Freesound Forums

Hi!

I'm working as a sound designer, making effects for video games.
I am using Freesound extensively in my work, searching for CC-0 licensed sounds that I transform and mostly use as elements in complex sounds, if I can't record something myself or synthesize it.

I am contributing CC-0 licensed sounds myself (almost a 1000 sounds so far), and have been doing so for many years before I even started downloading any sounds from Freesound and working as a sound designer.

I think there's a scarcity of really good recorded gunshots on this site.
I'd like to ask gun owners who can record good audio to step up and fill the gap.

What is missing are clean, raw gunshots and explosions recorded on location with no background noise, but clean reverb tail of the environment present. 24-bit / 96 kHz FLACs would be preferable (WAV is fine too, though FLAC saves on server load).

Sounds like that are incredibly rare on Freesound, and are usually short, clipping or have a lot of noise in them.

I would really like to avoid using commercial libraries and keep doing my job sticking to the free culture sources like Freesound.

I look with envy at gun-centric YouTube channels, who have access to open spaces, guns and recording equipment, that could provide amazing resources for sound designers, if they just published raw audio from their videos under CC-0.

Sounds like firecrackers, fireworks etc can be used as well, though that's already on Freesound to some extent.
I'm used to building such sounds layer by layer using recordings and synthesis, thought I see that some clean gunshot recordings captured in open spaces would go a long way to help in such work.

It's hard to do AAA-quality work with scraps, and I'd love to be able to showcase Freesound and free software as tools and resources that anybody can use to create great sound effects.
I am making video tutorials about free software and Linux for music production and sound design, and I'm using FOSS + Linux in my work exclusively.

Maybe I should make a video calling for such recordings?

I'm tempted to buy a bunch of firecrackers of various sizes, drive to a middle of nowhere and record them for ya'll, though maybe some of you can easily do something like that because you're already going to shooting ranges etc, and it wouldn't be much more work to just record the audio there.

Of course - you owe me nothing, and (full disclosure) I am using Freesound as a resource to earn my living right now. So maybe I should just buy a commercial library of gun recordings. My free culture spirit though yearns for something else. Maybe I could donate to someone who can fill this gap, so the sounds would be CC-0 and available for everyone?

Thank you for all your great work, and sharing resources that everyone can use!

Just to be clear, you're asking people to do work that isn't trivial, and then to put the results into the public domain (CC-0), just so you can use it to help make a living for yourself. Amazingly, there are folks here who do seem to do that a lot. I never put anything into the public domain, myself, but require attribution.

Gunshots are mostly high pressure impulses, so any recording of them in enclosed spaces will essentially be impulse responses -- they tell you more about the enclosing acoustic space than the gun. Thus, you need different ones for every different type of environment -- every possible combination of floor, ceiling, and wall material or treatment, every possible shape and size of room, etc. You might be better off just using an acoustic environment simulator for that. Admittedly, the impulses tend to emphasize lower frequencies, and you could do as well with popping a balloon for that part of it -- or a filtered impulse. The real gunshot sounds would be so loud that almost any additional notes such as metallic pinging, ejected cartridge impact, etc., would be very low-level by comparison once you get the levels correct for capturing the bang without distortion. Consequently, layering of different recordings of the different components is pretty much a necessity. Plus, you can't be firing a real gun in every possible environment -- a shooting range will typically have concrete floors and walls and will not sound right for other types of environments. Anyway, all those layers require even more permutations -- each different kind of empty cartridge being hit with a piece of metal and tossed onto different types of floors or walls/floors or furniture/floors combinations (though the rest of the room could come from convolving with an appropriate impulse response).

All that to say: I think your final suggestion, that you should invest in a commercial sound library, is probably your best bet.

But I'm just guessing.

--
zimbot

> Just to be clear, you're asking people to do work that isn't trivial, and then to put the results into the public domain (CC-0), just so you can use it to help make a living for yourself. Amazingly, there are folks here who do seem to do that a lot. I never put anything into the public domain, myself, but require attribution.

I've been recording sounds for years and putting them on Freesound under CC-BY-NC.
About a year ago I started working as a sound designer though, and I've started using Freesound CC-0 licensed sounds myself. Before that time I was only a contributor. Once I started using these sounds though, I asked mods to change the license of all my sounds to CC-0, and I publish all my new sounds under that license.

I'm putting this call out there in hope we can exchange sound resources - I can record some things or make video tutorials on how to process and produce sounds with open-source tools, others don't have access to that, and I don't have access to guns.

I guess a lot of starting game developers would be thankful for such recordings too.
I make tutorials about sound design and I show how to use free software for audio work, I guess that's also a way of contributing to the free culture audio world.

