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Boom Library’s Enforcer is a powerful bass plugin that enhances low-end impact with precision, perfect for music production, sound design, and cinematic effects.
November 23, 2021
Company: Boom Library
Product: Enforcer
Price: $119
Our Rating: 4.8/5
Enforcer is a bass plugin from industry leading sound effects company Boom Library. Enforcer lets you sculpt your low-end with frightening precision, and is the Swiss Army Knife for punch, low-end, sub power etc. Enforcer also functions as a kick-drum synth, allowing you to exchange kick drum tails and tune them easily. Enforcer can be triggered by your midi keyboard, making it playable like any other virtual instrument. This plugin works wonders on kicks, sub hits and impacts, but it also fantastic for beefing up sfx, and will help your sounds punch through on mobile devices.
Whether in music production or film/game audio, having a focused and punchy low end is crucial to achieving a great sounding mix. Enforcer allows you to quickly beef up your bottom end, adding power and intensity without compromising on detail. It comes with range of tools to shape the dynamics, tone and colour of your sounds. There are also built in pitch and oscillator functions that can be played around with to enhance your sounds even further. All of this functionality is packed into a user friendly GUI that makes the process tactile and fun.
Enforcer is a very versatile tool, and would be beneficial to music and audio professionals across the board. After putting it through its paces with a range of sound sources, we found Enforcer to be especially brilliant for adding punch to sfx hits such as gunshots or punches. With a few clicks, Enforcer takes your sfx to a new level, giving them that modern cinematic quality to make your audience feel every hit. Enforcer is also a great tool for composers, spicing up the low-mid range that can often be lacking in energy in some virtual instrument libraries.
The preset banks are broken down into music and SFX. On the whole, the presets provide a great starting point, and will instantly add punch to your sounds. We found the SFX presets to be loads of fun, and it was really cool cycling through them and seeing how our sounds were transformed. What was also interesting is the subtlty of a lot of the presets, as for a plugin focused on making things bigger, it is surprisingly subtle. It never feels like too much even when taken to its most bombastic and extreme.
Overall there are very few downsides to this product. Everything works well and is extremely responsive.
We would use this plugin in a variety of circumstances, but mainly for sound design purposes like processing SFX hits, and for mixing low-end when creating electronic music.
Enforcer will also be extremely handy for enhancing percussing and bass elements when composing music.
The preset banks are broken down into music and SFX. On the whole, the presets provide a great starting point, and will instantly add punch to your sounds. We found the SFX presets to be loads of fun, and it was really cool cycling through them and seeing how our sounds were transformed. What was also interesting is the subtlety of a lot of the presets, as for a plugin focused on making things bigger, it is surprisingly subtle. It never feels like too much even when taken to its most bombastic and extreme.
A comprehensive review of The Odyssey Collection: Essentials 2019 by Pro Sound Effects, a meticulously curated sound library featuring over 16,000 recordings from Hollywood sound designers Mark Mangini & Richard L. Anderson, offering high-quality, diverse effects across multiple categories for film, TV, and game audio professionals.
November 23, 2021
Company: Pro Sound Effects
Product: The Odyssey Collection: Essentials.
Price: $1,195 for Freelancers.
$1,495 for Companies.
Our Rating: 4.8/5
Pro Sound Effects bring us a slimmed down version of the renowned Odyssey Collection, gathered from the personal library's of some of our industry's greatest Sound Designers.
Essentials is a selection of the best of the Odyssey Collection by Pro Sound Effects; it provides over 16.000 sounds divided into 285 categories. These sounds were recorded for specific high profile projects by renowned Hollywood Sound Designers Mark Mangini & Richard L. Anderson over the last 3 decades. As it's name claims, this library offers you a very good quality foundation of sounds to accent or use as your main general effects library. We have listened to every single sound to provide you the most comprehensive, impartial and detailed review. Odyssey includes 16,532 Sounds (156GB), a 1TB Hard Drive, Search Software and Online Access with a Royalty-Free Commercial License to use the effects.
It took 10,000 hours to edit the library and compile all of the required metadata to make the it accessible in a fast post production workflow, and the search terms are fairly logical. The included high quality 1TB Hard Drive is covered by guarantee for 3 years, and you can access the library online at anytime, which is perfect when freelancing at other facilities. The 16.532 royalty free WAV files include a combination of stereo, LCR, Quad and 5.1 recordings in a variety of formats: 24/96, 24/48, 16/48, 16/44. This variety is likely due to changes in technology over the years of recording, as well as the very specific needs of projects that these sounds were recorded for.
At 344, we are a big fan of libraries that have some dirt and character, and this library contains genuine field recordings that were captured with love. Many of the sounds on offer here will slot into a scene without too much processing. There is a fairly large tonal variety, some sounds being more reverberant with a thinner frequency response, and others sounding close and fuller. The overall quality is high however and these varieties can definitely work to your advantage in a lot of tracklay scenarios. Be prepared for certain effects to have some noise floor inherent within them.
One of this product's stronger points is that it contains sounds that Mangini and Anderson obviously felt were lacking in many other libraries, and therefore it can be a great secret weapon for finding more abstract and rarely captured effects. Some big standouts for us were the car movements on different surfaces, rocket bursts and the metal scrapes/squeaks. Just a couple of examples of sounds that were meticulously selected, recorded and designed in a unique way.
Make sure you read our 'Categories of Irresistible Effects' section below for our detailed analysis of each sound category.
Some areas for improvement in this library would be the large variety of channel formats included. For example, the mixture between Quad, LCR and 5.1 ambiences can limit your ability to tracklay quickly, as you will be duplicating channels or removing channels to keep consistency in your BG tracks. It would have been better to upmix some of these to 5.1, or just keep them as stereo files.
Some users with smaller overall libraries may find gaps within Essentials if they attempt to use it as their main general effects library, however it a great addition to other PSE products like Hybrid Library, which offer more generic effects, but with a larger cross section than Odyssey: Essentials offers.
