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We’ve reached 29,000 sound effects

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Today we uploaded 62 new free sound effects exclusively for Gold members (check them out here) which brings the total number of sound effects at zapsplat.com to just over 29,000. That’s a mighty achievement, considering just three years ago we started with only 6,000 sounds. But are we stopping there? No way. In fact we estimate we will hit 30,000 sounds within 2 to 3 weeks. When we do reach the 30,000 mark, we’ll be running a fantastic free giveaway of a pack of 100 pro sounds courtesy of Audio Hero. This pack will offer a range of very useful sounds for you all, so watch this space for more information. I also just want to thank Justin McLeod, our new member of the team here at zapsplat.co... »

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120 new free sound effects just added

New Free SFX Releases

We are rapidly approaching 30,000 free sound effects and with many new free sounds being added this week, as well as a new contributor or two (watch this space for details), it should be around a couple of weeks until we hit that number. Today I added 120 new free sound effects that include everything from alien chatter to pears, and the two are bizarrely linked as you’ll find out below… Recording pears This wasn’t the most challenging recording session I have ever had. In fact this was a request that came through via email and with it being such a simple request, I managed to get these recorded the same day. One of our members was trying to find the sound of a shiny pear squeaking, as if so... »

Sneakers

128 new free sound effects: footsteps, glass bottles, jars, power tools and more

New Free SFX Releases

Another very busy day has almost ended her for us and what a great day it has been. Myself and Justin of Skyclad Sound have been finishing up preparations for, and launched a new horror sound effects pack just in time for Halloween. The pack, Horror Atmospheres and Accents features 60 sound design elements ranging from dark drones through to sinister hits and tones. Justin will be adding a blog post detailing more about how he created the sounds in this pack but for now, you can download it for free here. I’ve also been recording and editing sounds for the last few days, many of which I have uploaded today. Some are requests and some are sounds I have been recording for the library. I&... »

Chainsaw

189 new free sound effects just added

New Free SFX Releases

Things have been extremely busy here this week and today we’ve uploaded 189 new free sound effects. Some of these have been sat on my computer waiting to be edited for a few days and others are freshly recorded. So as always, I thought it useful to give a quick breakdown of just some of these sounds… Empty drinks can I had a request come through a while ago for the sound of an empty drinks can being crushed under foot. So I decided to go one step further (excuse the pun) and record a whole lot more. It always amazes me how many sounds can be created from just one simple item, and after editing them down, realising you have 40 or more sounds. This was the case here after popping open a can of... »

Waveform mix

The Art of Layering sound: How the pros do it.

Sound Design Techniques

A couple of weeks ago, we tweeted asking what kind of articles you’d like to see on the blog – what aspects of sound design you’d like us to cover. One of you replied and said they’d like something on how to combine sounds to make a new sound effect. This is a fascinating and vital topic and one of particular interest to me because, I’ll freely admit, it’s not my strongest area. I tend to be more about combining plugins, using them like instruments to make a new sound effect. We’ve been all a-bustle at the moment preparing a new horror sound effects pack for Halloween, which is due for release on 8. September, so we haven’t had chance to write ... »

28 horror drones and hits

28 horror drones and hits

New Free SFX Releases

Today I’ve been working in the new studio on some sound design elements, which from time to time it’s nice to sit down and get stuck into. The great thing about working on such sounds is there is a huge amount of flexibility and as such, your creative juices can really get flowing. This week I’ll be starting work on some new Halloween sounds as myself and Justin (our new team member here at Zapsplat) are putting together a Halloween themed pack (coming soon). So these are just a warm up and taster of some of what’s to come. I started by using the stock synthesizers that come with Logic pro, namely the ES1, ES2 and ES P, which are all fantastically versatile instrument... »

Gold textured background

New Gold sound toggle for Basic Members

Blog

Did you know we add up to 500 new free sound effects every week? I personally spend up to 60 hours a week recording, editing and uploading, which, as you can imagine, takes a lot of time and energy, but I do it because I love it and also I know our members love our sounds too. But if you’re a casual user of our website and have a standard Basic Account, you might not realise that every week, we also had hundreds of other sounds that can only be accessed by our Gold Members. The reason for this is simple… in order to survive and keep zapsplat.com growing, we need money, so we ask for donations. If a member donates, he or she will be assigned a Gold account which gives them many ex... »

Glass in tin

New free glass and metal impact sound effects

New Free SFX Releases

Many times in the past I’ve been asked if we have any impact sounds that can be used to beef up car and other vehicle crashes. Often I used to recommend they used a selection of our glass smashes and metal impacts and layer them up to get the right sound. But recently, I’ve had a few more questions relating to the same subject, so thought it might be a good idea to create some sounds just for this purpose. I set about researching some techniques that would work and came across an interesting discussion online, with one of the participants suggesting chucking a load of glass in a metal tin and dropping, it, throwing it etc against various surfaces to get the desired sound. So today I did just... »

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Buffer Effects: How to Have Your Cake and Repeat it

Sound Design Techniques

In the last article, we covered what buffer effects are, what they’re good for and some of the things to be aware of in order to use them most effectively. We also covered how and why automating buffer effect parameters can be particularly worthwhile. This post brings together those ideas to maximize the productivity of your buffer effect of choice in a given session. To briefly recap, the problems discussed last time include: Having to wait a long time before actual audio is processed because of the time taken for a large buffer looping a large number of times to fill and progress, which results in difficulties rendering desired sound elements from your session with appropriate accura... »

Buffer Effects

Buffer Effects

Sound Design Techniques

Chugging low-fi computers, high-tech data exchanges, harsh glitches and noise, UI sounds, power ups and power downs, intricate mechanisms, robotic and mechanical buzzes, record scratch-like effects, buffer effects can create them all. So if you’ve never used them, keep reading for an explanation of what buffer effects are and how they work and if you have, hopefully this article will have a tip or two that might help your workflow. What are they? At their core, buffer effects are looping tools. They capture audio, store it in an internal buffer, hence the name, and loop it according to various criteria. Depending on exactly how they are fine-tuned, the result can be beeping or buzzing ... »