Company: The Epic Website
Product: Epic Soundpack Combo
Our Rating 4.4/5
Price: $38
Upon opening we found a nice selection of sounds created by The Epic Website (headed by Stunt Actor and Martial Artist Tony Jaa).
4 Sound Packs are included from EPIC's current and previous releases, the first two covering Punches, Kicks, Grabs, Swooshes and Bone Breaks, the latter two including various Gunshots, Ricochets, Bullet Impacts, Explosions and much more. There are over 800 effects included and they are provided in a variety of formats, from 16 Bit, 44.1 kHz to 16 Bit, 48 kHz WAV format.
If you want to spot your fights, shootouts and epic scenes, this library will get you really close to that Hollywood sound. You should definitely still add additional layers and design to sweeten the mix as well as combining the various elements for larger hits and effects.
The sounds on offer cover a wide spectrum for a great price, varying in quality from decent to brilliant from Soundpack I to IV. You have a lot of scope for creativity and enough variations to cover extended scenes.
The fact that Face Punches, Body Punches and Kicks are separated leaves a lot of flexibility, and the Swooshes are a vital addition to the fighting effects.
The Gunshot, Hit and Ricochet effects sit in a scene really well, and with some reverb and EQ, you could have complete design layers at your fingertips ready for mixing.
The Explosions are also nice and all of the sounds are mixed in a way that feels natural without too much baked in reverb.
When placing the effects against picture, you will find that you are adding production value with each glass smash or bullet whiz, which will have action movie fans on the edge of their seats.
One small criticism is the lack of quality control in the earlier libraries. They were released a while back and this reflects in the way that they sound. Some may be less useful, but by no means are they unusable.
The library is clearly aimed more at Frugal Filmmakers rather than professional Sound Designers, having no metadata tags and a variety of sample rates at 16 Bit, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Epic got most of the sounds just right.
For the low price of $38 you get a lot more value than what various professional developers offer in their products, but with a much more 'earthly' and instantly usable quality, giving your epic scene that level of production value it deserves.
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