Holiday Freebies

It is that time of year again! When lots of SFX libraries make available free samples or entire collections at no cost.  All this to give back to the online Audio Pro community.  This is a great way to either jump start a new SFX library on your hard drive or beef up the the personal library you have been living with for years.

Check back regularly as we will try to keep adding to this list as we hear about more and more releases.  Participating in holiday freebies is becoming a bit of a annual tradition for many SFX providers and recordists.  So let us know if we missed anything or you are doing a give away yourself.

• Airbourne Sound has a great library (30 sound files) of Jet Passes up right now.  Available as 96 kHz, 24-bit stereo WAV files.
• ASoundEffect has an extra large free SFX pack of 1044 sounds.  The fine folks at  Antisample, Digital Rain Lab and Soundbits have teamed up to make it happen. (newsletter sign up required)
• Alexander Ahura has a free library called Keys and Locks up currently.  This collection has got 144 sounds in 24 files, recorded in 24 bit/48 Khz.
• DesigningSound.org has a cool set of giveaways going on all month.  This one is a little different from the others listed here.  You have to win the freebies – but it costs nothing to “enter”.  You just have to take part in their Designing Sound Exchange community forum.  And since it is an awesome resource you really should be a part of it already anyway!
• The great folks at BOOM Library will be doing their annual Advent Calendar again this year.  Each leading up to the 25th of December they release something cool.  Sometimes it is a free mini library, other days it is special discounts, while other days feature special content like gear reviews or sound design work flow blogs.
• Friend of our podcast and the man behind Mindful Audio, George Vlad, has just made a nice long recording of a thunder storm hitting Johannesburg.  Downloads are enabled on the soundcloud player for the clip.  You can go get it from his blog post featuring the story of how he recorded the storm.
• The fine people at Boom Box Post have a cool new blog post about the best practices for recording water sound.  They have very kindly made a little library available for download featuring 10 examples of cool water recordings at 96k/24bit.
• Our own René Coronado has let loose air traffic control centre SFX to celebrate his 17th anniversary working at Dallas Audio Post.  Get it here fast (won’t be there for long!)
• Here is a note from Tim at Sonniss-The Sonniss Christmas Wishlist!’.  Simply head on over to our website and add a couple of items to your wishlist for your chance to win a free sound library this Christmas! http://www.sonniss.com     How to get involved:  1) Signup for an account on Sonniss if you don’t already have one.  2) Choose up to 3 items from our catalog and then add them to your wishlist. (You can find this functionality on each of the individual product pages).   3) Check your inbox on December 25th to see if you have won.  Pretty simple right? Winners will be randomly selected on Christmas day and gifts will be manually picked and personally sent out by yours truly.  Offer limited to 50 people. Good luck!
• Not really a holiday thing – but still free….   Sergey Eybog from Lesser Vibes has a new library called “Artificial Life”.  It is a fun packed of raw and designed non-organic lifeforms, alien machinery and abstract expressive articulations.  There is a free sample version of the library with some really cool sounds.  Find it here at the bottom of the page.
• Olivia Oliffka has made a recording of the Electromagnetic waves of an Internet Router available for free download.  Cool distortions and glitches.
• Here is one that is not SFX but software.  DMG Audio has just released a useful plugin called Track Control and it is free right now.  All you have to do is set up an account with their site (also free)
• Another bit of free Software is Sound Chopper II.  Thumbs up to Italian sound designer MATTEO CERQUONE for making this free after all the hard work he put into creating it.  There is a donate button on the site if you feel you want to kick a few bucks his way.
• Audio Mangler has made a ton of cool SFX (over 4 gig) available for the holiday season.  Featuring a small selection of their forth coming sound libraries.  These sounds are cool but lack a lot of metadata – so you will have to do some work to get these all set up in your sound search app. (UPDATE: The folks at Audio Mangler reached out to clarify that they rushed the sound files to get them out for the Xmas holidays.  Meaning the metadata is not there yet because it is not ready.  They will be releasing a CVS file once they are set allowing you can merge it with the audio files)
• Chuck Russom and his awesome Sound Effects Monkey SFX company are giving away a free collection featuring super high quality recordings of an M4 Carbine Assault Rifle.  Only available until New Years.
• Native Instruments is giving away a cool virtual instrument based around the concept of antique toys.  Go get it here.
• Chris Procopiou has put out this great mini library of distant jet passes.
• The great and talented Frank Bry has made some gun recordings available for free download.  They were recorded with the SoundField ST450 MKII Ambisonic Microphone, and the download includes Stereo, 5.1 and Format B (if you want to decode the files into some other format of your choice)  This will be fun to play around with!
• Out of Argentina Matias has put out a free sampler of his library releases from 2016.  Get it here.
• Joshua Jay released a free set of drum samples he created. In this download there are pre-made drum racks for all you sound designers.
• The folks at SampleTracks have released SineDust for free.  It contains 100 samples and 15 Kontakt Instruments based in the Photosynthesis engine. (email sign up required)
• 344 Audio have released an ambiance recording of the interior of auto chop shop with all sorts of tools and machines happening at various times though out.  Check it out on SoundCloud as downloads are enabled.   It is labled as SOUND OF THE WEEK, so follow their Soundcloud account as there might be more stuff each week?
• Listener of the our podcast Alex Thomas has made a great collection of mechanical sounds available to here.  It is a collection of recordings of an old ‘Paymaster’ adding machine.
• Head over to SOUND EX MACHINA‘s site and sign up for their mailing list and you will get a bunch of links to pull down free “lite” versions of many of their libraries!
• If you own the Hybrid Library from Pro Sound Effects make sure you grab the free update for owners that has 53 gig and great new sounds from Big Room Audio.
• George at Mindful Audio has just put out an amazing free collection of some of his recordings from 2016.  This collection reflects his travels over the last 12 months and has recordings from South Africa, Scotland and Romania!  Get it here.
• You might be too late if you were not already on the mailing list for Hiss and a Roar, but Tim Prebble has released a great collection of sounds to say thanks for the great year he has had.  If you head over to the HaaR site and sign up to the mailing list, you might be able to get the latest collection?  Not sure.
• The folks at www.soniccouture.com have made their Estey Reed Organ, a 1.8GB sampled 19th century pedal organ for Kontact available for FREE until Dec. 31st.  Get it here, then add it to your cart and use the coupon code: ESTEYFREE
• Andreas Usenbenz is an active member of the online sound community and his SoundCatcher site has tons of cool SFX libraries.  One of them he has made available for free until the end of the year.  Go here, and add the Electric Cash Register to your cart and use the coupon code chrstms2016 at check out.
• Frank Bry at The Recordist has released another free selection of great recordings made with his new Ambisonic mic.  There are format B and surround versions of each sound.  Get it here.
• The fine folks at Collected Transients have made a cool library called Ice in a Vice available for free.  The name pretty much tells the story here.  Get it at their site.

Stay tuned for more as they are announced…….