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Company: SoundBits & Glitchedtones
Product: Rummage
Price: $42
Our Rating: 4.6/5
Veteran Sound Effects company SoundBits team up with Glitchedtones to offer up a delightful treasure trove of rummaging performances.
Opening Our Copy
Searching through our virtual download package, we found sounds separated into 2 folders, one for SoundBits and for Glitchedtones, containing their respective contributions. The cover art for the library is quite striking, and reminds us of the video game Mirror's Edge. Although suggesting much less dexterity and more of an exploratory use of the limbs.
Included are 733 files, providing the sound of curiosity, explored through interacting with multiple items. The library totals at a staggering 3.86 GB, and is provided in 24Bit 96kHz WAV for all of you pitch-exploring sound wizards.
Rummaging Around
The sounds range in length quite drastically, but most offer enough rummage to suit your scene. The variety of items is quite splendid, they have everything from midnight fridge rummaging, polystyrene Christmas gift unpacking. all the way through to wardrobe tinkering. Some sounds are provided in stereo, for those widescreen moments, where others are conveniently provided in mono for foley effects cues.
We have found many a situation where rummaging sounds are missing on a project, especially if the Foley Artist covers it but you want to add some extra spice, so the price makes this product a worthwhile investment. Finding enough props to replicate the sounds on screen can be quite time consuming, so it is really convenient to have this package.
Both company's folders offer up a fairly similar sound, with SoundBits rummages feeling more methodical in places and Glitchedtones being more sporadic with an 'unrehearsed' vibe, so you definitely get the best of both worlds. The overall tone is 'boxy', some natural mid-range exists here, and the sporadic nature of the theme means that the aesthetic captured should blend into scenes well. However, it sounds like some EQ has been used to tame rogue frequencies. Some noise is present on particular recordings, but nothing that will reduce the usefulness for most situations.
Finding a Winner
The library serves it's purpose rather well, but there are some small presentation issues. Minor spelling mistakes - 'refridgerator' are something we have never seen from SoundBits before. This may seem like nitpicking, but if you search for a refrigerator, it needs to be spelt correctly. This is corrected in the metadata thankfully. On our system, Windows Explorer is displaying incomplete words in the title, and contributing artist for each effect.
The expectation when auditioning the effects was that they would have a rough and raw quality, the performance is definitely there, but the tonal quality of the sounds is rather clean.
The separation of the sounds into two libraries for each vendor makes the user prejudge the sounds based on who created them - they should have been a single cohesive library.
The Bottom Line
When you need rummaging sounds (most projects at some point!) you will find yourself having to layer unnatural combinations of recordings, or gathering many props to execute the cue. Rummage will create a convenient way to fill those needs extremely fast. The current 30% off makes this deal extra sweet, purchase at the link below.