In this bumper episode of Sunday Sound Effects Round Up, we feature new sound effect libraries from Pro Sound Effects, SoundBits, Thomas Beverley, Sonic Salute, Frick & Traa, Smackheads and Mindful Audio. We also have stories about Creating The Sound For Cars 3, Recording Classic Cars, the sound of the movie Dunkirk, and creating the world’s largest cat sound effects library.

Pro Sound Effects Release Shanghai Ambisonics

Shanghai Ambisonics is a sound effects library of 33 immersive urban ambience recordings, provided in both B-format and stereo, along with "virtual mic" software.

Adjust perspective of these city atmospheres in real-time with included software for utmost flexibility, realism, and creativity. Point “virtual microphones” in any direction with the polar pattern of your choice to match the specific setting of a scene.

The Ambisonics recordings can be decoded to mono, stereo, 5.1, 7.1 and beyond, allowing for versatile use of the library. Pre-rendered stereo versions are included as well.

Recorded in 24-bit/96kHz with a SoundField SPS200 mic by Masato Ushijima, Shanghai Ambisonics was captured at diverse locations throughout the city including Maglev & Metro Train Stations, Century Park, Nanjing Road, Huangpu River Ferry, The Shanghai IFC and more. The library contains sounds that are unique to Shanghai as well as more general purpose urban ambiences.

• 33 immersive recordings in B-Format & Stereo (18.5GB)
• Nearly 3 hours of pristine Shanghai atmospheres
• Average recording length of 5 minutes 24 seconds
• Diverse Shanghai ambiences: Traffic, trains, parks & more
• 24-bit/96kHz Broadcast Wave Files: 
• SurroundZone2 software by TSL Products: Control “virtual microphone” position and polar patterns. Your DAW must support Quad (4-channel) tracks in order to use SurroundZone2 plug-in.
• Price: $75

SoundBits Release Artificial Intelligence Sound Library

In this collaboration, SoundBits and Monte Sound combine their love for sound design and hidden talent for voice acting, “Artificial Intelligence” features more than 2000 individual words and 100 ready-to-use phrases for your next Sci Fi production.

Introducing 6 one-of-a-kind synthetic voices with an infinite possibility of word combinations. Be it for a movies or games, “Artificial Intelligence” will help put a voice to your characters.

• 2800 Stereo Files
• 96 kHz / 24 Bit and 44.1 kHz / 16 Bit
• 3,28 GB
• Price: 52 Euros

Thomas Beverley Releases High Desert Winds 2

In the second instalment of the High Desert Winds Series, you get the blustery sounds of High Desert Winds 2 recorded in the resonant mountains of West Texas. This library was recorded during a massive two-day wind storm with gusts up 75 mph! These extreme winds rattled and shook the house in wonderful ways. The creaking and groaning windows, doors, and walls were vibrating so much that Thomas could record the wind for the first time using a contact microphone! There are also recordings of leaf vortexes, sand blasts, tarps popping, umbrella destruction, and much more. 

• Turbulent hurricane-force gusts ranging from 20-75 mph
• Droning and singing wind whistles
• Open plastic bottle and wine bottle wind whistles
• Mountain ridge top wind
• Desert grass, scrub oak, and pinyon pine wind
• Indoor ORTF perspectives: adobe house, wooden storage shed, and mid-sized truck
• Indoor contact mic perspectives: chimneys, windows, doors, and walls
• Plastic tarps and umbrellas whipping in 50-75 mph winds
• 90% bird free
• Locations: Davis Mountains, Texas
• 59 stereo WAVs files • 59+ sounds
• 192 kHz / 24-bit
• 10.5 GB • Includes metadata 
• Duration: Approx. 165 minutes total
• Price: $59

Sonic Salute Release Interior Ambiences Library

Mikkel Nielsen from Sonic Salute recorded Interior Ambiences together with sound designer and field recordist Rune Palving,  at the Technical University of Denmark, and at a big Art Workshop in Copenhagen. This collection of sounds captures the crowds, both loud and quieter,  and the different rooms, halls, and hallway tones that are special to such places.

The Technical University files are all surround format files, recorded in double MS and mixed into 5.0 tracks. Recorded in very crowded places, like the dining area, and at the library, but also in quieter places, like the auditorium wardrobes and in the rest rooms.

