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| What is a Sound Effect/ Audio Effect? |
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Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes that are used to emphasize artistic (or other) aspects of movies, video games, music, or other (new) media. In music and television production, a sound effect is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point without the use of dialogue or music. The term often refers to a process applied to a recording, without necessarily referring to the recording itself. In professional motion picture and television production, the difference between dialogue, music, and sound effect recordings is quite severe, and it is important to understand that in these contexts dialogue and music recordings are never referred to as sound effects, though the processes applied to them, such as equalization, compression or reverberation, often are. At Soundlabel, we record and design Sound Effects on a daily basis.
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| What's the history of Sound Effects? |
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The use of sound effects originated in theater; sound effects were already in use in the Classical Antiquity. Various simple devices were used to simulate sounds like thunder or approaching horses' hooves off stage. The repertory of early theatrical sound effects became more elaborate in the early modern era, and various mechanical devices were constructed to produce more and better sounds. Large urban theaters often had large collections of these devices. Samples of these vintage sound effects can occasionally be heard in early audio recordings of Vaudeville acts, although contemporary accounts of the effects in the primitive early recording studios were less elaborate than those in theaters.
Sound effects were used in the ancient Greek theatre of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. In Elizabethan theatre, scripts called for the sounds of alarms, chimes, and gunshots and skilled vocalists imitated the baying of hounds and crowing of roosters. Many theatres used “thunder runs”: sloping wooden or iron alleys that cannon balls were rolled down from, to produce the sound of thunder.
“Sound is 50% of the motion picture experience.” - George Lucas
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A sampler device allows the recording (sampling) and replay (playback) of audio in a digital format - so a sampled sound is one that has been digitized and stored in the RAM memory of a sampler. The sampler allows the digitized audio file to be amplified and manipulated in different ways, for example: playback of the sampled sound at a different speed will alter its pitch. Samplers vary in their purpose and capabilities - some of them can be used to record and edit the different notes of almost any instrument - a piano, a flute, drums, or anything else you might need in order to simulate the sound of a full orchestra or band. Use of a MIDI keyboard with a sampler allows you to “play” a full range of notes for the instrument(s) of your choice. Nowadays many DJ's use samplers to capture phrases from existing songs and re-use them to make re-mixes or new productions. Some samplers are also designed to produce sound effects and accents as well as music and percussion sounds, and samplers have the ability to “loop” an audio file, which means that you can extend the playback time of the note by just holding down the key longer. Features like these make samplers and sampled sound very versatile for the production of customized audio.
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| What are Imaging Elements? |
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Imaging Elements are audio clips used to sweeten a recorded production, usually for radio intros, promos, Flash animations and PowerPoint and Keynote Presentations. They are provided either as background or punctuation to highlight the message, and are often relatively abstract sounds, not actual identifiable ones. For example, you'll find a lot of imaging elements on X-treme Whooshes, there are a lot of individual effects that you can use to spice up your logos, titles and leaders. Take a look at the X-treme Whooshes video (URL). Another example is X-treme Webclicks, which contains a lot of short sounds that therefore are very useful in Flash and other new media and web applications.
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The technique is named after Jack Foley, who established the basic modern technique still used today. Foley effects are sound effects added to the film during post production (after the shooting). They include sounds like footsteps, clothes rustling, crockery clinking, paper folding, doors opening and slamming, punches being delivered, glass breaking, etc. etc. In other words, they include many of the sounds that the sound recordists tried to avoid recording during the shoot.
Foley recording is a special technique, designed to produce both simulated everyday and extreme sounds for synchronization and audio sound replacement usage in motion pictures. Without the magic of Foley, you would never hear someone’s footsteps in a film - these and many other sounds have to be dubbed in again on the film’s soundtrack in order to be heard by the audience.
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A (good) Sound Library is a collection of ‘isolated’ sounds and is arranged in categories like cars, cities, firearms, backgrounds, whooshes etc. When doing audio post production you can browse through a library, grab the sounds you need and build your ‘soundscape’. You can compare this with Photoshop where layers are used to compose a new picture. For example, Soundlabel's 'Basic Asia' series has several outdoor environments that are ‘traffic free’ so they can be used for historical or documentary situations in which the sound of cars and planes is not appropriate.
