What's This Year's Best Sound Effect Library? Pick Your Winner Here

Posted March 6, 2014 by Asbjoern Andersen in New sound effects libraries

Who’s done the best sound effect library? And who’s the #1 sound effect developer?
Those are some of the questions the fine team at The Audio Spotlight are looking to answer when they give out the SAMPLE DEVELOPER AWARDS 2014 on their site.

So make your voice heard – hop on over to The Audio Spotlight and cast your votes.

Vote For Your Favorites Here

Want to hear the candidates?

At the time of writing, many of the nominated SFX libraries – as picked by the voters on The Audio Spotlight – can be found here on A Sound Effect. And below, you can hear what they sound like and learn more about them:

Drones & Mood Sound Effects Around Bridges 1 (Dresden) Play Track 70 sounds included, 30 mins total $35

Around Bridges introduces the inner sound of various bridges.
The steel components of a bridge transmit the vibrations caused by passing cars or pedestrians in a fascinating manner.
So this library contains the sounds of excited beam barriers, noise barriers, expansion gaps and a lot more steel components that bridges are made of.
Also included are takes of footsteps, rain and wind – ordinary noises that get a certain magic when recorded at a handrail.
To round up this library several high quality AB-stereo ambiences of the acoustical surroundings of bridges are included.

Read the story behind the library

Around Bridges features sounds organised into 10 categories:

Ambience Below • Ambience Top • Beam Barriers • Expansion Gaps • Footsteps Handrails • Noise Barriers • Rain • Steel Structures • Wind

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Drones & Mood Sound Effects Doom Drones Play Track 120 sounds included $39

Doom Drones contains more than 3Gb of eerie, doomful, dark, atmospheric field recordings, designed drones and backgrounds. Perfect for something in the realm of a David Lynch film, ambient music production, a horror film, or just to set the mood of a foreboding soundscape.

Each artist made 60 custom loops for a total of 120 loops. With SoundMorph focusing more on field recordings and subtle tonal design and Arovane focusing more on dynamic synthetic textures and sound design. Both perfectly suitable as layers or final assets, depending on their use, Doom Drones is a great addition for anyone wanting to enhance dark ominous moments.

All field recordings were captured with a mid/side stereo setup consisting of 2 Schoeps CMC6 bodies, Schoeps mk5 & mk8 capsules housed in a Rycote AE windshield running into a Sound Devices 722.

61 %

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Drones & Mood Sound Effects Floppy Drives Play Track 655 sounds included $49

The Floppy Drives sound effects library features recordings of seven computer disk drives: two 3.5″ floppy drives, one 5.25″ floppy drive, three Zip drives, and one SuperDisk drive.

All drives were taken apart to access and manipulate the stepper/eject motors to create unique sounds. These range from electronic percussive bleeps and glitchy noises, to electromechanical motor movements.

An Arduino UNO microcontroller board was connected to one of the 3.5″ floppy drives, allowing precise control of the drive’s stepper motor via custom software code. A midi keyboard was interfaced to the system, giving the ability to control the back-and-forth movement of the read/write heads via notes on the keyboard. This essentially turned the drive into an instrument, producing a new set of sounds not existing in the drive’s normal functions.

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Human Sound Effects Human Play Track 400 sounds included $25

We packed all the sonic variety of humanity into 400 sound fx, totalling over 1.6 gigabytes.

The Human sound effects library offers coughing, cooing, puking, sneezing, and sniffles. Laughing, grunting and groans join farts, burps, and belches. There are wolf whistles, cat calls, snoring, and others.

All takes are identified by performer so you can match similar takes. Includes men, women, and a four-month-old baby. Includes over 10 fields of rich Soundminer metadata.

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Sci-Fi Sound Effects Robobiotics Play Track 3600+ sounds included $140

Robobiotics is an exciting new sound effects collection from The Library by Empty Sea. It delivers 3600+ original sound effects for scifi and robots. We’re talking about almost 3 hours of material here.