I'm not expecting anyone to do anything for me, I just love to be able to do work with 100% free software and free resources, so I can say and show: hey, you can do this too, even if you're broke!

I hope make videos and work to support creators and promote free software and resources, BTW:

https://youtube.com/unfa000

I could just go out and buy a commercial library on the company expense, but I hope I can demonstrate to myself and others that the community of Freesounders that it's not required to do quality sound design for games.

That's what I make with music tutorials - showing that kids can make orchestral compositions with free software and free orchestral libraries.

Anyway - nobody owes me nothing, but maybe someone will be happy to help.

That sounds great, unfa.

I do think that using impulse responses that are generated dynamically for different rooms (geometry of boundaries, their materials, and the relative position of the gun and the listener) could be key to getting the best result, even if there is one general impulse response for the room overall, and the dynamic part is just for the earliest reflections (making it require fewer calculations). Even without the dynamic localization part, a different IR for each different type of room (use gross categorizations of room geometry and flooring/wall materials, for example, to reduce the permutations), might be good enough. Then you could use relatively dry source sounds (which are relatively short) to convolve against the IR -- mostly giving a pop with an overlay of some metal strike. Cartridge noises should probably be an extra layer on top of that, also convolved against the same IR. If you don't have the IR's, you could try using balloon pops to record suitable ones in environments that are similar to the gross categorizations of room geometries and boundary materials that are identified as being required. That way, you don't need guns or gunshots. Then the "gun" part of the challenge comes down to getting relatively dry gunshot recordings to convolve against those IRs. Similarly, dry recordings of spent a cartridge tumbling would also be kind of rare to come by, as they probably have to be recorded in a anechoic chamber, with different types of "floor" material to land upon (carpet or soft furniture would give a simple thump versus tile or lino or concrete or hard desk-top or table-top types of furniture), and you would want a dozen or so different variations to cycle between for variety. I'm wondering whether using a contact mic (like a piezo) on the gun itself could give some dry gun sounds to layer on top of a generic "pop" impulse. Such could be recorded in any suitable environment (indoor or outdoor shooting range) without contaminating the recording with the impulse response of the acoustic environment. Hmm... But that still wouldn't help with the cartridge sounds.

Come to think of it, the cartridge part might be something I could work on as I have access to spent shells of many different cartridge styles and a relatively anechoic mix-room to record in, if only I could get all the junk out of it that is stored in there. [But even if I put in all that time, I would still release it with attribution licensing, so it wouldn't necessarily help you.]

Good luck!

Sometimes I forget some users here on FS are really knowledgeable. Thank you for reminding me, one can learn a lot from your posts.

D

zimbot wrote:
That sounds great, unfa.

I do think that using impulse responses that are generated dynamically for different rooms (geometry of boundaries, their materials, and the relative position of the gun and the listener) could be key to getting the best result, even if there is one general impulse response for the room overall, and the dynamic part is just for the earliest reflections (making it require fewer calculations). Even
.
.
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Come to think of it, the cartridge part might be something I could work on as I have access to spent shells of many different cartridge styles and a relatively anechoic mix-room to record in, if only I could get all the junk out of it that is stored in there. [But even if I put in all that time, I would still release it with attribution licensing, so it wouldn't necessarily help you.]

Good luck!

LOL. Be careful what you call "knowledge", dobroide; as I said, I'm only guessing. I've never actually faced this particular challenge myself.

Hey Unfa

Politics aside, I have something useful for you. The sound library company Sonniss have released a number of large sound libraries for free over the years which are all still available to download; around 120GB in total. They were released with a standard single-user license that you would get if you bought them, so completely free to use.

It's been an invaluable resource for me and my sound design work, and there are quite a number of professional firearm sound effects to choose from.

Download page: https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc

Also, not listed on the above page are the Monthly Packages that were released. they aren't available directly from the Sonniss website any more but you can get them here (1-6):

https://gamesounds.xyz

I hope this helps

Headphaze wrote:
Hey Unfa

Politics aside, I have something useful for you. The sound library company Sonniss have released a number of large sound libraries for free over the years which are all still available to download; around 120GB in total. They were released with a standard single-user license that you would get if you bought them, so completely free to use.

It's been an invaluable resource for me and my sound design work, and there are quite a number of professional firearm sound effects to choose from.

Download page: https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc

Also, not listed on the above page are the Monthly Packages that were released. they aren't available directly from the Sonniss website any more but you can get them here (1-6):

https://gamesounds.xyz

I hope this helps

i just want some sounds for animations and i cant find any decent sounds , there is NAVARO and he made a great collection of free high quality sounds but its not enough for me , i see folks with sounds from BF1 and modern warfare and i am wondering where i can get those , everything is for personal use nothing commercial ,thanks