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[BrixxieBee]

Anyone got any ideas where I can find sound effects? Free ones for sure. Sometimes digging through freesound can be fruitless and if anyone knows any good jumping off points, be sure to share!

[jdmunro]

If you are looking for some retro styled sounds there is a great little tool called sfxr: http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html

You can generate your own using it. I don't know where it came from but it rules

[BrixxieBee]

I just found that yesterday by accident. It's really awesome. Thanks!

[hyperduck]

freesound.org and soundsnap.com might help, soundsnap aint free though

[Kadoba]

Sound Bible is good.

[Falmil]

If you ask your computer nicely with a microphone, it will give you some.

[aeiowu]

http://sound-effects-library.com/ has a ridiculously huge selection. it's a bit more expensive relatively speaking, but on the whole it's still pretty cheap.

also, sfxr++ for lo-fi stuff for sure (check out cfxr if you're running OSX).

[John Nesky]

Since this thread is still going, I'll do a little self promotion.

All of my assemblee sound effects, which are free for commercial use, were made with my in-progress synthesizer which you can download for Macs here. A Windows version is planned. Questions are welcome.

It's a little more organic than SFXR's chip noises, but it requires more effort than just pressing a "Random" button until you like what you hear.  

Sadly I have had no time to work on it recently.  

[hyperduck]

Nesky ftw.

[aeiowu]

damn John, i love that tool. any chance of making it a little more "live performance" friendly? nonetheless i'll get a lot of use out of that i think. 

[Chris Whitman]

I live in a recording studio with high quality microphones, so if anyone needs something in particular that's relatively easy to foley, I don't mind lending a hand (although probably if you have an entire laundry list of sounds, you gots to pay).

The other day I was making steam escape noises by putting things over my face and breathing, and I almost passed out a couple of times.

I'm really dedicated.

[John Nesky]

@aeiowu: You can play notes with your computer keyboard. They're arranged like the Thummer. And if you plug in a MIDI controller or a MIDI emulator before you run the synthesizer, you can play notes with that too. Although I honestly would like to make the program friendly to people who have no experience performing music, so I do plan to make the interface primarily mouse-oriented.

Also if you can come up with a better name than "nuzynth", please let me know! I picked the name because it didn't have any hits on google, but I don't actually like it.  

EDIT: Also if you make any cool instruments that you want to share that's awesome too! I need better brass and strings...

[BrixxieBee]

Synthesized brass is notoriously cheesy sounding. But your program sounds cool. I can't wait for a Windows version. What language is it in? Maybe I can lend a hand making a version that will compile for Windows.

[John Nesky]

My synthesizer is in C++, and it makes use of a bunch of cross platform libraries. I actually already made a proof-of-concept build for Windows in one weekend using MinGW, but it was pretty buggy and I didn't want to maintain it while I was still designing the Mac version. But the part that was the most buggy was the GUI library. I'm using wxWidgets, and apparently it just doesn't work as well under Windows.

I don't know anything about making GUIs for Windows, so that might be a good thing to help out with, but probably not until the code is a little more stable.

[beverett]

I actually just found this today: http://www.stephanschutze.com/index.html

It's a humongous library of free sounds - the only limit is that you can't download more than 50 sounds a day.

[David Pittman]

I actually just found this today: http://www.stephanschutze.com/index.html

It's a humongous library of free sounds - the only limit is that you can't download more than 50 sounds a day.

This is pretty sweet, thanks for sharing! Nice selection of footsteps. Definitely lots of stuff in here I can use for my game. And 50 sounds a day is a reasonable limit, I think, considering you can audition as many as you want.

I've been looking for a good sound library for a while. I don't mind spending a bit of money, but if I'm going to pay, I'd rather purchase a whole library and peruse it at my leisure than have to pick and choose sounds in advance and make lots of small purchases. In fact, I'd buy this guy's library just to avoid the daily limit (and custom librarian tool, guh) but it's a little outside my budget.

I've used Freesound in the past, but I'm routinely disappointed with the quality and selection on there. I'm checking out SoundSnap for the first time now, and it seems like a more robust library--and I don't mind spending a bit for sounds I don't have to clean up as much. Also, doing individual Creative Commons credits for each sound is a huge pain for a project of any real scope--I'd probably just end up crediting every sound I downloaded regardless of whether I actually ended up using it. And the CC Sampling+ license Freesound uses is pretty ambiguous with regard to the use of their sounds in games and film; that license is primarily for sampling music for use in other songs, and seems a poor choice for a sound effects library.

[feeblethemighty]

SFXR is pretty much my go to tool. 

But i just found the AS3-SFXR on a different part of these forums and thought i'd repost it here.  It's a Flash port of SFXR and has a few added bonuses.  Namely, being able to go back to previously generated sounds.   So, you never have to worry about trying to recreate that awesome sound you found randomly. 

[s0]

SuperCollider is one of the most powerful software synthesizers (and music creation systems) in existence. The drawback is that some decent DSP knowledge is required in order to make anything substantial with it and it's a programming language you have to learn, though I suppose if you're just looking to synthesize some sound effects it shouldn't be too hard.

[Taiko]

I'll second freesound.  It's an entire community of people who use both make sounds electronically and run around with tape recorders getting sound effects "in the wild."  I've found great samples for general background noise, fires, explosions, and more.