I’m very happy to announce that Sound Effects Search now lists 1000 independent sound fx libraries.
It seems like just yesterday that I launched the site. In fact, that was almost 10 months ago, although the official announcement was seven months ago, in January.
What’s Changed
Since launching, Sound Effects Search has added:
- A page listing free independent sound libraries.
- Web shop lists
- Link searching via publisher, category, and metadata.
- A blog which highlights new sound library releases, shares tips and tricks, and sound library analysis.
- The biggest improvement was adding the search engine feature in January.
What about content? Sound Effects Search has added 196 sound libraries and 26 Web shops in seven months. That’s an amazing amount of productivity from the field recording and sound design community.
That totals 1000 independent sound fx libraries from 105 Web shops.
Congratulations to everyone in the community who has been recording and sharing sound fx bundles.
What else is new?
New Feature: Audio Player
An exciting announcement: sound libraries are now able to showcase an inline audio preview demo montage. The audio player is responsive and works in both mobile and desktop browsers.
You’ll find the audio player to the far left of each sound library listed in every search result. Use it just like any other audio player: simply click the play arrow to begin auditioning. You’ll see a black circle begin to fill clockwise. This represents the audio preview’s duration. Click the player again to stop it. Click another preview to switch.
Here’s an example of New Sound Lab’s freaky-sounding 3D Printer sound library:
The previews are identical to a publisher’s SoundCloud audio demo, they just appear in a different shape.
You’ll notice that some entries don’t have audio demos. That’s because the player is actually pulling the audio from each publisher’s SoundCloud preview (i.e., audio content itself is not stored on Sound Effects Search). So, if the library doesn’t have a SoundCloud preview, or doesn’t permit sharing, a player will not be available.
(Note to sound library publishers: if your preview doesn’t display, look for solutions at the bottom of this page, under “Fixing Problems”.)
Adding Sound Library Demos
Adding an audio player is something I had wanted to do all year. It may seem like common sense to add an audio preview for each collection. Why didn’t I do it when launching?
Well, creating a search engine was challenging enough. Adding previews is actually technically tricky. For copyright and logistical reasons, it wouldn’t work to ask each publisher for a demo and host the WAV file on the site.
So, I developed a way to simply stream the previews from SoundCloud. That was a challenge, but last weekend I finally carved out some time to get it done.
How Sound Library Previews Are Helpful
Of course, a sound library preview demo montage showcases highlights from each collection.
That helps sound pros searching for independent libraries. By providing the previews directly on Sound Effect Search, sound searchers can compare libraries amongst each other. That’s not as easy to do if you’re visiting one site after another. The inline previews save time from clicking and loading multiple websites.
It also helps sound library publishers. After all, people are more likely to click through to your Web shop if they can sample of your library first.
For Sound Publishers
How can library publishers add audio previews? It’s quite easy. Simply find each track’s SoundCloud ID, and enter it in the proper field on the “Add a Sound Library” page.
Read detailed instructions for finding, adding, and troubleshooting SoundCloud IDs and previews.
The Future
I want to thank everyone who has submitted feedback about the website. I appreciate you taking the time to help the community search engine grow.
What does the future hold? Well, I’d like to keep adding features to Sound Effects Search. Some ideas I am exploring:
- The keyword field currently searches amongst library titles. I’d like it to also draw information from the description field and also category, with layered prioritization.
- Show more information: sampling rate, bit-depth, number of takes, and so on.
- Ways you can keep track of new sound libraries, or display them on your own website.
It’s a fine line to add features while remaining a “no fuss, no muss” search engine. It would be easy to just cram many features into the site. However, that risks ruining Sound Effect Search’s simplicity, speed, and design. So, I consider new features carefully before adding them. Just the same, new features will indeed be revealed in the future. Join the free newsletter, follow me on Twitter, or subscribe to the RSS feed to learn when new features are released.
Thank you again to all sound pros using the site, and to sound library publishers for adding their collections to the search engine.
— Paul Virostek
Owner, Sound Effects Search
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