Freesound Forums

in a recent recent post, the user Microscopia put some statistics about the number of Freesound users and number of samples they have uploaded.

I wonder if anyone knows what kind of samples people are looking for when they come to Freesound.
Are most people looking for ambiences, music instruments, experimental sounds, what?

So here are my questions to all users who are kind enough to answer:
1) What kind of samples do you usually look for? (what do yu use them for?)
2) Have you contributed samples to Freesound? If not, why?
3) If you have contributed samples, do they tend to fall within the same category: drum sounds, musical instruments, loops, ambiences, homemade recordings, experimental, etc ?

Thank you for your answers.

Hi Microscopia

Thanks for your answer.
How very true... All the sounds you can download, for free, and still there will be those who complain !
But I am not trying to satisfy those (ab)users anyway.

To be honnest, when asking this question I was hoping to increase the interaction amoung users.
For example say you are interested (of all things!) in binaural recordings of birds (joke intended :lol: ) and other people who do (or want to do) bird recordings read this. Suddenly you may have a group of people with similar interests exchanging tips and tricks, etc.

I think it is very rewarding to talk to other users. Exchange techniques, ideas... You end up doing things that you would otherwise never have tried.

I do not want to think of Freesound as a "database of sounds". It is much more than that: behind those sounds there is a living community of people who are making, recording, processing, cataloguing and uploading those sounds.
Lets, face it, if you are reading this, chances are you share common interests with a number of other Freesound users. I would like users to interact more.

I also think there are quite a lot of "shy users" out there. They came here, download a few sounds but would never think about uploading any of theirs!
To some extent - and please do not take offense - posts like your "what is in your bag?" can be off-putting for 100% amateur users (i.e., like me). After a few minutes of dribbling looking at photos of great equipment, many amateurs will then just crawl into bed and cry - they will be too ashamed to post their sounds taken with a webmic!

I would like those people to come out. I have posted many recordings made with a webmic and others have found them usefull, downloaded them and left comments. So lack of kit should not be an excuse not to post your sounds!
My view at least. Anyone agrees?

what am i looking for? I'm responsible for the music our church uses - and it's just me and my guitar, so I've been using Ableton Live to create some accompanyment tracks to play alongside. I also sometimes make short little movies for my denomination. I've been using sounds from this site for those projects...

But I also find myself just putting on a pair of headphones and listening to "random sample"s without any project. I just like the sounds that I find here.

Have I contributed? - a few so far. I don't have any fancy equipment... Audacity and a cheap (really) computer mic.

1) What kind of samples do you usually look for? (what do yu use them for?)
In general I look for sounds that I couldn't create myself, such as instruments, but for the most part I have always been more of a "contributor". I also look for sounds that would be interesting to re-create myself. Finally, I am one of the sound moderators so I look for sounds that breaking the rules of Freesound.
2) Have you contributed samples to Freesound? If not, why?
I have contributed some sounds so far and I plan to continue to do so.
3) If you have contributed samples, do they tend to fall within the same category: drum sounds, musical instruments, loops, ambiences, homemade recordings, experimental, etc ?
I try to contribute a variety of types of sounds because I tend to find lots of different sounds interesting. Lately however most of the sounds I've uploaded have been requests for my girlfriend's voice. Recording those takes a lot of time so I haven't done as many other types of sounds.