Think of this library as the ultimate Sound Designer's personal library. Natural character and imperfections give this library the edge over general effects libraries. Perfect for those looking to augment their libraries with some unique and well crafted effects that cover a variety of categories.
Get The Odyssey Collection: Essentials Now!
Check out our verdict of each category in the library, so that you know what to expect:
Acid: A small selection of bubble and sizzle sounds.
Air: Useful airy sound effects from elements such as Sprays or Fire Extinguisher as well as pure air sounds, not including standard wind sounds that you can find in any library
Aircraft -
Gliders: A single sound effect that contains a lot of airy moaning and whistling sound.
Helicopters: Very good variety of helicopter sounds recorded from different perspectives.
Jets: A huge selection of jet related sounds.
Prop Planes: Good quantity of sounds from propeller planes.
Alarms: A basic selection of alarms that you might need for your projects.
Ambience -
Battle: If you are in need of military style ambiences, you will be happy with this selection.
Exotic: A good selection of exotic elements from different countries such as Mexico or Malaysia, the only downside of this selection is the length of most of the recordings, it would be ideal to have longer ambiences as most of them are shorter than 3 minutes.
Industrial: A fantastic number of industrial sounds.
Jungle: This selection will bring your jungles scenes to life! Most of the sounds have a great content of wild species. A few 5.1 effects are included in this section!
Misc: All the miscellaneous ambience that you will need will be probably found in this section.
Nautical: A fantastic selection.
Public Places: A huge variety of locations were used to capture these background sounds. People talking in different language would be a real bonus for this section.
Room Tones: Just a variety of tones!
Rural: Good for scenes that need simplicity.
Suburban: A nice selection of stereo and 5.1 ambience sound from relatively quiet environments. Other than that, there are a few other ambiences such as roller coaster or bank ambiences.
Technical: if you are working in a casino style movie, you will find a great selection of casino background sound.
Urban: The sound of big cities to bring your scenes to life!
Walla: A very natural selection of different types of environments such as Prisons or Nightclubs, useful for layering your atmospheres.
Amphibians: Has some very nice frogs and insects background sounds, however; some of them sound very similar.
Arrows: a nice and realistic sounding of arrows passing by, hitting the target and taking off from the crossbow.
Beeps: Just a great number of beep sounds!
Bells: Great variety of bells.
Birds -
Exotic: An extensive selection of birds sounds that you might not have heard before.
Land: This is the selection of birds that you find close to you if you are in an urban environment.
Misc: A few background sounds from a Barnyard and a very minimal selection of birds and winds.
Water: A good number of penguin, geese and seagulls captured from different perspectives.
Wing Flaps: Not the most realistic wing flaps in this selection.
Boats -
Bow Wash: Be careful with the water, these sounds are very close to you!
Misc: All the detailed sounds that you might need for your scene such as jet skis and boat creaks.
Motor Boat: Great selection of moving boats at different speeds.
Rowboats: Very nice and realistic sound different elements of rowboats and its impact with the water. Very realistic squeaking sound of the wood, useful to add the realistic textures.
Ships: This selection would be used if Titanic was being remade!
Submarines: A short selection of submarine/industrial sounds, nothing very special in here.
Breathing: Useful breathing content for projects that requires a very realistic touch. It also includes a couple of processed, washy breathing effects for horror movies.
Buzzers: An average selection of buzzer sounds, some of them are already designed for an specific location such as a prison yard or for an stadium, there are some limitations as these sound are already processed.
Camera: Very detailed capture of different sounds that a camera can make. This large selection will probably contain all the sounds that it needed from a different types of cameras, as well as other elements such as projectors.
Cartoon: This section has an extensive number of very useful cartoon style sound effects, it reminds me of my childhood!
Chains: A very extensive number of chain with variations, being rattled and hit on different types of surfaces.
Chairs -
Leather: No budget for foley? You can achieve a good sense of realism and texture by using this section if you come across any leather on your project.
Metal: A great selection of chair squeaks, chairs sliding and wheelchair sounds.
Misc: A selection of chairs sound not very commonly found, especially the theatre seat sounds, these stand out massively on this section as they give you all the quirks that you hear in a theatre.
Plastic: A selection of “plasticy” sounds that you hear from a plastic chair.
Wood: A realistic selection of wooden chair sounds such as chair squeaks, chairs moving and chair impacts.
Clicks: Sounds coming from different sources that click, such as metal tongs, remote control buttons or a spray can. It would be great to have more type of clicks included on this list such a finger sounds on mobile phones/tablets.
Clock: This section offers a great range of different clock types such as pocket watch or a chime clock. Most of them are recorded out of context; therefore, it gives you a great chance to manipulate the sound as desired.
Cloth: Very good selection of cloth movements, useful for when you can't do Foley.
Computers: This selection mostly has keyboard sounds.
Cooking: Useful kitchen elements such as boiling water and sizzling sounds. Most of them are captured from a close perspective.
Crashes -
Debris: It is not a big selection but has a very nice 5.1 impact. There are also a few stereo vehicle drops with variations.
Glass: Very good quality glass crashes such as light bulbs and wood glass crashes, however, it feels that this section is lacking in larger weight glass impacts.
Metal: A variety of crashes made from vehicles, fences, shields, etc. This section contains a great number of useful impacts, perfect to be layered with other effects in order to enhance your sound design process. A few of these sounds are made in 5.1.
Misc: This selection of crash sounds offers mostly shorter and drier versions of impacts.
Pottery: This section offers a very short selection of pottery crashes and impact sounds that lack in high frequency content.
Wood: Great selection of wood debris sounds, including a piano lid crash.
Creaks: A fabulous selection of creak sounds from different surfaces to add realism to your project.
Crowds -
Applause: This large selection of applause is great! The great number of different types of crowds, clapping speeds, screaming and cheering make this selection very unique.
Misc: This is just a great addition for the applause selection.
Movement: These sounds are basically a variety of skate rolling and jumping, they are recorded on location so they are great for background sounds rather than spot effect sounds.
