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Archive republication: This technical review originally appeared in Digital Production 03:2020 and was republished online in May 2021. Features, pricing, availability and links reflect the historical software versions reviewed at that time.
This article originally appeared in DP 03 : 2020.
Especially for trailers and short social media clips, but also for animations and motion graphics, music, sounds and sound effects are at least half the battle. Under certain circumstances, this can cost a lot of time. We’ll show you a few tools and tricks to make sound design fun in the editing process.
You don’t necessarily have to be a sound engineer to enhance your projects with good sounds (although that does help). It’s amazing what you can achieve with freeware and inexpensive products. But at the end of the day, you should remember that the most valuable thing is the time you invest in learning the software. There are several good tutorials for the sound tools presented here (some of which I have collected again on postproduction-tutorials.net), but in the end I must also warn all editors of the great addictive potential of sound tinkering: you can tinker with a good Woosh for hours without any problems.
Soundly
Sound and Foley libraries have been around for a long time. You used to have a CD collection for them. Then came libraries with WAV files. But often the exact sound you needed was missing. Soundly is an audio browser that is installed locally, but gets its content from a huge, well-sorted and categorised library. Even the free version contains thousands of useful sounds. Conveniently, you can also integrate your own libraries and music collections into the interface using drag-and-drop. These can also be tagged. Of course there is a search function and favourites can be marked with a star. Sounds found can also be organised in their own libraries. The integrated sample player with waveform display offers numerous editing options such as selection, speed, reverse, normalise, amplitude or mono.
The edited files can then simply be dragged and dropped into a folder, into the window of a DAW such as Ableton, Cubase or ProTools, but also into the timeline of editing software such as Avid, Edius or Premiere. The window can be made more compact in dock mode so that it doesn’t get in the way.
The sound collections are also very practical. These are compilations of sounds that you need for the kitchen scene, the airport or a horror film, for example. To have access to your sound effects anywhere, you can also upload the entire library to a cloud folder.
If that’s not enough, you can integrate additional libraries in the integrated add-on shop. There are also some free libraries here. However, the free version already offers a lot for occasional users: the extensive free library and the integration of 2,500 local files. For 14.99 US dollars per month, there are unlimited local files, free and paid shop add-ons and 10 Gbytes of cloud storage. And if you just urgently need a few sound effects for a current project, you can use the entire library for 24 hours for 9.99 US dollars.
Loopcloud
What Soundly is for sounds, Loopcloud is for music. Here you can find loops for every genre, but also lots of sound effects. The whole thing works like in Soundly via drag-and-drop, but has a few more features in store. As the name suggests, it works with loops. There is a DAW plug-in that makes it possible to synchronise the tempo and key automatically. And if you edit with Vegas and set the grid to BPM, you can even put together a song directly in the editing programme. You can also do this directly in the Loopcloud interface. A small digital audio workstation with 8 tracks and audio effects is conveniently already built in. It can even be used to manipulate the speed without changing the pitch, and one-shot samples can be rhythmised using pattern presets or drawn in with the pencil tool. The volume and pitch of the individual samples can even be manipulated. This was previously only available in expensive audio editors and DAWs. Local libraries can also be integrated and analysed in Loopcloud.
You can try out millions of samples and listen to them synchronised with your Ableton, Cubase or Logic arrangement. If you like something, you can either buy the loop or sample individually for a small amount of money or the corresponding library. I used it to put together the arrangement for my trailer for a big production in Madrid with a flamenco library and then sent the stems and sounds to my friend Jan Kalt from the Schraubfabrik recording studio in Mannheim via wet transfer, who then mastered the perfect soundtrack for me. But for a short intro, it’s often enough to put together a few loops from the free sounds and simply drag them into the timeline. Then copy them one after the other, add a reverb to the last beat and the royalty-free track is finished. A drum machine and a sampler plug-in for the DAW are also included, and the audio effects are integrated from the Pro version onwards.
The new scoring system is a little annoying. In the past, you could simply buy individual sounds and packs for the specified amount directly by credit card. Now there is a points account in which you can buy blocks of 100, 250 or 500 points. This means that you are always forced to buy more points than you actually need, which you then of course spend relatively frivolously on individual sounds, which usually cost 1 to 2 points, just because they are there.
In the free version there are only 2 tracks, but at least 5 free sounds per day. For 6.99 euros per month, you get the full functionality including audio effects, 8 tracks, 100 points, 5 Gbytes of cloud storage and 10 free sounds per day. After the 30-day free full version, the studio tariff starts at 10.99 euros per month with 8 tracks, 300 points, 50 Gbytes of cloud storage and 20 free sounds per day. For frequent users, there is then Professional for 19.99 euros per month with 8 tracks, 600 points, 250 Gbytes of cloud storage and 50 free sounds per day. There are also slightly discounted annual tariffs for 69.99, 109.99 and 199.99 euros.
Xtreme FX
Another good source of sampler-based sound effects is the UVI workstation instrument Xtreme FX for 99 euros. To use it, you have to install it first. This is a free platform for all kinds of instruments and sound generators, including the following plug-in Woosh. The plug-in also runs in UVI’s flagship hybrid synthesiser Falcon 2 with even more manipulation options. However, you have to buy it first for 349 euros, which is interesting for musicians and sound designers. UVI’s website also offers other tools such as the step designer Walker, Meteor and the SweepMachine. Xtreme FX offers 6806 samples spread over 686 presets and also runs stand-alone without a DAW. The categories are divided into atmospheres, scenes, unreal, science fiction, sub basses & drones, nature, urban, noises, musical, electronic and synth FX and can be played live via the integrated software keyboard or a connected midi keyboard. The workstation also has plenty of audio effects and an arpeggiator. Conveniently, samples can be dragged and dropped into the timeline. What is missing, however, is a search function for the samples, and the effects are not included when dragging them into the timeline.
Woosh
The right sound is extremely important for motion design. Every editor is sure to have a few wooshes and zaps in their collection, but the one that fits perfectly and has the right movement and timing is often hard to find. With this tool for 149 euros, you can either tinker with one of over 400 presets or design a completely new sound yourself.
A Woosh is made up of 3 basic sounds. The first comes from a noise generator. The other two are called Texture and are usually based on one of the 545 noise samples. With an intuitive interface, these 3 ingredients are moved around the room using panning, filters and effects. The spectrum ranges from the eponymous wooshes to rises, drops and gaming effects. It’s great fun to tweak the sounds and the possibilities are endless. I will provide a few sample sounds for download on my site postproduction-tutorials.net.
Unfortunately, unlike Xtreme FX, there is no option to drag and drop the sounds into the timeline. UVI could certainly inspire many more editors with this feature.
Not everyone has a DAW at the start, and bouncing out is also a bit cumbersome. This is where our next tool comes into play.
Virtual Audio Cable
Now, of course, you would like to simply record your wooshes live into the running timeline, but how do you get the audio output of the UVI workstation to the voiceover input of the editing software? Plug the output of the sound card into the input? Chaos and feedback! There must be another way. That’s exactly what virtual audio cables are for. This is software that can be used to link internal sound generators.
You can download a cable from this page: www.vb-audio. com/Cable. There are also a few more cables available for a small donation. But in this case, all you need is an input that you assign to the UVI workstation to connect the output in the settings to the standard input of Premiere, for example. You can then play your newly created sound effects live into the timeline.