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| Where can I find covers, product sheets and other promo-material of Soundlabel products? |
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First of all you can go to our support page, here you can download all kinds of free downloadable promo packages containing free demo patches for EXS24, HALion, Kontakt2 and Reason. There is also an online press kit containing artwork of our products, pictures, and of course the Piano Attack promo video in several formats, reviews and other Soundlabel goodies.
If you are looking for something that is not available on our website, just send an e-mail to:
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| What is a Soundlabel pack? |
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Instead of individual sounds we offer you the concept of Packs: a Pack is a family of sounds. For instance, the Pack XW1 P10 Metal Moves, contains 58 sounds. And this for just € 9.95, which is € 0.17 per sound). Every Pack has its own demo so you know exactly what you're buying!
All Packs are available as download and come in 3 formats; AIF, WAV, and MP3 (192 kbps).
Pack advantages:
- Low costs (Pack XW1 P10 Metal Moves, 58 sounds for just € 9.95, is € 0.17 per sound!)
- Family of sounds (sign and signals, metal moves etc.)
- Instant access (User Area URL)
- Demo (every sound is present in the demo)
- Sound Effects come in 3 formats (WAV, AIF, MP3 192 kbps)
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| Who are Soundlabel users? |
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Soundlabel offers a lot of products for a wide range of users. For example: a sample library like Piano Attack contains a lot of phrases, hits, atmospheres, rushers, zings, beats, loops, demolition sounds and more, and can be used by composers, musicians and sound designers.
Other products like X-treme Whooshes are applied to moving objects; they can be used in websites, flash animations, leaders, Keynote and Powerpoint Presentations etc.You can find a lot of quotes and reviews from the users, like Junkie XL, The Orb, BT and others, on the quotes page.
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| How and where can I buy Soundlabel Products? |
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Soundlabel products are available in most of the larger music stores around Europe, Japan and the USA. All products are also available at the Soundlabel web shop on www.soundlabel.com. Here you can buy the physical version (CD, CD-ROM or DVD-ROM) of the product, or the downloadable version.
On the online web shop we use the PayPal-secure payment system for our payments.
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| Are there advantages to downloading Soundlabel product? |
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The original X-treme Whooshes version is an audio CD. This is a quick and easy format that allows you to listen to all the different Sound Effects. The download version contains all the 686 sound files, accurately named and categorized in folders. This makes X-treme Whooshes very accessible for ProTools and other DAW (digital audio workstation) users. It is a big file (approx. 450 MB), but downloading is pretty fast nowadays; sending it by mail takes a lot longer, and downloading is more convenient if you need it immediately.
A very important advantage of the download version is that all the sound files are named in a very intuitive way so that you almost 'know' how a particular sound file will sound just from reading its name. Audio CD's don't have this advantage although the Soundlabel audio CD's are recognized by 'cddb', this means that when you insert the audio CD in your computer (with internet connection), all the track names and the title will appear.
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| How can I contact Soundlabel with questions and/or suggestions? |
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You can contact us by sending an e-mail to . Feel free to ask questions or give us feedback. We also recommend everyone to register at the Soundlabel website. It is easy and you get access to free sounds and samples.
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| Why do you want me to register at the website? |
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There are 2 types of registration:
- You can register and get access to free sounds and samples.
- When you buy a Soundlabel product you are granted access to extra sounds and samples.
When you buy a download version of a product, the extra stuff is automatically placed in your user page. When you buy a physical version of a Soundlabel product, it comes with a serial number. Register this code at Soundlabel.com and you will find your extra sounds and/or samples in your user page.
Besides the free packages, we also send all the users an occasional newsletter, but we won't spam you; don't worry. We only send a newsletter when we have a new product or when we offer our users a special discount. If you don't want to receive this newsletter, just let us know and you will be removed from the list.
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| What are the terms and conditions concerning Soundlabel products? |
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Take a look at our online License Agreement which contains all the terms and conditions for using Soundlabel sound files.
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All downloads are available in 3 formats:
AiF 44.1 KHz
WAV 44.1 KHz
MP3 (192 kbps) |
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| Prefered Software Sampler |
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Please tell us your favourite Sampler
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