Walla: A great source of sound to add realism to your backgrounds and atmospheres.
Crunches: Well detailed and clean individual crunches sounds, useful to add extra detail.
Debris -
Dirt: A decent number of sounds that can be used to add realism on your projects such as the sound of the gravel wheel or metallic sprinkling sound.
Misc: This selection will add movement to those small details that you might need for your debris, such as metal movements or wood cracks.
Rock: Very nice variations of short, medium and large impacts, crashes and avalanche sounds, from different perspectives.
Distortion: A short selection of overly processed sounds that might be useful for sci-fi projects.
Doors -
Creaks: Just a great variety of doors and creaking sounds. It would be ideal if all of these sounds were recorded from a closer perspective in order to have the opportunity to process them according to the project and it’s perspectives.
Exotic: A few weird sounds such as bamboo doors and sliding doors.
Glass: This selection offers you a great variety of glass doors from close or distant perspectives. A few of these include variations such as different opening and closing speed.
Hardware: This section has a great number of detailed sounds that are needed for creating a realistic sound effect on your project. It includes door knocking on different types of doors, key movement in locks, door handle sounds, etc.
Metal: This section contains a great number of metallic doors, captured from different distances and perspectives.
Misc: This is a huge selection of in detail sounds that will complement any door of this collection. Metal doors impact and knocking on doors are the type of sounds found in this section.
Sliding: Again, well detailed sounds of different types of sliding doors such as Ice cream freezer doors, Metal and Wood doors.
Stones: This selection only contents 2 sounds of rocky type of doors.
Wood: Numerous wood doors and its variations in this section.
Drawer -
Metal: Good number of metal drawers, movements and prop sounds.
Misc: Very nice variations of prop sounds such as movements of items inside different type of drawers.
Wood: If you are a looking for a natural type of wood drawer, you will be able to find it here.
Earthquakes: A decent amount of quakes for different needs. This section includes general rumble, rock movements, explosions and debris.
Eating: I am hungry! This selection has all the taste that you need for eating scenes, such as biting crisps as well as extremely detailed sipping coffee sounds.
Electric -
Arc & Zaps: Good selection of metallic buzzes with different frequency ranges and variations.
Hum: Useful hum sounds in the section. A few of them are in 5.1.
Misc: Some random electric sounds such as cosmic impacts and a diesel generator machine. This selection misses speakers ground hum noises.
Sparks: Very nice selection of spark and crackle sounds.
Tonalities: Very good addition of tonalities for the electric section.
Elevators: This section seems to be more focused on the old type of elevators. Very useful for mechanical noises.
Energy: Amazing selection of designed sounds, very useful for cinematic trailer effects.
Explosions: These explosions have been captured fantastically, the transients are clear and the textures adds a great level of authenticity and uniqueness to these effects. These explosions will allow the sound to break through easily in your mix.
Fans and Air Conditioning: Good selection of different size of fans. More air conditioning units would be ideal, however, it has gone cold in here!
Farts: We don’t want you to imagine this section, you already know what to expect.
Feedback: This selection is a bit short, it could have a greater number of microphone feedback styles; however what it offers, could provide some elements for designing sci - fi projects.
Fight -
Bodyfalls: This selection offers you sounds to add to your design, such as body impacts or the sound of the body rustling in different surfaces. This selection has a great frequency content and they all sound very realistic.
Hits: More pure and real sounds were expected in this selection. Most of the sound are designed and processed in a way that they doesn't sound realistic or big enough for a film mix.
Misc: These are the “add-on” of your fight scene.
Fire -
Burning: Great number of different sizes of fire.
Igniting: Useful sounds that determine the origin of the fire such as lighter spark or gas ignition fire.
Misc: The fire burst is the winner in the section!
Whooshes: This section has a great number of fire movements.
Fireworks: You would probably expect to find only a selection of big fireworks shows, but that is not the case in this library; you will also find a great number of fireworks elements captured from an isolated perspective such as fireworks hisses or crackles.
Foley -
Footsteps: Great stuff for a quick solution. Great selection of floor surfaces, speed, dynamics and type of shoes.
Misc: This section is huge!
Props: Again! Huge selection of prop sound, useful!
Foliage: This is a nice complement for the foley selection.
Games: From Casino sounds to toys sounds.
Ghosts: It is a short selection but it has a great number of beautifully designed sounds.
Glass -
Breaking: A huge amount of glasses breaking, such as bottles and safety glasses.
Glassware: Detail sounds that are needed for dinner scenes such as the spoon stirring in the cup or plate movements, are found in this section.
Hits: Glass down on the table and tap on a window, are the type of sounds found in this section.
Misc: Random sounds coming from glasses such as walk on glass or bottle rolling.
Scrapes and Squeaks: A great addition of details.
Gore -
Blood: There is a lot of texture in this section, a good addition for your design.
Misc: This is an organic selection. You will find a great number of useful sounds, most of them obtained from vegetables such as tomato impacts.
Rips and Tears: Some great bone stretching and cracks in this selection. This selection would be a great starting point for designing weird creatures sounds.
Guns -
Artillery: A few of these shot sounds don’t feel fully realistic, however, this section has other elements such as tank hydraulic movements and its engine.
Bullet Hits: A good number of bullet impact sounds and variations. Useful to have for any action or battle scene.
Bullet Whiz: It offers more unrealistic sounds for a type of a laser gun in a Sci- Fi movie.
Bullets: All bullet related sounds. You will find a great selection of different shell dropping sounds as well as impacts.
Handling: Well thought out sounds for adding realism to your scene.
Machine: Very good number of different weapons, captured from different perspectives. A few 5.1 options in this section, useful!
Misc: Useful sounds for adding an extra detail.
Pistols: Great range of sounds from perspectives and distances.
Ricochets: Disappointing section. Most of the sounds feel very 'Cowboy Western'.
Rifles: The silenced sniper rifle is the winner on this section! There are a great variety of rifle elements but not all of them sound good.
Shotguns: This is a great selection of well balanced type of guns. With this selection you won't need to layer any more sounds on top of it. A few 5.1 options in this section too!
