features a total of 28 channels including 13 Stereo and 2 mono sources. All of our close and mid spaced pair Microphone options can be used as two independent mono microphones. The right side of every spaced pair will have more Mech than its left side counterpart.
    Every single gun has been recorded using the same gain settings on the same recorders, and we have level matched each microphone option between the same calibers so your 50ft microphones will be the same or similar across all libraries that share the same calibers. This makes mixing large amounts of weapons easier as the loudness and character of each gun is predictable.

    Our foley features a total of 4 audio channels with 1 Stereo and 2 mono sources, including the Sanken CO-100k which captures frequencies above 100kHz for extreme pitch shifting workflows.

    Designed Mixes

    Created from the ground up we’ve designed a collection of game-ready mixes for your next project. If you are creating your own custom weapons system and would like to use our designed mixes in your project, you can use our no-tail options which are our realistic designed mixes without our tail layers. Just drag, and drop.

    UCS compatible metadata embedded

    All files contain extensive metadata to provide you with the fastest and easiest workflow possible. Metadata can be read and processed by audio management tools. Some digital audio workstations feature an included search tool that can also read embedded metadata.

    Add to cart

   

5 thoughts on “The Soundly Quick-Start Guide”

  1. Hi there! I really appreciate this guide, but I have a question – where can I find bins? I noticed you mentioned those in your previous intro guide to Soundly, and the Soundly FAQ also references pressing the ‘b’ key to send a clip to a bin, but so far, it doesn’t seem to work for me (for reference, I’m using the Pro/subscription version)

    To elaborate, I really like using the drag-and-drop functionality with Reaper – however, when right-clicking and viewing the file destination, it’s referencing the asset in the library, rather than an aliased copy. I’m thus concerned about the possibility of destructive editing. As a result, I’ve been manually drag-dropping each sound into a folder, then drag-dropping the assets from that folder into Reaper. I’m looking to streamline that process by tagging and exporting clips en-masse. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

    Otherwise, I’m enjoying the software – the libraries are nice and the UI is very user-friendly. Thanks for your time!

    Reply

  2. Hi Jonathan, Peder from Soundly here.
    Thank you very much for your nice comment!

    I think I’ve got a very good solution to streamline your workflow, but first I’ll answer your bin question.

    The “bin” is Pro Tools terminology, and refers to something you’d find in that app, not in Soundly. Basically, there are three ways to send files to Pro Tools – drag to the app, spot to the playhead timeline in the actual edit tracks, or just add it to the list of files Pro Tools collects and users may draw from. This last item is what’s know as the “bin” – Soundly can send selected files directly to this location in Pro Tools. As such, it’s not applicable to Reaper users.

    I believe you can drag files straight into Reaper if Reaper is set to copy files on import. In “Media->copy imported media to project media directory”. Does that work?
    We are working on tighter integration with Reaper, so you’ll have more transfer options in the future, and you can always get in touch with us on mail@getsoundly.com if you have any questions!

    Thanks!

    Reply

  3. Hi Peder, thanks so much for your reply!

    The drag and drop functionality works great with Reaper – I’ll try to tweak the import settings, and should be good for now. If you’re able to implement a spot to track function with Reaper in the future, that would be awesome, though!

    To clarify re: bin, I meant “taglist,” and was using the wrong term. I.e. I was looking for a way of tagging multiple assets at once, and then transferring them over in bulk with a keystroke rather than drag-dropping. Thank you for the term clarification.

    Looking forward to seeing what you all come up with next!

    Reply

  4. Hi Peder, from Canada. I have just signed up and have an account but there seems to be no simple way to login. I find myself downloading the program to get back in. Can you please direct me to what I hope will be an simpler way to login and out. Thanks in advance John.

    Reply

    • Hi John, I’m not Peder, but quick question: Since it’s installed on your computer, isn’t there a Soundly icon available on your desktop or in a start menu or similar? If so, try clicking that and I’d guess it’d log you in automatically.

      Reply

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