Over the years, my sound library has grown to huge proportions, and it includes everything from sound effects to music samples and everything in between. This was all possible thanks to a few key sound repositories that keep on giving today.
The BBC Sound Library
The BBC sound library is possibly one of the greatest amassed treasure troves of sound anywhere on earth. There are an estimated 33,000 samples currently housed online. You can check them out by heading to the BBC sound effects library.
In the past, I’ve used a third-party app to bulk download sounds from this library. But as the code hasn’t been updated in many years, I recommend using the official website to gather your collection.
The BBC—the British Broadcasting Corporation—has been creating film, television and radio programs since the 1920s, and over that time has recorded thousands of sounds in the studio, and out in the field, to use in their work.
They first released this archive back in 2008, with more files being added since. The library is expansive, with the nature category alone containing 17,000 samples. Other large categories range from animals, machines, crowds, clocks, and daily life.
Sifting through the various categories will result in some surprising finds. Otherwise, you can search by keyword for anything specific. Audio files can be downloaded as WAV or mp3, and you don’t need an account to do so either.
All the BBC sound effects come with a non-commercial license.
Freesound.org
Freesound.org is another fantastic website that has an enormous collection of free-to-use sounds. I’ve never been disappointed when I come looking for samples here, and I’ll always end up grabbing a few sounds for my own library.
The rights to use samples will fall under a number of Creative Commons licenses. As the name of the website suggests, however, most are intended to be used for free so long as you attribute the author.
One famous example of this is the film Children of Men, which used a sample found on Freesound.org and attributed it to the author who posted it.
In fact, all the sounds on the site are contributed by regular people. Over 650,000 weird and wonderful sounds, SFX, field recordings, and music, have been shared since the site went live in 2005.
This has helped to give the collection an unusual and diverse spread of sounds that are a little different to what you will find in any other stock audio library.
BandLab Samples
My library wouldn’t be complete without music samples. To that end, BandLab has you covered. BandLab has an incredible number of royalty-free samples in its repository that are free to access, download, and use as you see fit.
While BandLab has its own DAW that they hope you’ll check out, these samples can be dragged into any DAW you’re working in, making it an amazing place to start gathering samples for your library.
The handy part is that BandLab curates its samples into packs, making it easy to search for what you’re after, whether that’s a bunch of snare hits, bass lines, synths, or piano.
There are some great light-weight online DAWs for music, podcasts, or general audio editing. You can also check out the best free DAWs for Mac and the best DAWs for Windows.
Whether you’re after a few SFX or need some background music, having a good sound library on hand is essential when you’re working on a creative project. These are some of the best places to go searching if you want to build your own massive sound library.