Heartbeat: A great range of speeds.
Horns: Very good number of horns included in this section. The New York auto horn is the winner as it has great number of horns beeping from different perspectives and distances without the city and car sounds, a great element to layer in your city environmental sounds.
Insects -
Flying: Great number of flying insects from different perspectives.
Land: Very large range of insects in this section.
Misc: Close perspective sounds from insects.
Laser -
Guns: Good variety, great to use as a starting point for your design.
Impacts: A very processed explosion style.
Misc: There is a great number of synthy sounds in this section, mostly useful for Sci-Fi Weapons.
Sword: This section has a short number of grinded style synth sounds to represent the movement of the laser sword.
Liquid FX: Useful sounds to add “wet” textures!
Machine -
Electric: Useful sounds, such as printer and dentist drill.
Heavy: Heavy machinery sound such as tunnel drill or conveyor belt.
Light: A great selection of everyday sounds, such as washing machines or a cash register.
Misc: This selection contains those machines that are not very commonly found on a daily basis, such as a leaf blower or a tape recorder.
Mammals -
Cats: Not too much of variety in this section, no more than only cat growls, meows and purring.
Dogs: Great selection of common dogs and all the typical sounds that they make.
Farm: All the sounds that you would expect to hear in a farm are in here.
Horses: Great number of horse walks, prop sounds and noises.
Marine: A very short selection, mostly made out of water spout sounds from whales. It would be great to have dolphin sounds and other species.
Misc: Useful sounds such as creature's wings or a stadium of rats.
Rodents: Great selection of mice vocals.
Wild: A great number of different type of animals such as hyenas and elephants, all captured by different perspectives.
Mechanical -
Gears: Great addition for your machinery design.
Misc: Mechanical sounds from machines that are not commonly found such as ferris wheel or DVD tray motor.
Ratchets: Great addition to the misc.
Rollers: If it rolls, the sound is probably here! This selection includes items such as shopping cart or a gurney rolling.
Metal -
Hits: In need of any metallic hits? This selection will sort you out. Good selection of metal bangs, clangs and drops.
Misc: As this section claims, a great number of metallic miscellaneous sounds, including desk bangs, metal clicking or a metal drum drag.
Scrapes and Squeaks: Realism and textures! This selection will add all of those details that you will need to create an unique piece.
Warps: A short selection of random noises coming from metallic elements, useful for design. The metal groans are the winner!
Microphone -
Feedback: A short selection of feedback. It would be ideal to have clean feedback sounds.
Handling: This section could be added to the Foley props.
Motor -
Combustion: A very short selection of engines sounds.
Electric: A great selection of sizes and type of motors.
Hydraulic: A short selection of movements.
Misc: More motors!
Steams: A short selection that complement nicely with the rest of the motors category.
Turbines: Mostly jet sounds.
Musical -
Chimes: A small but sweet and magical selection of chimes.
Instruments: A mixture of sounds coming out from instruments such as piano key impacts or cymbal effects. Useful elements for sound design.
Misc: This selection contains random sounds such as kazoo fanfare or a saxophone player performing on the street.
Tonalities: Great elements to determinate the mood of your project.
Paper: Great selection of paper movements.
Phonographs: Variety of sounds coming from a phonographs such as a needle drop and record scratch.
Plastic: A great range of plastic objects and movements, such as plastic fan or lid drop.
Pops: Short selection of pops!
Pumps: Brilliant range of pumps, useful for machinery design.
Radio FX: All sorts of radio sounds such as statics and walkie talkie effects.
Rain: Beautiful selection of rain, captured from indoors and outdoors perspectives and over different type of surfaces.
Rattles: Most of these sounds are a great complement for the metal and earthquake category.
Reptiles: Not too much variety in this section, a few snakes hisses and very processed sounds.
Rips: A selection of paper and textiles ripping sound, useful to add texture and realism to your project.
Robots -
Misc: Useful range of designed a processed sounds. Great to add elements to your robot or machinery designs.
Motors: A great addition to the motor category mentioned earlier.
Voice: This selection contains mainly low frequency sounds.
Rockets: A short but useful selection of sounds such as rocket burst or rocket rumble.
Rocks -
Hits: Useful for adding character to debris sound or impacts.
Misc: Minimal detail sounds from rocks, such as rock drops or pebble movements.
Rolling: Again, great selection of detail sounds.
Scrapes: A useful selection that complements the rest of the rock category.
Rope: Very nice detailed sound of the rope, such a rope stretching or creaks. It lacks rope handling sounds.
Rubber: A full texture range of rubber sounds such as tire creaks or rubber balls.
Rumbles: A useful selection of drone elements to create tension on your projects.
Sand: This is a short selection of sand sounds, such as raining sand or sand impacts.
Sea Animals: A short range of a few sea animals and its movements. This is a good addition for the mammals marine range.
Sirens: Very nice selection of sirens sounds with different perspectives.
Snow: Mainly snow hits and footsteps.
Spaceships: Brilliant! Good selection of designed spaceship elements. Time saver!
Sports: This section is WOW! Great range of sports types and sound elements.
Including racquetball footsteps!
Squeaks: Just squeaking noises from different materials and items.
Static: As the name claims, static sounds!
Stings: Brilliant range of cinematic effects sounds, well designed, very useful!
Subwoofer: A short selection of sounds, useful for adding LFE on your projects!
Swishes: Great to make your any movement stand out! Large selection of sounds with different tonalities and speeds.
Switches: A larger range would be great, however, you might get away with this short selection as they are reasonably good.
Telephone -
Answering Machine: A short selection of answering machines sounds such as beeps and tape sounds.
Handling: Good selection of phones and sounds in here.
Misc: A short random sound for phone purposes. The rotary phone sound is the winner here!
Rings: Mostly traditional and old fashioned rings in this selection.
Tones: Dial sounds and beeps.
Television FX: Mostly remote buttons effects, as well as a few old fashioned monitors and buzzing sounds.
