Symphonic Ambiences: How Michael O' Connor Made His Majestic Modular Ambience Sound Effects Library

In this brand new A Sound Effect podcast episode, sound designer and recordist Michael O' Connor takes you behind Symphonic Ambiences, an impressive modular sound effects library that gives you 41 layered scenes - allowing you to control each layer for maximum customization. With the sound library featuring a staggering 242 isolated layers and 15+ hours of recordings, creating it was an ambitious and overwhelming project. Here's how he did it:

Interview by Jennifer Walden, hosted by Asbjoern Andersen

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Here’s what’s in this episode (with starting times):

0:00 Introduction and highlight of new sound libraries.

03:05 How Michael O’ Connor made the majestic Symphonic Ambiences modular sound effects library

53:12 Find more great podcasts about sound from our friends in the Audio Podcast Alliance

Hear the episode below:

Explore the full Symphonic Ambiences Vol 1 sound effects library below:

Environments & Ambiences Symphonic Ambiences: Volume 1 Play Track 283 sounds included, 1092 mins total
Rated 5.00 out of 5
$150

The world’s first modular ambience library. Themes include cities, suburbs, public places, fictional locations, and more.

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More sound effects libraries highlighted in this episode:

Animal Sound Effects Antarctic Soundscapes Play Track 415 sounds included $50
A unique collection featuring 415 originally recorded sounds from Earth’s coldest continent.

From the majestic Emperor Penguins to the thunderous Southern Elephant Seals, the Icebreaker ship, and the serene Antarctic ambiences, this pack offers a diverse array of wild and untamed sounds.

Four categories are inside:
- Animals (258 sounds)
- Ice Breaker Ship (68 sounds)
- Antarctic Ambiences (50 sounds)
- Sea Ice Sounds (39 sounds)
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Cinematic & Trailer Sound Effects Cosmos Play Track 1476 sounds included $69.99

Craft a unique sonic universe with Cosmos, our ultimate futuristic and neo noir sci-fi sound effects collection, which will elevate your productions to the next level.

Our fully unique cosmic collection has everything you require and the flexibility you demand. With carefully crafted source and designed sound effects, you are ready to infuse your next project with a distinctive noir sci-fi allure.

SUPERCHARGE YOUR PRODUCTIONS
With Cosmos, the possibilities are endless. Whether you’re designing spacecraft fly-bys, impactful moments for a trailer, engine pass-bys, cutting-edge interface sounds or extraordinary transitions, our collection provides you with the perfect toolkit to captivate your audience and transport them to realms beyond imagination.

CURATION APPLIED
Our top priority is always to deliver an exceptional experience to our end users. To achieve this, we have invested considerable time and effort into perfecting the audio content, customizing it to meet your specific production needs. Additionally, we follow rigorous editing protocols to guarantee seamless performance in every possible use-case scenario.

MULTIPLE VARIATIONS
We made many versions of each sound to ensure versatility and variety in sound programming. Each source and designed sound effect contains multiple variations. This approach allows us to provide you with either various styles or durations of a single sound within a single file, instead of multiple files.

UCS COMPLIANT AND DETAILED METADATA EMBEDDED
Cosmos is fully universal category system (UCS) compliant. Additionally, to optimize your workflow and enhance productivity, our audio files are equipped with detailed metadata, allowing you to locate and access the sounds you require easily. Leading audio management software such as Soundminer and BaseHead are fully equipped to read and process the metadata, providing an intuitive and seamless user experience.

WHAT’S INSIDE

764 Designed Sounds • 712 Source Sounds • 260 Designed – Impacts (45 Files) • 76 Designed – Risers (19 files) • 376 Designed – Whooshes (72 files) • 8 Source – Drones (5 files) • 141 Source – Impacts (22 files) • 251 Source – Synths (53 files) • 74 Source – Textures (15 files) • 88 Source – User Interface Sounds (14 files) • 202 Source – Whooshes (31 files)

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Vehicle Sound Effects Kaput Play Track 81+ sounds included $75

Presenting the most malfunctioning, dirty old gritty sounding engine failure library out there

Featuring a staggering 81 files with numerous takes in most tracks, the Kaput sound effects library will cover the bases of almost any broken false starting engine scene one can imagine.

I can honestly say, that finding the vehicles and tools for this library, has been among the most challenging I have come by. Old and broken cars and trucks are hard to come by these days. Most cars are obviously either driving and dont have start problems, and many of the rest just wont start at all.

Just as rare are broken petrol powered tools, which usually fit the latter category of not working at all.

Still, with amazing recording help from recordist Michal Fojcik Soundmind Poland, and just as amazing help from recordist Erik Watland from Norway, the Kaput sound effects library is featuring no less then

24 different cars, trucks, moped and motorcycles

1 boat engine

A few weird sounding power generators and water pump motors

Back firing exhausts

Petrol powered garden tools, chain saws, and hedge trimmers

Brutal construction machines

From old eastern european trucks, vintage US V8 muscle trucks, classic scandinavian cars, and more modern diesel and petrol engines to funny sputtering dying petrol power tools.

There is even a few more recording sessions planned, that just didn’t make the deadline for the first batch of sounds in this library (buying a copy of this first of sounds, will of course make any future sounds added to the library free of charge).

KAPUT is 81 stereo and mono files, 96/24. 1,6 gb big, all UCS ready!

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Ambisonic Sound Effects Room Tone Play Track 60 sounds included, 311 mins total From: $109

Sound Tailor Effects Library enters the void with its 3rd release:

60 sounds, 5+ hours of rich and deep room tones, with a variety of sizes and environments that will cover most of sound editors needs. From a quiet residential bedroom to an reverberant inactive hospital hall, a ventilated office space, or a noisy basement, we carefully chose the right place at the right time, to get the best from those empty spaces.

We’ve recorded with a combination of 7 low noise microphones, 1 ambisonic microphone and 1 geophone, dispatched on a wide rig, to get the best spatial impression, allowing us to deliver a true 7.1.2 format, plus ambisonic, 5.1 and 2.1 versions. The sub channel, provided by the geophone and its low frequency response, has been a shocking surprise for us, and is a real colorful and creative addition.

You can choose between several spatial format combinations, to suit your needs. All versions includes a stereo mixdown, and all files are loopable.

Sound Tailor’s Room Tones is UCS compliant, and delivered in high resolution 96kHz/24 Bits.

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