We start off this week with a piece of fun courtesy of Soundsnap and Dissolve...

The Real World Doesn't Sound Like This

A little tongue in cheek but the points they make are valid. The example that stands out for me is why does every churchyard scene have the same crow in it from the BBC sound effects library.  It is really important that we don't fall back on these cliches and we do choose our sound effects carefully so than you Soundsnap and Dissolve for raising this issue.

How To Design Stellar Spaceship Sound Effects – An Essential Sci-Fi Sound Design Guide From The A Sound Effect Blog

Looking to create the sound of a futuristic – and perhaps alien – spaceship? Sound designers Ruslan Nesteruk and Gleb Bondarenko have spent the last few months researching and working on excellent spaceship sound effects – and now they’ve made an incredibly in-depth spaceship SFX guide.

In this special guide, sound designers Ruslan and Gleb share their tips and ideas on how to get spaceship sound effects just right; from the conceptual phase, the sound sources, tools and methods, to designing the actual spaceship sound itself.

And along the way, they provide plenty of examples + bonus NI Massive patches for you to design from. Happy reading – and sound designing!

They outline essential sound source both recorded and generated as well as recommendations for the types of plugins that help in this genre. Do take some time to study this very in depth guide on the A Sound Effect Blog.

Kuulas Sound Release 'Car Destruction' And 'Cold As Ice' Sound Effects Libraries

Car Destruction

The idea of the Car Destruction package was stuck in Tapio Liukkonen's mind for years as dropping cars from the crane looks like great fun. Finally, he did have spare time and rented a truck load of wrecked cars and crane which could hoist a car to 30 meters (98 feet) in the air. Add these together, and a result is a nice and sunny weekend with flying cars.

Tapio recorded the sounds in this package in quiet space far away from city traffic. It includes 18 drops with 7 different miking techniques and perspectives. Also included are sounds from close or medium range, and from inside the demolished car. Most of them are in stereo but there are some mono and LCR recordings as well. he also used a custom made PZM wedge. He used it for first time with loud sounds and for him it makes very wide, natural and soft sounds without loosing the low end.

When cars are dropped from 2-30 meters (6-98 feet) on top of other cars, some just hit once and stop, but some make a few impacts and some of them even also roll on the ground. A few cars are also lifted up from front vertically so that its back is attached to other car. After releasing the car it just falls on other car. A few drops made great whoosh sounds just after the impact.

• 126 sound files
• Interior stereo, Interior stereo with processed sub, close mono, close stereo, close LCR, medium stereo and medium PZM wedge stereo.
• 689,3Mb (596,3Mb .zip
• 24bit / 192 KHz / WAV
• Soundminer Metadata
• Price $90 ex vat

Cold As Ice

Cold As Ice was inspired by the Finnish nature which can sometimes be icy cold. When temperature changes very fast, the ice starts to behave very aggressively. It shrinks and expands depending the direction of the temperature change. Usually this happens in spring when sun starts to warm frozen ponds and lakes. Due to the warming, ice makes lots of loud crackling sounds.

The sounds for this package have been recorded with three hydrophones in a small pond and a large lake. Both of these environments have distinctive sounds. Pond produce more solid and isolated cracks. Lakes are more noisy, producing more continuous cracks with sharp stress and big deep cracks.

Cold As Ice includes lots of different size cracks, crackling, stress, sharp crackling, distant cracks in many various way. These are natural sounds and this is how they sound under the ice. Cracks are natural occurrence, so there are very unexpected sounds when one crack happens – it might lead to other crack, long and aggressive stress or ice slush dropping from ice to float in the icy water. Sometimes distant cracks sounds like thunderstorm or even distant gunshots.

• 51 sound files
• Recorded with hydrophones, LCR
• 5,99 Gb (5Gb .zip
• 24bit / 192 KHz / WAV
• Soundminer Metadata
• Price $100 ex vat

The Recordist Releases Shotguns HD Pro Sound Effects Library 

Over the course of two and a half years frank Bry has been recording shotguns. His crazy obsession with shotgun sound effects resulted in a one of a kind collection of these single and double barrel beasts.

Shotguns HD Pro is a complex library with five "sections.” There is a multi-channel section that has a bunch of shotguns, with many microphones, recorded in a wonderful field/forest location. These are presented in their "original" form with just a couple of cleaning passes and level adjustments. Live action foley and mechanical sounds were also obtained.

• Files: 457 (5500+)
• Download: 5.1GB
• Format: Stereo/Mono • MS Stereo Encoded
• Bit Depth: 24-Bit
• Sample Rate: 96kHz
• Metadata: Soundminer, BWAV
• On Sale: $145.00 - Normal Price $200

Red Libraries Release World Of Secrets

Every hidden door, drawer, cabinet, cryptexs will now have no more secret for you. Discover this huge sound collection of designed and raw sound effects of mechanics. 4 Collections - Designed Objects & Furnitures - Toolbox Objects - Toolbox Furnitures, and a big Complete Bundle

World of Secrets Complete is a collection inspired by those mysterious and beautiful objects and furniture, meticulously designed by 15th to 19th century’s craftsmen. Those geniuses used their art to protect what had to remain confidential or secret.

One of the mentors of that art was Leonardo Da Vinci, master of inventions, designing incredible mechanisms for his machines. After much research, and a large photo review, Red Libraries has designed this bundle of modules to assemble as you wish.

A bookcase, a desk, a sarcophagus, a hidden door, a statuette, a cane with a retractable blade, a poison ring, an old grimoire…each of them will reveal its secret mechanism, from the delicate assemble of parts of the jeweler, to the smooth slides of hinges designed by the cabinetmaker.

There are a wide range of elements to create your own objects, mechanisms, or secret furniture ; with toolboxes which leave you infinite possibilities of combinations, from the more simple towards the more complex, wherever your imagination leads you. Or you could also use their ready-to-use designed objects and furniture they have prepared for you. World Of Secrets Complete is priced at $170 ex vat.