Test Tone: A single emergency broadcast tone.
Thunder: Great selection and variety of thunder strikes and explosive blasts.
Tools -
Hand: Brilliant! Great range of sounds and tools!
Misc: Random sounds that will complement the rest of the tools sounds.
Power: Any powered tool is on this selection!
Traffic: Just traffic! From different perspectives.
Trains -
Diesel: Large selection of diesel train types and its different sound and variations.
Electric: Great selection of modern and fast trains.
Horns: All the horns that you need.
Steam: Great selection of locomotives, from different perspectives.
Subway: Nice variety of subways sounds from different cities such as New York and Chicago.
Whistles: A great way to travel to the past!
Typewriters: A life saver if you don’t have a typewriter.
User interface: Nothing extremely special here, mostly beeps.
Vacuum: This selection will clean up your session!
Vehicles -
Antiques Cars: A selection of a few car sounds from 1934 to 1942. This section includes props and engine sounds.
Bicycles: An extensive selection of bicycles sounds.
Brakes: Short selection of brake squeals.
Buses: An extensive selection of buses and their sounds. Useful.
Carts: Fantastic selection of go karts sounds, very rare to find.
Classic Cars: Beautiful recording of classic cars passing by.
Construction: Powerful engines in here! Extensive selection.
Doors: More door were expected in this section.
Horns: Great selection of horns but lacking of horns moving.
Mechanical: Wipers, handbrake, lights switch on.
Military: The basic army vehicles selection that you will need to have in your library. Useful!
Misc: All those random noises that cars make are probably in this selection.
Modern Cars: A selection of cars from 1988 until 2009, this section includes doors, engine and car moving sounds.
Motorcycles: An extensive selection, beautifully captured. A very impressive range of motorbikes in here!
Race Cars: All the sounds that you need to create a scene in the Formula One track!
Suspension: These need some lubrication!
Tires: Great to add textures to your moving and breaking sounds, fantastic selection.
Trucks: Again! Great number of vehicles and recordings in here!
Wagons: Good selection of creaking and squeaking moving sounds.
Voices -
Alien: Well designed voices that will speed up your workflow.
Babies: Different type of crying and baby sounds. Useful!
Beasts: Nothing really new in this selection. It seems that most of this sounds are over used this days.
Blow: A great element, well thought out!
Burps: I don't want to listen to this again! This selection is not very extensive, I guess there are not too many burping varieties.
Children: School background, screams and laughter are included in this section.
Coughs: Not very extensive selection, it lacks a variety of coughing sounds, distances and repetition.
Efforts: Useful sounds for a battle or fight scene.
English: Random phrases said in this short selection.
Foreign: More languages would be ideal.
Laughter: This will make you laugh!
Misc: Reactions, mouth noises and moans are the type of sounds found in this selection.
Musical: A very short selection of singing.
P.A: A short selection of P.A announcements. Nothing really special in here.
Radio: Mostly emergency related american radio messages.
Screams: Surprisingly short and processed sounds in this selection. More variety and clean sounds would benefit this section.
Sneeze: Only three sounds in here and not very useful.
Whispers: Stop gossiping there!
Water -
Bubbles: Great element for designing.
Drain: Useful selection of draining sounds, great number of bathtubs styles and scenarios.
Drips: Useful sounds to add drama on your rainy scenes.
Flowing: Amazing selection of different types of water flowing such as a fire hose, river or waterfall. Nice!
Misc: Water balloons, ice cube movements and rowboat are the type of sounds found in this selection.
Plumbing: Great number of useful sounds in here.
Pouring: More liquid moving!
Splashes: This section is very extensive. It has a great selection of splashes from different perspectives.
Spray: This selection includes water hose, water spray and plant mister.
Surf: Hopefully there is a lifeguard around. This selection contains a great number of sounds of waves, wind and big splashes!
Turbulent: A great addition to the previous selections.
Underwater: Great details in this selection! Perfect for adding elements in your design.
Weapons -
Knives and Swords: Big and useful selection for combat.
Misc: No too much going in here.
Whips: That hurts! Very nice movements and whooshes in this section.
Whistles -
Human: The most common whistling phrases made by humans.
Mechanical: Police whistles, steam whistles, Factory whistles. Sounds that you might need at some point.
Misc: Other type of whistles like a teapot and designed whistle whooshes.
Bys: Great number of designed elements to add to your tracklay.
Impact: Well designed whooshes with a lot of texture in this section.
Misc: A decent size selection of elements that will be useful for enhancing movements and creating magical moments.
Reverse: Movements going backwards! Great elements for a trailer.
Winds: This is an extensive selection of different type of winds sounds, with great dynamics and from different perspectives.
Wood -
Chops: A single sound of a tree being chopped from the distance.
Cracks: Great selection of wood breaking. A great addition for the wood debris range.
Hits: Wood being dropped and hit.
Misc: Any wood-like sound that you might need such as dragging wood or stretching wood.
Scrapes and Squeaks: A great addition of wood props for your library.
Zipper: Medium size selection of zips with different speeds and length.
A review of Soundly, an intuitive and lightning-fast sound effects search and management software that streamlines workflow for sound designers with cloud integration, seamless DAW compatibility, and an extensive free library.
November 23, 2021
Company: Soundly
Product: Soundly
Price: $14.99 per month
Our Rating: 4.7/5
Cutting edge sound effects search software Soundly, combines Scandinavian minimalism with lightning fast editing workflows.
Soundly comes as a compact software package, which installed quickly on our Windows 7 system. Once launched, and a subscription is purchased, users can scan their entire hard drive for audio files (there is a free version with limitations too). This will take some time, but once scanned, Soundly can automatically update new audio files within folders when relaunching the software.
The interface is very slick, and is comfortable to look at for long periods with it’s dark colour scheme. It offers a stripped back set of preferences, and has a very useful ‘dock-mode’, which adjusts the window to a laptop friendly size automatically. Screen real estate is massively important when sound editing, and Soundly can function very well on laptops.
