In this edition of Sunday Sound Effects Round Up we look at libraries from Sonic Salute, Surround Sound Lab, Skyes Audio, Sound Ex Machina and Sound Of Italy We also take a look at a field trip the team at Mindful Audio made to Islay in Scotland.

Sonic Salute Release Contacts & Hydrophones Library

Mikkel Nielsen from Sonic Salute has been in touch to tell me about his latest release hot of the press Contacts & Hydrophones. Its been several years in the making and is packed with 62 unusual sounding tracks, this sfx library includes very different sounds, captured with contact microphones and a hydrophone:

• Water flow and rushes
• Aquarium pipes and pumps (industrial size)
• Sewers
• Underwater bubbles
• A Ships hull
• Underwater busy harbour life, ferry propeller passes
• Micro film machine playing, rewinding and fast forward
• Radiator bubbles and water flow
• Model train passes and drones
• Dishwasher doing the dishes

Thee are many long takes of most of the tracks included, and a lot of diversity all perfect for stretching and for adding a weird tone to your tracks.

I have a listen to the library and some of my favourites are the "Contact Aquarium Bubbles Inside Large Glass Container" sounds and "Contact Radiator Air Bubble".

• Size: 2.8 Gb big, all tracks meta data tagged and named.
• Files: 62 tracks
• Quality: 96K and 48K / 24 Bit
• Price: $50 ex VAT

Surround Sound Lab Release SSL24 Football Ambiences – Calderon

SSL has released their second ambisonic library decoded and mixed in Dolby Atmos - Football Ambiences – Calderon.

They recorded the last two football matches of Atletico de Madrid last year in the historical stadium, Vicente Calderon. They have included both matches in ambisonic format.

The result of these recordings are rich Ambisonic recordings of 50,000 people singing and enjoying the last days of the stadium. The football matches were against Eibar Football Club and Atletico de Bilbao Football Club, both the last two games of Spanish La Liga 2016/17 season. Enjoy topical Spanish crowd ambiences, with the highest quality available nowadays to record these sporting events. They mastered all the files in Ad Hoc Studios Madrid Post Production sound studios, which are certified by Avid and Dolby, and are considered by some as the best post-production facility in Spain.

They decoded all the First Order Ambisonic recordings with HarpeX plug-in into 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos bed configuration, using the top channel to create ambiences tracks ready to use.

SSL intend to release all their new libraries in the Ambisonic format so that users will be able to decode it from mono to Atmos systems as well as being an ideal format for Virtual Reality.

• Format: Dolby ATMOS, 5.1, Stereo, ambiX B-Format Ambisonic
• Number of files: 20 files
• Quality: 48Khz 24bit
• Total Size: 15 Gb
• Total Runtime:+03h 30m
• Price: 75 Euros ex VAT

Skyes Audio Release 20th Century Cameras Library

After months of research, recording, editing, writing and filming, their newest audio sound effects library is finally out! It contains mechanical and foley sounds of around 24 cameras, manufactured across continents and spanning nearly 70 years! Only cameras manufactured in the 20th century, some as early as the 1930s, have been included.

Organised into 159 files, the 20th Century Cameras library offers over 3900+ sounds recorded at 24bit/96kHz, thus allowing you to not only use the mechanical sounds of the cameras for their intended purpose, but also for sound design.

The library contains mostly mechanical sounds, such as the sound of shutter release at different shutter speeds, knobs, latches, wheels, and more, in addition to some Foley sounds as well.  Due to the age of the cameras, most of the shutter release sounds have slight variations between them, even at the same shutter speed.

An update for the library is on its way, which will include the sound of a few different types of camera film being unwrapped, handled and installed into cameras. The update will be free for the people that have already purchased the library.

• Number of files: 159 files 
• Number of sounds: 3900+
• Quality: 24 bit / 96 kHz
• Size: 1.08 GB Includes metadata
• Price $200 ex VAT

Sound Ex Machina Release Rolling Objects Library

Rolling Objects has been created as a diverse collection of 270 sounds, which covers a wide range of objects rolling on various surfaces. Some of the elements included are large metallic pipes rolling on concrete, tree logs and gravel sloping downwards, a Chinese meditation ball slipping from an aluminium rail, a metal barrel moving on various surfaces, various kid toys rolling on wooden surfaces.

• Each sound has been captured with both stereo configurations and directional microphones in order to achieve wideness without phase cancellation issues when flipping your sounds in mono.
• All sounds have been minimally processed and intended to serve not only those who need straightforward samples but also those who search for intriguing "raw" material for maximum creative freedom in creating new sounds.
• Each sound has detailed Soundminer metadata, that can be read by various applications and services.

•  Number of files: 270 royalty-free files in total
• Quality: 24bit/96kHz in stereo wav format
• Size: 1.4 GB (unzipped) All files embedded with Soundminer metadata
• Price: $49 ex VAT

Sound Of Italy Release Cracks Library

Cracks is a large exploration of different cracking sound sources – cracking, crunching, breaking and creaking.

Robert Serra has recorded a number of different materials, designed and processed to create some more aggressive, powerful and ready-to-use sounds. The library contains over 300 sound files – around 2 hours of sounds included in total. Originally recorded at 192 kHz with two Sennheiser MKH8040 and a Sound devices 702, and fully metatagged.

• Number of files: 306 files
• Number of sounds: 400+ sounds
• Quality: 24 bit / 96 kHz
• Size: 4.0 GB Includes metadata 
• Duration: Approx. 120 minutes
• Price: $55 exc VAT

Mindful Audio Field Recording Trip To Islay Of The Coast In Scotland

I first spotted this on Twitter as Geoge posted tweets about this trip. It especially grabbed my attention because I had been on a walking holiday 45 years ago to Islay and the neighbouring island of Jura but enough about me back to George Vlad's trip. The weather wasn't too good to start with but was mitigated by trips to whisky distilleries. George takes up the story...

On Tuesday the weather finally cleared up and we got to do some recording. My first target was a colony of corvids made up of mainly rooks and jackdaws. This was quite close to an RSPB wetland reserve and a few farms, but the corvids were making a lot of noise (as they do) so I was hoping to get at least a few clean bits in an overnight recording.

Later in the week, they decided to visit the famed Islay Blowhole...

They are tried a number of overnight recordings to get some dawn and dusk sounds although were some of the less successful recordings from the week. There is plenty of sheep bleating and cow mooing in the distance from a farm nearby, so probably not a lot of it is usable. There are short bits like this next Robin song that sound quite good though...

You can read the story of the full trip on the Mindful Audio blog.