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Company: Principle Sound Design
Product: Sci-Fi Weapons
Price: $42
Our Rating: 4.7/5
Principle Sound Design's Sci-Fi Weapons fuses Hollywood style elements with hard hitting Russian engineering.
Opening Our Copy
After opening the review copy sent to us by Principle Sound Design, we were excited to take a look at what is on offer here. The first impressions were great, as over 1000 weapon sounds are included (that should be enough to fill out your star-ship armoury).
There are also categories which are cleverly separated into weapon names; DP-116-STEELFINGER and UR-1804 CRUSHER being personal favourites. A clever touch that gives the impression that real care and attention went into building each weapon with unique character, something often missing in Sci-Fi libraries at this price point.
The cover art, layout and file naming of the library is very consistent and feels professional. The 1000+ sounds are provided in 24Bit 96kHz so that you can stretch 'till your hearts content (or until you get artefacts).
An unfortunate thing here is the lack of metadata tagging! A small price to play for the quality vs. price ratio though.
And then it went BOOM!
This library is modular, offering customers free updates which we think is very generous considering how much content is included already - we were told by Principle Sound Design that at least 7 new guns and about 50 sounds of reloading will be added as a free update very soon, and that metadata may also be on the cards.
You also get performances / repeated shots built into many of the sounds which is useful for huge battles and off screen elements, saving you lots of time when spotting those behemoth sized planetary invasions.
Some of the weapons are clearly inspired by your favourite Sci-Fi heroes (see SW-77-REBEL) where others offer something completely new and exciting (see FN-001-WHIP).
So how do they sound? Hollywood, huge, heavy and high calibre. They have a fat, processed and clean sound that feels mixed to the point where you can drop them straight into a scene with some reverb and distance perception. Reloads and ricochets also make an appearance, and are definitely a nice addition.
Enough stereotypical Sci-Fi elements have been used to build this library, but some new ones have been sprinkled in to give it some fresh flavour. This will blend with other vendors libraries well, but will also stand on it's own with formidable glory. A combination of Foley and Synthesis were blended to create the content, which has resulted in a well rounded aesthetic.
It's Jammed, Sergeant
One minor problem that I feel was overlooked by Principle Sound Design here was the naming of the library. It is very similar to libraries from SoundMorph which raises some questions, but also makes it very confusing to find in search engines.
In terms of what's offered, the only negative is the lack of metadata - the sound, price, format and everything else help make this a really killer library!
The Bottom Line
If the lack of Metadata doesn't concern you, there are over 1000 reasons to purchase this library for the small price of $42 and not many reasons to say no; especially if you are working on a Sci-Fi project.