We spent over a year recording and designing Lasers, Robot Vox, Impacts, Servos, Ratcheting Metal, Ambiances, Transformations, Foley, Vehicle Bys and much much more!

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Firearms Sound Effects Weapon Foley Play Track 708 sounds included $55

This is a collection of all of the mechanical sounds you can get out of handling the specific weapons.

Included are sounds from the Glock 9mm, Walther P22, Smith and Wesson .38 revolver, Heckler and Koch MP4, M4 Carbine and M24 Sniper Weapon System.

All sounds are recorded indoors with both close and medium perspectives, giving you both dry and wet options to speed up your design process.

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Destruction & Impact Sounds Wood Impacts Play Track 1671 sounds included $65

Wood Impacts features a large number of organic-sounding wooden crunches, impacts, metal+wood clashes and wood fiber explosions.

The sounds are organized into 10 different categories such as Hits, Movements, Digs, Cracks, Mangles – giving you lots of great and versatile material for your sonic arsenal!

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Remember, if you want to vote for the candidates, this is where you do it. If you find that a SFX library or developer is missing on their list, you can also suggest your own candidates.

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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:

Cinematic & Trailer Sound Effects CIRCUS Horror Strings Play Track 180 sounds included $7.80

Strident and Demonic

Expand the timbre of your horror violins and cellos with CIRCUS, a sinister sample pack featuring 180 WAV sounds of screeching or high-pitched string noises, perfect for horror music and dark sound design.

Creative Tension

This collection offers a curated selection of screeches, high-tension tremolo, heavy jeté strokes, dark demonic textures, finger patterns, chaotic string elements, clock loops and bow accents.

Haunting and Experimental

Create haunting atmospheres, perfect for horror, thriller or experimental soundtracks. Every element has been designed to unsettle and disturb, blurring the line between music and noise.

80 %

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Ends 1760911199

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Firearms Sound Effects Handguns & Pistols Play Track 75 sounds included $34.99
Stockpile your arsenal of HANDGUNS with this mini pack of cutting edge sounds of modern warfare, designed by our team of AAA-industry veterans and huge fans of games like Gears of War, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Killzone, Command & Conquer, Red Alert and many more.

From PISTOLS, HANDGUNS, and SILENCERS to GUNSHOTS, ZAPS, and BULLET RICOCHETS, quiet WEAPONS HANDLING, this mini pack of sounds will give you everything you need for any HANDGUN-wielding SOLDIERS or AGENTS!

KEY FEATURES:
- Huge variety of big and small weapons, mechanical industrial and modern clean sounds, different types and intensity variants
- Ready to use – requires no editing, labeling or splicing
- Categorized, organized and individually labeled files for maximum use efficiency
- All files are included in Hi-Rez WAV, SD WAV and HQ MP3 formats
GET THE MODERN WARFARE WEAPONS SOUND PACK NOW!
13 %

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Creature Sound Effects STOMPS – Creature Footsteps Play Track 8500+ sounds included
Rated 5.00 out of 5
From: $299

We’re incredibly excited to introduce the ‘STOMPS – Creature Footsteps’ sound effects library – these are footsteps like you’ve never heard them before!

STOMPS is a massive collection of more than 8,500 files to boost your creativity and help you add special footstep sounds to your new project.

The library is organized into 3 categories –
Source, Textures, Design:

In the Source category you’ll find the “best of” several hours worth of our recordings sessions, with more than 7,500 files (with lots of variations) organized into 83 folders. Every single sound is the product of a new recording.

You’ll find the sequences that include: 2 Legs WALKING, 2 Legs RUNNING, 4 Legs GALLOPING, 4 Legs TROTTING, and 4 Legs WALKING.

We used all kinds of weird props to record original, versatile sounds with lot of character, different textures, and in very different frequency ranges.

These sounds form the DNA of your future footsteps. You’ll have lots of different sound colours to play with, ranging from very small and harsh sounds to very low and bold ones, and all the ranges in between.

In the Texture category, you’ll find more than 600 sounds with different textures to help you customize your footsteps. These textures are also a very valuable sonic material that will help you construct lots of varying sound design work.