There is support for a variety of audio formats, including WAV, MP3, OGG, AIFF and FLAC up to 192 kHz 32 Bit. Soundly also includes these features:
The 'Sounds' tab has various controls for searching, editing and spotting audio files. At the left side of the interface is the Libraries section, where users can toggle the cloud/local libraries on and off, as well as create custom playlists - very useful for building those project specific folders!
In the lower area of the UI, users can reverse, adjust pitch, speed and the level of chosen sound effects before dragging them into a DAW or NLE. The majority of the screen is filled with search results, displaying file names, lengths, formats, channel configurations, libraries and descriptions.
The 'Store' tab allows users to search for sound effects to purchase from boutique libraries. The 'News' tab allows customers to comment on update releases directly, which shows that Soundly value the opinions of working professionals.
Soundly is a dramatic workflow enhancement for Pro Tools Sound Editors. Not only can you drag files straight into the timeline, but you can adjust in/out points and spot to Pro Tools all without exporting additional files.
One of Soundly’s major advantages is the online library that comes with subscriptions, it includes over 10,000 audio files, which sound great and are a useful addition as a general library.
On top of that, Freesound integration makes trawling through the website a thing of the past! You can even search for CC0 only effects, which helps avoid those ‘doh!’ moments when you can’t use a sound effect due to attribution licensing.
The ability to drag audio straight from the cloud is painless with today’s fibre optic broadband connections, and Soundly makes it feel like an offline library, amazing.
Users also have the option to purchase boutique libraries from multiple vendors within the software. Sound effects creator’s will also be happy to hear that extensive Metadata authoring is also on the feature list, and it couldn’t be simpler for beginners, simply right click a file and hit 'edit metadata'.
The best way to describe the current release of Soundly is that it feels complete as an offline sound effects search software. It is fast, adaptable and painless to use.
However, now that 2.0 has added many practical features, Soundly need to focus on partnerships to really help their Store section shine. More free libraries need to be available in the app, such as the Sonniss GDC bundles, Zapsplat and more.
Soundsnap integration would also be a huge addition, as well as a partnership with ASoundEffect and Pro Sound Effects. The difficulty in obtaining this is evident, but the app specialises in sound effects from the cloud, and the $15 per month subscription feels harder to spend with these omissions - as the cloud library won't cover every specific scenario.
That brings us to the next point, subscription models. Hate them or love them, they are here to stay, and can be worthwhile if constant value is added month by month - Soundly provides this by updating their cloud library.
The inclusion of a pricing option for users who want the full offline search options, without the cloud library, would position Soundly as a knockout competitor for Soundminer and Basehead, which it definitely can be.
If you prefer to pay monthly for software, Soundly promises immense value straight out of the box. It would take over 2 years of subscription to spend as much as the cost of Soundminer HD PLUS; and you get 10,000+ audio files included.
If you hate subscription models, it is still worth a look, especially as there is a free version available for download with limited features.
A review of The Complete Boom Basics by Boom Library, a massive, high-quality sound effects collection packed with over 12,000 sounds, making it a versatile and cost-effective toolkit for sound designers in film, TV, and game audio.
November 23, 2021
Company: Boom Library
Product: The Complete Boom Basics
Price: $251.86 Yearly Subscription ($999.00 Buyout)
Our Rating: 4.8/5
Boom Library has made a name for themselves delivering high quality products that continually raise the bar in what is expected from a sound effects library. With their latest offering The Complete Boom Basics, they have rolled 57 of their most popular libraries into one neat package to deliver a superb sound effects library at a jaw-droppingly low price.
The first thing that jumps out about this collection is the size. Clocking in at 52Gb and over 12,000 audio files, this library certainly provides the user with a huge array of content. There is an insane amount of value here and its great to see such a wide variety of in one package. This vast and detailed library is a great toolkit for completing many sound design tasks. With sounds ranging from the organic and historical, vehicles and weaponry to the more synthesized and abstract, The Complete Boom Basics give you all the content you need to design compelling and exciting sounds for Film, TV, Games, Trailers, Animation and much more.
You can find everything from ambiences, UI sounds, weapons from various time periods, explosions, cinematic whooshes & impacts, crowds, creature sounds, and the list goes on. With such a staggering amount of sounds to choose from it can be a little overwhelming at first, but the folder structure breaks things down into easy-to-navigate sections and its never too difficult to find what you are looking for.
One especially great section in this collection is the vehicle sounds. not only do they sound brilliant, but they have really gone to town with providing highly specific sounds that cover individual car models, different engine sizes, SUVs, vans and high powered muscle cars.
Another gem contained within this collection is the vintage World War II tanks and aircraft sounds. These include tanks from both the allies and axis, as well as the iconic P15 Mustang fighter plane. These sound highly authentic and are not something you see that often.
As we have come to expect from Boom Library, the quality of the sounds contained in this collection is fantastic both in terms of their fidelity and aesthetic. Everything has a pristine level of polish whilst retaining that hard-hitting cinematic edge. Despite the huge variety of sounds, there is a consistency across the library that makes everything feel part of the same family, which is no easy feat when there are over 12,000 files.
To put this library through its paces on a real project, we used it on a horror movie trailer to create the sounds of the monster growling and its footsteps, the sounds of magic energy encircling the main character, and for risers and impact sounds. The sounds were user friendly, and the particular advantages include full frequency content, consistency, and many variations of most effects. The magic sounds were particularly dynamic and useful, BOOM has provided enough duration in the files to cover extended sequences, often overlooked in independent sound design libraries.
This mammoth library is subdivided into 55 separate folders that cover a different category of sounds. This file structure makes navigating the library easy, and you can always find the sound you are looking for without spending ages searching for it.
Below you can find a short description and overview of the contents of each folder.
Urban USA - A collection of ambiences from major American cities with different types of locations and times of day. You can find busy financial districts, parks, downtown, train stations, outdoor market, industrial district and underpasses.
Room Tones Europe - Room tones from a variety of settings including factory, workshop, library, school sports hall, underground car park and office spaces.
