BOOM ONE UPDATE
The power of the human voice
Every day we’re surrounded by a symphony of sounds – from the mundane to the mysterious. This month’s BOOM ONE sound effects update has 626 files with 3254 sounds, and explores an array of human utterances, creepy Halloween effects (in time for the holiday), and a plethora more sounds from the natural and man-made world.
The nearly 200 vocal sounds cover everything from breathing and yawning to slurping, coughing, and kissing: the noises our mouths make that are more than words. These are “vocal barks”, used to fill out those awkward silences between dialogues and action sequences. Our recordist Yannick Winter recorded these raw, unfiltered vocal effects that allow us to inject realism and immersion into our projects.
We’ve included 100 bone-tingling Halloween effects that come just in time for spooky celebrations and programs. Recorded by BOOM Library professionals across the board, there are creepy creaking wood floors and doors, piano notes, string slides, eerie designed sounds like music boxes and choirs, as well as a few more gore effects, drones, and booms to add to the collection.
Rounding out the update is an assortment of 300 textures, ambiences, and impacts. Help your audiences escape into lush forests or neighborhood environments. Ceramic clinks, juicer whirs, and sawing wood add some tactile elements. These build up BOOM ONE’s palette of sound to help get your creativity moving and make your projects easier to design.
Yannick Winter sat down with us to discuss the recording process for the vocal effects.
VOCAL BARKS
Have you ever played a video game and heard the ambient vocal effects? Maybe your character is in a tavern or walking through a village. The NPCs are making noises, or “barks”, that aren’t always coherent and are designed to slip into the background to give the player the feel of the real world without distracting from the gameplay.
These are also important for film sound editors, who are always looking for generic sounds to fill out the atmosphere in a scene – a perfect addition to car honks, dog barks, or closing doors in populated scenarios.
“If you imagine a large roleplaying game, there are main and side characters and NPCs,” Yannick Winter, our recordist for this update, says. “NPCs usually have so-called ‘barks’ in game, which get triggered randomly, like someone coughing in a hospital bed for example, or an unsuspecting enemy whistling in a stealth game.”
That’s what this month’s pack is all about, providing you with top-quality vocal barks so that you can drop in a high level of realism without distracting gameplay. “While the main and side characters have their own voice actors, the NPCs usually don’t, but they are still a big part of the world and make the environment authentic and believable.”
MEETING THE TALENT
Yannick met with a team of six vocal actors to help prepare for you this excellent update of over 200 studio-grade sounds. To get enough variation in the sounds, he recorded three female and three male vocal artists to come to our studio and deliver their exceptional work.
“I immensely enjoyed working with the people making the sounds,” Yannick said. “I discovered that each person in front of the microphone had something unique to contribute to the sound pack. It could be a very unique interpretation of a sound that I hadn’t thought of before or coming up with completely new and extremely useful sounds by using their voice creatively.”
RECORDING THE SOUNDS
Doing the work in our studio, Yannick was able to get the precise set up that he needed for the super clean and distortion free recordings. For this project, he chose the large diaphragm cardioid Lewitt LCT 440. “These types of microphones are a popular choice when it comes to vocals,” Yannick explains. “The cardioid pattern can give your recordings more low-mids because of the proximity effect and the Lewitt produces a clean sound with minimal self-noise.”
Yannick then changed the position of the mic depending on what sound they were after. “If I wanted to highlight the low rumbling of a really deep cough, I positioned the microphone chest high. For some of the breathing sounds, I placed it slightly above the head at an off-axis, so I wouldn’t get the air-rumble from breathing directly into the microphone.”
THE BOOM ONE SOUND
BOOM ONE starts you off with a collection of over 90,000 high-quality sound effects and delivers a massive new update every month. Our team of top sound designers and artists create the diverse libraries you need – from ambient tones to human voices, animals to sci-fi. Subscribe now for high-quality, royalty-free sounds at your fingertips. Check out our main BOOM ONE page here for more details.
Already subscribe and need more sounds from a specific category? Let us know and we’ll send someone out to capture the best recordings.