The sounds recorded at the art workshop, are all in stereo and focus more on the rooms and reverberation found here. The sounds also include artists working in their own shops, cleaning, writing and painting. 

• 15 5.0 surround tracks, ranging from a few minutes to +7 minutes long. 8.8 Gb.
• 10 stereo tracks, from 3-10 minutes long. 2.1 Gb.
• 96 kHz / 24-bit
• Price $56.25

Frick & Traa Release City Bicycles

Arnoud Traa got in touch through the Contact Us page on the site to tell me that together with partner Max Frick they have released their first commercial sound library City Bicycles.

City Bicycles is a library filled with clean recordings of character bikes captured outdoor.
They went to great lengths (literally) to get long onboard recordings and great pass bys.

They used four bikes with distinct characteristics:

1. Good bike: a smooth sounding retro bike that doesn’t rattle or squeak, really nice tire noise.
2. Bad bike: an old worn bike with severe rattles and cranking, tends to let the chain fly off.
3. Ugly bike: this bike gets you from A to B... but it won’t win awards for its looks.
4. Racer bike: a vintage racer that’s probably owned by a barista or a hipster art student.

They recorded each of the 4 bikes at 3 different speeds on different surfaces with departures from slow, medium to fast getaways. Arrivals from slow stops with gently squeaking handbrakes to heavy stuttering skids. 

• 96kHz/24bit recordings
• 633 unique sounds (154 files)
• over 5,5 hours of content
• 5GB zip (7GB unzipped)
• Price: 99 Euros
• Free Sampler Collection Available

Mindful Audio Release WW2 Aircraft

George Vlad also got in touch via the Contact Us page to tell us about a new library he has released called WW2 Aircraft.

WW2 Aircraft is a collection of recordings of rare World War 2 aircraft captured at several airfields around the UK. It features icons such as the Supermarine Spitfire, Bucker Bu-131 Jungmann, North American P-51 Mustang, Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, Grumman F8F Bearcat and others. The library consists of 59 recordings ranging from 13 seconds to over 10 minutes in length.

The library covers exterior flybys from slow to very fast, aircraft taxiing by, engines starting up, idling, revving, stopping and a few takeoffs. It also includes an on-board recording of a Bucker Bu-131 biplane as it starts up, taxies, takes off, flies, lands and then stops. The planes have been recorded at a variety of distances, from close to relatively far away. As an added bonus, one of the P-51 Mustangs recorded had had its guns removed, which caused an awesome whistling sound every time it swooped down at a certain angle. 

• 59 .wav files
• recorded and presented as 24 bit/96 kHz stereo files
• more than 96 minutes of content
• 1.76 GB uncompressed size - 1.67 GB zip archive

Smackheads Release Suburbia Sound Library

You might be wondering if we need another library of suburbian recordings but Suburbia from Smackheads is a little different they have put this library together to fill a gap in their own library for Suburban sounds from their native Australia.

This collection covers a variety of locations, from quieter suburbs with a gentle breeze, a distant dog, some crickets perhaps and maybe a few birds, to the more densely populated areas, where the traffic and background noise is much higher and some construction is always going on. There some night time stuff in there, some ocean side, some with nature at its finest and even lawn mower and whipper snipper recordings so you can layer it all up.

• 36 tracks
• 2.5 GB
• 24bit/96kHz
• Price: $49

SoundBits Release Just Stones Sound Library

The “Just Stones” sound effects library brings you a huge amount of sounds created with stones. Ranging from impacts, shatters and rolling stones to scrapes, slides, water hits and tickling fine derbis.

All sounds were recorded with Sennheiser MKH8050 + MKH30 mix setup in 24Bit and 192kHz, cleaned, edited and downmixed to stereo. Since many of the sounds are quite mono-ish you can also download the complete library as mono files from only the MKH8050 mic.

• Number of files: 578 Files
• Quality: 192 kHz / 24 Bit / Stereo + Mono
• Total Size: 1,91 GB
• Price: Introductory price 26.25 Euros then normal price 35 Euros

Behind the Sounds of Cars 3 From Skywalker Sound

In this video from the team at Skywalker Sound you can take a look behind the scenes of Pixar's Cars 3 with Supervising Sound Editor Tom Myers. Watch as the team capture the unique sounds that bring the Cars world to life. 