Assault Weapons - A hard hitting collection of heavy weapon sounds, sniper rifles, pistols, machine guns, grenades, mechanics and bullet impacts all recorded at close, medium and distant perspectives.
Baby BOOM - Baby vocalisations from a range of different moods and ages. Crying, babbling, laughing, screaming, shouting and yawning.
Birds of Prey - An assortment of bird calls, screeches, growls and other sounds from birds of prey such as eagles, vultures, falcons, hawks, owls and more. Expect to find lots of chips and squawks, as well as some more aggressive sounds from these predators of the sky.
Black Powder - All things gunpowder, canons, explosions, impacts, historic guns such as muskets. Complete with long tail reverbs and plenty of variations on each sound.
Cars SUVs & Vans - Highly detailed car sounds from a range of modern Vans and SUVs. As well as long take engine and drive-by sounds, this collection has an extensive batch of interior and mechanical sounds, indicators, pedals, seatbelt, and everything else you can think of. Recorded at different points of the car - engine, exhaust, interior.
Cars V8 BOOM Basic Edition - A collection of sounds from legendary muscle cars such as the Ford Mustang and Shelby GT500. Engine recordings at slow, medium and fast, recorded from engine, interior and exhaust perspectives. Approaches, sharp turns, aggressive starts and passes to give you everything you need to create high-octane car sequences.
Cinematic Darkness - Dark cinematic effects perfect for horror & trailer sound design. Drones, Glitches, Risers, Stutters and transitions that will raise the tension and create a creepy atmosphere.
Cinematic Elements - Fire & Water - Construction kits based around the elements of fire and water. Flaming whooshes, sizzles and cracks, bubbles and underwater motions, ice-cold splashes and full-water immersions.
Cinematic Hits - A collection of ready-to-use cinematic hits and impacts, epic drums, rumbles and crashes.
Cinematic Horror - Inspired by film such as The Hills Have Eyes and Ghost Ship, Cinematic Horror contains a range of horror themed construction kits. Complete with drones, impacts, scrapes, distorted guitars, mangled instruments and creepy vocal sounds.
Cinematic Metal - A stunning assembly of unique and earth-shattering metallic hits, perfect for use in trailer sound design.
Cinematic Metal Titan - Designed to shock and amaze, Titan gives you a large range of thunderous effects ready to shake the room. With multi-layered hits, braams, booms, impacts and stingers that will push the limits and add some serious weight to your sound design.
Cinematic Strikes CK - Comprehensive drum hit package designed to satisfy every area of the frequency range. These construction kits offer up a range of epic drum hits, rolls and swells, complete with multiple options in terms of beaters, whips, drum sticks and recording perspectives.
Close Combat - Everything you need to create exciting fight scenes and make your audience feel each and every blow. High quality and detailed punches, kicks, drops, body falls, as well as subtle elements such as cloth movements and whooshes.
Creature Foley - A range of creature effects such as bites, claws, wings, footsteps and movement sounds to help you bring horror creatures to life.
Creatures - Create your own unique creatures with the diverse offering of breaths, chokes, slobbers, bellows from creatures such as Aliens, Dragons, Zombies and Lizard hybrids.
Crowds - Concert Audiences - Realistic crowd ambiences for concerts, clubs, stadiums, arenas and more. Applause, cheering and shouting from a range of sport and entertainment settings.
Debris - The sounds of demolition and destruction. Debris gives you a stunning collection of detailed and rich textures featuring glass, dirt, sand, metal, gravel, rock, wood and more. Think collapsing buildings, earthquakes and explosion aftermaths.
Destruction - A devastating array of hard-hitting, destructive sound effects. With creaks, breaks, stress fractures, splinters and other apocalyptic sounds. Tailor made for creating destructive soundscapes.
Dirt Bikes - Dirt bike motor sounds covering different distance perspectives, brands and models of bikes.
Dogs - A collection of sound effects from a man's best friend. Dogs contains a wide assortment of canine based sounds such as barks, licks, growls, whimpers, scratching and eating, from many different breeds and sizes of dog.
Everyday Cars - Drive-bys, handling sounds, ignitions, honks, engines, doors, trunks from 10 everyday car models. With multiple long takes and interior/exterior perspectives.
Flammable Liquid - Raw and dirty flamethrower sounds to ignite your inner pyrotechnic. Complete with flame bursts, whooshes and splutters.
Gun Handling - Triggers, dry shots, safety switches, reloading, magazines and more from a range of different firearm models. Highly detailed and authentic effects.
Guns - A substantial collection of modern, powerful gun sounds that would feel right at home in a Hollywood action blockbuster. With sounds separated into light, crispy, realistic and larger than life, this collection provides you with all you need to create intense gun battles.
Historical Firearms - Contains a set of old-fashioned weapon sounds perfect for historical setting such as the wild west and pirates. Expect to find canons, muskets, revolvers, carbines and lever-action rifles.
Horses - A range of cavalry based sounds including trotting, galloping, saddle, eating, mounting/un-mounting as well as hooves on various surfaces.
Hot Rod - Rev Ups - An assortment of aggressive engine sounds from a range of gas-guzzling hot rods and vintage v8 cars.
Impulse Responses Outdoor - A range of different impulse responses from outdoor settings. Ready to be loaded into your convolution reverb plugin.
Jet Fly Bys - Fly by sounds from a range of different jet aircraft rockets, military and passenger planes.
Magic - Unleash your inner wizard with this set of unique and enchanting magic spell sounds. From warm and healing magic all the way to dark and evil spells.
Magic Arcane Forces - A range of construction kits and designed sounds themed around the more aggressive and supernatural end of magical sounds. Expect to find heavy and hard-hitting spells, darks summons and elemental flourishes.
Mechanicals - Recorded dry and up-close, mechanical is a selection of clicks, rattles, springs, cogs and mechanisms from metal machines, designed specifically to give the user the most flexibility possible when working with these sounds.