Finally, we have the Design category. Here you’ll find more than 500 processed sounds created by veteran sound designer Michel Marchant, covering a wide range of characters like Robots, Snow Creatures, Distant Dinosaurs, Rock Golems, Armies, Colossus and many, many more!

Update: Glued version also included

STOMPS now also features a special GLUED version, with the exact same content but with variation files edited together to reduce the number of single files in the collection, and making search through all sounds easier.

With “STOMPS, Creature Footsteps,” you’ll have anything you’ll need to create everything from small creature footsteps to big, out-of-this-world ones.

Select options

Explore the full, unique collection here

Latest sound effects libraries:

Destruction & Impact Sounds Woodpile Chaos Play Track 82 sounds included $10

Woodpile Chaos is a gritty collection of 82 wooden hits, creaks, and scrapes — a wild mix of organic textures born from raw timber and controlled destruction.

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Animal Sound Effects Collections Dark Environment Sounds and Loops Play Track 120 sounds included, 63 mins total $29.99

This is big set of scary sound effects, that will make your game, or any other project performance much more impressive!

Dark, evil ambient loops, ambient noises, scary sounds, heavy rumbles, moans, metal squeaks, scratches, cracks, debris sounds, sub bass sound FX, background white noises, thunder strikes, electric sounds, engine loops, electric sparks and many, many more!…

40 %

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Car Sound Effects Ford Puma 1997 sports car Play Track 206 sounds included, 48 mins total $65

All files are recorded 32bit, 192 kHz, with RØDE NTG1, Line Audio Omni1 and FEL Clippy XLR EM272 microphones, Sound Devices MixPre-6 II recorder. Library contains wav files of driving, interior and exterior foley, mechanical and electrical sounds. It is only available in UCS.

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Ambisonic Sound Effects Red Deer Play Track 13+ sounds included $80

A small collection of High quality, close up red deer recordings.

Red Deer Roars and Moans and other vocalisations from different habitats. (mountainous areas and forest)

Recorded over the years during the rutting season, varying distances but mostly up close and face to face with this loud and scary mammal.

20 %

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Game Audio Packs - Game Sound Effects Libraries Ultimate UI Click & Select SFX Bundle Play Track 1054 sounds included, 9 mins total $60
Take full control of your interface sound design with the Ultimate UI Click & Select SFX Bundle — a massive collection of 1,054 professional-grade UI sound effects across seven expertly crafted libraries by RawAmbience.

From crisp button clicks and smooth menu transitions to RPG-style selects, denies, and toggles, this all-in-one bundle gives you everything needed to design intuitive and immersive UI audio for games, apps, web, or interactive media.

Packs included:
Click and Select UI RPG SFX
Click And Select UI RPG SFX 2
Click Menu Sound Effects
Click Menu Sound Effects 2
Click Sound Effects
Essential Menu Click Sounds
Essential Menu Select Sounds

Your complete UI sound design toolkit.

The Ultimate UI Click & Select SFX Bundle delivers a polished collection of responsive interface sounds, including:
- Click & Select UI RPG SFX 1 & 2 – Over 456 sounds tailored for RPG and interactive UI: selects, hovers, alerts, cancels, access-denied, and more.
- Click Menu Sound Effects 1 & 2 – 281 high-quality menu interaction sounds for toggles, clicks, opens, closes, and confirmations.
- Click Sound Effects – 110 versatile UI clicks designed for modern app and game interfaces.
- Essential Menu Click Sounds – 107 precise and minimal click sounds, ideal for clean, modern UIs.
- Essential Menu Select Sounds – 100 select-focused sound effects, delivering clean, modern UI feedback for toggles, confirms, menu navigation, and precise user selections.
Perfect For:
- Game menus and HUDs (RPGs, mobile, indie, AAA)
- Web and app UI feedback
- Interactive experiences (VR, AR, touchscreen)
- UI prototyping and UX testing
- Accessibility-focused sound design
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