EMusicTips » Links http://emusictips.com Tips that will help you become a better producer Thu, 20 May 2010 21:34:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Huge, free audio sample library http://emusictips.com/2009/02/huge-free-audio-sample-library/ http://emusictips.com/2009/02/huge-free-audio-sample-library/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:19:35 +0000 admin http://emusictips.com/?p=178 I just had to make a mention of this great resource available for free: Over 8GB of free samples under creative commons license.

Loops, Grooves, Licks, Stings, Hits, Pads, Melodic Motives/Themes/Phrases, Sound-Effects, City and Country Soundscapes…, Motors, Machines, Toys, Guns, Explosions, Swords, Armor, Cars, Jets, Pot & Pans, Acoustic and Synthetic Noises, Acoustic and Electronic Drums, Voices, Western and World Instruments, Real and Human Animals, Industrial and Natural Ambiences, Film and Game Foley, and more, more, more! This huge collection of new and original samples have been donated to Dr. Richard Boulanger @ cSounds.com specifically to support the OLPC developers, students, XO users, and computer and electronic musicians everywhere. They are FREE and are offered under a CC-BY license for downloading and use in your teaching, your demos, your research, your music, your remixes, your songs, your games, your videos, your slideshows, your websites, and your XO activities. Each of the 7000+ samples is 16-bit, WAV, Mono, normalized to -3dB, and provided at 3 sample rates – 44.1K, 22.5K and 16K.

]]> http://emusictips.com/2009/02/huge-free-audio-sample-library/feed/ 5 Free Sound and Sampling Sites http://emusictips.com/2007/10/free-sound-sites/ http://emusictips.com/2007/10/free-sound-sites/#comments Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:24:09 +0000 admin http://emusictips.com/free-sound-sites/ I was recently contacted about some sample web sites and decided to put a little review of the best ones here.

SoundSnap.com has a nice collection of sounds categorized by large icons.
Pros:

  1. Built-in audio player with a picture of the waveform makes browsing through sounds quick and easy.
  2. No signup required
  3. User-contributed sounds
  4. Tag cloud with popular categories of sounds
  5. All samples free for use under license similar to Creative Commons
  6. MP3 and WAV formats

Cons:

  1. None that I can point out so far

Soundsnap.com screenshot

The Freesound Project has been a personal favorite of mine for a while now. It’s got loads of sounds, from high quality field recordings to synthesized ambient soundscapes, they cover the spectrum of sounds, and best of all, they’re all Creative Commons licensed.

Pros:

  1. Built-in audio player with a picture of the waveform makes browsing through sounds quick and easy.
  2. Geotagging capability
  3. User-contributed sounds
  4. Remix tree shows sounds that have been remixed by other users
  5. All samples free for use under Creative Commons
  6. Sample Packs offered for quick acquisition of multiple sounds

Cons:

  1. Free signup required
  2. Design is a little dated

Freesound screenshot

SampleSwap.org is a decent sized forum with user-uploaded sampls packs for download.

Pros:

  1. Interesting collection of loops and samples cateorized by genre.
  2. About 400 sample packs available

Cons:

  1. Made with a typical phBB style forum software, which isn’t necessarily the best format for downloading samples
  2. Downloads only in MP3 format, maximum 320kbps
  3. Registration required.

SampleSwap screenshot

SynthZone’s Sampling Zone is basically a huge list of small and amateur free sample sites.

Pros:

  1. Sheer quantity of links to otherwise hard to find niche sample sites

Cons:

  1. Design looks like it hasn’t changed since 1995.
  2. Ugly logo and ads