I have talked about Soundly a couple of times on the podcast as my Find Of The Week even though it has been in public beta for a long time. It is already my go-to sound effects librarian software and now it has been officially launched.

What Is Soundly?

It is billed as "a cloud-based sound effects library and workflow tool" but it also does a very good job of cataloging sound effect collections on local drives as well as being a cloud-based sound library with access to thousands of premium sound effects and a powerful workflow tool.

My Thoughts And Experiences With Soundly

Soundly lets you search your local sound libraries, edit and place them to on the timetime instantly. That for me is the main feature in Soundly, when I am working in Pro Tools using Workspace, if I have a 5 minute atmos track, I’ve got to import the whole thing, drop it somewhere else on the timeline, audition it, trim it down to what I need, and move it to the correct place on the timeline. With Soundly, I simply play it, select the bit I want, and drag just what I want straight into the right place on the Pro Tools timeline. Job done.

I was also impressed at how Soundly catalogued my 50,000+ sound effects that use a range of different metadata systems. It just worked its way through my libraries, and now searching for the right sound effect in Soundly is quick and easy, and unlike Workspace in Pro Tools, I no longer have to look across different fields, the metadata is all there in one place in Soundly.

Now you may be saying that this isn't new, there are other sound effect librarian packages that do similar things and you would be right but that isn't all Soundly does.

What if I don't have 'that sound effect' I am looking for? This is where the cloud based side of Soundly can kick in. You can now search their cloud based libraries, audition the sounds, when you have found 'the-one' then you can buy it and bring into your session all from within the Soundly application.

Where Can I get Soundly?

The Soundly application is available for download and is available for Mac or PC and is FREE to download and includes access to 300 sounds.

Want More?

The Premium SaaS version includes 6000+ premium sound effects, full sound catalog indexing, access to the Soundly store for specialized in-app purchases, and access to 100,000+ more sounds from Freesound.org to use within Soundly all for only $14.99 per month.

Thomas Trelnes, video editor at Uhort in Oslo, the home of Soundly, told us....

Soundly is the fastest SFX tool I have ever used. I counted my steps to get SFX from my previous tool into Premiere Pro; it was 11 steps! With Soundly, I’ve taken that down to down to 3 steps which can literally save me hours on a project.

Peder Jørgensen, Lead Developer and co-founder at Soundly explains why it has taken so long to bring Soundly to market...

After an intensive public testing for a full year (and 5 years in development), Soundly is finally out of beta and ready to meet the world. Our beta testers tell us we have created the world's easiest way to get and use sound effects – a true game-changer for everyone involved in content creation.

Core Features In Soundly

• Instant Search to quickly find the sounds across cloud libraries + local files

• Access sound effects in the cloud from anywhere in the world

• Tweak & Edit pitch, speed and reverse on any sound, and hear the results in real-time

• The Store allows additional free and premium sound effects libraries - immediately delivered

• Import Local Files - including metadata - to easily manage your existing SFX collections

• Drag and Drop whole sound files - or snippets - from the Soundly cloud straight into your project

• Access the extensive Freesound.org library directly from within Soundly

• Smart, lossless compression for lightning fast transfers 

• Index local wav, aiff, mp3 and flac files up to 192khz 32bit from mono to 5.1.

• Reads metadata from production music libraries in mp3 format 

• Built on Google's infrastructure for unparalleled redundancy, safety and speed

• Available for both Mac and Windows

Soundly Pricing Plans

• Free - 300 sound effects included - you can use the free version on your local libraries

• Premium - 14.99 per month, with 6000+ premium sound effects, full sound catalog indexing, advanced store, includes access to Freesound to use within Soundly

• 24 Hour Pass - $9.99 – Premium access for 24 hours 

What Is Missing

I would like to see more libraries being available on Soundly.  In the Store section there are both Free and Paid For libraries but it is good to see the SoundBits libraries in the store built into the Soundly app. I really hope that we will see more libraries added and there are all searchable too. So to independent sound effects producers, pease talk to Soundly and see if you can get your libraries into Soundly too like Saroo has from SoundBits.

New Version Of The Soundly Software

If you have been using it during the public beta like me then make sure you download the latest Version - v1.3

Whats fixed/new: 

• Greatly improve performance on large (1TB+) local libraries.

• Search wild cars. Remove words from search with minus (-) - "Car -door" will find all files with the word "car" that does not have the word "door".

• Share playlists. You can now share playlists in the cloud with other users.

• Change the order of your cloud and local libraries by dragging and dropping in the library view.

• Soundly now remember your layout, ordering of columns, width of library view etc.

• improved sorting on searches in local libraries.

• Code signing. The code is now signed which means no more warnings when downloading it off the internet.

• Fixed a bug with some 32 bit wave files distorting.

• New upload function. This is a big one for multi-users who upload their libraries. The old version could be a bit unstable especially on windows, but it is now stable and it is what's been taking up most of our time since the last release.

• Easier sharing of libraries added contacts and direct access to all the users in your multi-user account.

• Logarithmic volume fader 

• Remove files from your local library! Finally we got this in :) Sorry it took so long.

• Right-click a library to search only in that library.