Medieval Life - Construction kits to help you build medieval scenes from quiet villages all the way to bustling towns and cities. With sounds including animals, carts, voices and mechanical, Medieval life is perfect for quickly laying down some ambiences when working on a film/game project.
Medieval Weapons - An assortment of razor sharp weapon effects ready to build intense medical combat sequences. Expect to find swords, shields, spears, axes, hammers, catapults, plus a range of armor movement and gore sounds.
Modern UI - A versatile collection of pristine user interface sounds, perfect for use in game menus and apps. With a clean and pleasing aesthetic, Modern UI offers a huge range of unique sounds to use in your projects, or as source material for designing your own effects.
Monsters & Beasts - Construction kits containing you a range of different animal vocalisations including elephants, pigs, lions and racoons. Expect to find growls, snarls and hisses. there are also several designed sounds covering prehistoric animals such as the saber-tooth tiger and pterodactyl.
NEON - Neon contains a wide selection of abstract electronic sounds that would be perfect for science fiction and cyberpunk. Complete with glistening ambiences, hits, granular textures and particle effects.
Noisy Places - A variety of ambiences from noisy setting such as harbour & industrial, town & country, urban & suburban and much more.
P51 Mustang - A thrilling collection of sounds from the iconic P51 Mustang. Expect to find fly bus and approaches, dives, whistles, take offs, landings, propellor and engine effects, all recorded in multiple perspectives.
Sci-Fi - An extensive toolkit for futuristic and sci-fi sounds, contains a range of construction kits covering servos, energy weapons, hydraulics, mechanics, impacts and more.
Silencers - The stealthy sound of suppressed firearms, perfect for assassins, special forces and hitmen alike. inside you will find multiple recordings from silenced pistols, assault rifles, shotguns and submachine guns.
The Interface - A fantastic selection of button clicks, slides jingles and more. ideal for designing satisfying interactive elements in game menus, apps and other software.
Toons - Toons contains a great collection of quirky and comedic effects that echo back to classic cartoons such as looney toons and mickeys mouse. Complete with crashes, jumps, honks, whistles and wobbles to bring out your inner cartoon character.
Trains - A collection of clean train recordings from a range of different models and engine types, recorded in multiple perspectives such as the cockpit, wagons, engine rooms and cabins.
Urban Explosions - Featuring the creative talents behind the sound for Dice's battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront games, Urban explosion contentions a range of explosion, destruction and debris sounds recorded in a dense urban environment.
Virtual Foley Artist - Footsteps - A diverse range of footstep sounds featuring many kinds of shoes of different materials and walking surfaces.
Wildcats - An extensive collection of big wildcat recordings. Inside you will find snarls, growls, roars, moans and mating calls. These make for perfect source material when designing your own orginal creature sounds.
World War II Tanks - An arsenal of classic tank sounds from iconic machines of the second world war. Included are the iconic Sherman and panther tanks, with a vast array of engine sounds, pass bys, canon fires, plus interior and exterior perspectives.
As you can see there really is a huge amount of variety included in this library! With the currently discounted price we strongly recommend The Complete Boom Basics to anyone who is looking for a comprehensive and high quality sound effects library covering the more 'epic' end of the spectrum.
Whilst the size of this library positions it more towards professional audio post facilities, the fantastic yearly subscription price would make it a great buy for any budding sound designers, game audio, and audio post professionals who are looking to upgrade their sound collection with a large library. The huge variety of quality sounds offered makes this product great value for money.
You can purchase The Complete Boom Basics Here: https://www.boomlibrary.com/sound-effects/the-complete-boom-basics/
We hope you enjoyed this review!
A review of FRQ Shift by TONSTURM, a powerful and clean-sounding frequency shifting plugin offering endless creative possibilities for sound design, music production, and futuristic voice effects.
November 23, 2021
In this review we will be taking a look at FRQ Shift, a new frequency shifting plugin from German sound design company TORNSTURM.
Company: TONSTURM
Product: FRQ Shift
Price: $89
Our Rating: 4.8/5
FRQ Shift contains a powerful dual-frequency shifting engine and is capable of producing some truly stunning effects. This plugin offers everything from subtle modulation and stereo enhancement to more extreme and chaotic effects. FRQ Shift is extremely clean sounding, allowing you to completely warp and mangle sounds without the introduction of sonic artifacts or any unwanted glitchiness. FRQ Shift also preserves the transients of your source audio meaning you can get extreme without losing punch or presence.
FRQ Shift offers the user up to four feedback effects that can be introduced into the Frequency Shifter´s feedback path, in the form of shifters, delay, resonators, and filters. There are also modulators that can be assigned in a similar way to macro controls on a synthesizer. These modulators can be stacked for complex modulation, as well as a randomiser setting for when the preset options aren't doing it for you. This product comes with a fairly large pre-set bank, which is categorised into voice effects, synth, risers, rhythm and groove effects and spacial enhancement. Everything is laid out very efficiently from a visual standpoint, which makes finding your desired effect very simple.
The sonic quality of the plugin is sublime, and it really rewards experimentation. You can tell that the designers have gone out of their way to give users the most amount of creative options, which is something that you don't always see in similar products.
FRQ Shift is perfect for creating robotic voice effects or adding some sci-fi essence to a sound. What's really impressive is the subtlety of the effects and the fine degree of control you have over all of the parameters. You can get truly forensic in your frequency shifting. Of course, if you want to throw subtlety out the window and go full Optimus-Prime then FRQ Shift excels for that kind of thing as well.
This plugin is also an excellent tool for electronic music production, as it gives producers a huge amount of creative options when it comes to adding movement to a sound, or creating crazy build-ups and drop effects.
We see ourselves using this to enhance voice effects, to create electronic sounds from every-day sources, and to create highly detailed, evolving sound design sequences.
FRQ Shift is an outstanding plugin and for the price of $89 its difficult to think of another tool that can rival its features. The combination of dual-frequency shifting, with all of the in-built effects and modulators gives users a huge amount of options for shaping sounds. This is an extremely useful tool for both sound designers and music creators.