The Story Of Recording Classic Cars For The Movie Overdrive From Red Libraries

Last summer, Red Libraries were asked by a sound supervising company to work on a project called Overdrive. This movie, directed by Antonio Negret, and produced by Pierre Morel takes place on the French Riviera, and centres on two car thieves specialised in luxury cars who have been hired to steal some of the most beautiful and expensive cars of a rich collector.

On the set, there were some of the original cars shown in the film, but for the rarest which was not supposed to be away from their protective case, even less doing stunts, the production has decided to build and use replicas. The main problem is the replicas were built round a Rover engine on an aluminium chassis, which meant that the sound had to be rebuilt in post production.

With 5 days of recording, and 8 cars, they couldn’t afford to lose time by rigging cables on each car. Also, some of were very expensive, so any gaffer tape’s trace was unthinkable!

They decided to prepare an 8 capsule systems with LECTROSONIC SMDB HF transmitters, and DPA 4061 low sensitivity microphones and they were tiny enough to find a place in some tricky holes. One was hidden in the fuel trap, to be as near as possible of the tyre for the drifts.

You can read this detailed article in full on the Red Libraries site.

Behind the spectacular sound of ‘Dunkirk’ – with Richard King On The A Sound Effect Blog

Director Christopher Nolan’s dramatic war film Dunkirk follows the retreat from three perspectives: the beached troops, Britain’s Royal Air Force, and that of a civilian boat captain. They struggle against the advancing Germans, but they also fight against time and tide. The clock is ticking for these troops, and that ticking clock — the main component of Hans Zimmer’s score, is a prevalent aspect of the sound track.

While the score grapples with the emotional tension of the film, Oscar-winning supervising sound editor Richard King, at Warner Bros. Sound in Burbank, CA was grappling with the sound of the characters’ experiences. His goal was to build a rich, dense, and immersive sound track that encompassed the raw environments and perilous situations that the characters were in. In this interview for A Sound Effect written by Jennifer Walden, get the full story on how the film’s rich, dense, and immersive soundscape was created, in this A Sound Effect interview with Oscar-winning supervising sound editor Richard King:

I was inspired by several books, especially Joshua Levine’s ‘Voices of Dunkirk’, which presents a kaleidoscopic view of the events through firsthand accounts. They often had fresh, interesting descriptions of the way certain things sounded and clearly, these sounds made an impact on them. There were descriptions of bombs going off, of ships sinking, and of the Stuka sirens on the German dive bombers.

These descriptions were inspiring because not only were they real, but they provided fresh insight and perspectives on the sound. They talked about sound in unexpected ways sometimes. We wanted to create a sound track that was historically accurate, while at the same time making an awesome, exciting movie. Using these firsthand accounts was my way into creating unique perspectives on situations that we all think we’re familiar with but mostly through other war films.

We didn’t want to use other war films as inspiration. We wanted to use the real event as much as possible for inspiration.

You can read the rest of this interview on the A Sound Effect blog.

Creating the world’s largest cat sound effects library – with Yarron Katz

Cats are a favourite pet within the sound community, and they’re very vocal creatures as well – but strangely accordingly Asbjoern Andersen from A Sound Effect there has been a lack of cat libraries. Recordist Yarron Katz, decided to remedy this weak point. Here’s the story behind his new cat sound library series, how he got the cats to ‘perform’ – and why he’s become known as something of a cat whisperer. 

It’s been in the back of my mind for a very long time. Like most Sound Designers I simply recorded everything around me. And it happened to be that I’ve always had cats, and my family had cats. I’ve also volunteered at animal shelters and feed the stray cats outside. On average I’d feed about 12 strays every day, but when the neighbourhood cat lady went on holiday, I’d take over and could feed over 40! So naturally, over the years I’ve acquired a tremendous amount of cat sounds.

My original plan was to release an absolutely massive library with everything, and perhaps a lite version. But it was a mammoth task that was taking too long and there was demand for a cat library. So I came up with the idea to split it into parts. When deciding how to approach the first one, I realized that most cat sounds were sporadic, overused and scattered around various different libraries. I decided that I’d provide a single go-to library that had all the core sounds in a single package with plenty variation.

You can read the rest of this interview on the A Sound Effect blog.