I've had a bit of a play around in Audacity in an attempt to create some sound effects of my own, but they aren't really any good, so I'm hoping that there might be some good free sound effects online that I can use?

I've tried searching but all the sites I've checked out so far just have very low quality free sounds and then try to sell you higher quality versions for a price (Which is fair enough).

I was just wondering if there was a website that offerred a large library of free high sound effects, in the same way that TurboSquid has a large library of 3D graphics models.

Thanks
Ben

Generally a search for "free wav files" turns up quite a few results for me. Then you just have to make sure you abide by any licenses they might be on and you're fine. I don't know of anything that matches TurboSquid though; just little sites with a few wavs each.

What kinds of sounds are you looking for? Maybe I could help create some for you.

If you're looking for simple 2D sound fx, there's a great little tool out there to generate your own. I love and highly recommend SFXR. Simple, easy to use and perfect for the kind of sounds I need for my games. No more searching desperately for soundfx again for me. Obviously, not going to meet everyone's needs though.

I've been using http://www.soundsnap.com/ and have been really pleased with it... great site!

I'll put in another vote for Sound Snap.  The sounds can be used for commercial projects.  I've grabbed some menu sound effects and ambient music from there so far.  The community also seems very helpful as I saw people requesting certain sounds on the forums and other users would create something for them.

The Freesound Project is another site that has been recommended on these forums before.  The sounds on that site are under a creative commons license.  I haven't personally used the Freesound project as Sound Snap has been great for me so far.

Thanks everyone, I'll take a look at those sites.

Ben

Txh for the Soundsnap link.

 I know several sites before from where I've searched sounds and have found new ones with simple search engine searches. But still I don't remember seeing that site before and now I found perfect (for free) background noise tracks for my project, and now my next best track got different part in my game. Soundsnap really is snappier than some other free sound sites I've used earlier, because some have so heavy navigations and dozens of ads etc.

Freesound seems quite good too, even it is not so clear to use despite it doesn't seem to have ads at all.

Most of the "search engine" sounds are terrible, 11 kHz, 8 bit wave files from the 1980's era of Sound Blaster cards. Stay away!

I find that I can sculpt synthetic sound effects using the Nyquist command prompt that is built into Audacity. That approach does require an understanding of DSP, though. For life-like sounds, I use purchased sample CDs. I purchased a bunch back in the '90s for music making, but some of them come with a decent set of sound effects, too, which can often be warped into service.

Here's a Nyquist script for an explosive "boom" if you want to try it:

; boom
(mult (reson (scale 0.17 (noise 1.0)) (pwl 0 500 1 100) (pwl 0 400 1 40)) (pwl 0 1 0.1 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.4 0.05 0.5 0.025 0.6 0.0125 1))

jwatte:

Here's a Nyquist script for an explosive "boom" if you want to try it:

; boom
(mult (reson (scale 0.17 (noise 1.0)) (pwl 0 500 1 100) (pwl 0 400 1 40)) (pwl 0 1 0.1 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.4 0.05 0.5 0.025 0.6 0.0125 1))

Cool, I must have a play with that :D

jwatte:

Most of the "search engine" sounds are terrible, 11 kHz, 8 bit wave files from the 1980's era of Sound Blaster cards. Stay away!

I find that I can sculpt synthetic sound effects using the Nyquist command prompt that is built into Audacity. That approach does require an understanding of DSP, though. For life-like sounds, I use purchased sample CDs. I purchased a bunch back in the '90s for music making, but some of them come with a decent set of sound effects, too, which can often be warped into service.

Here's a Nyquist script for an explosive "boom" if you want to try it:

; boom
(mult (reson (scale 0.17 (noise 1.0)) (pwl 0 500 1 100) (pwl 0 400 1 40)) (pwl 0 1 0.1 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.4 0.05 0.5 0.025 0.6 0.0125 1))

I didn't even know such functionality existed in Audacity! That's great. That makes one more thing on my already too-long list of things I need to learn. :p

jwatte:

Most of the "search engine" sounds are terrible, 11 kHz, 8 bit wave files from the 1980's era of Sound Blaster cards. Stay away!

I find that I can sculpt synthetic sound effects using the Nyquist command prompt that is built into Audacity. That approach does require an understanding of DSP, though. For life-like sounds, I use purchased sample CDs. I purchased a bunch back in the '90s for music making, but some of them come with a decent set of sound effects, too, which can often be warped into service.

Here's a Nyquist script for an explosive "boom" if you want to try it:

; boom
(mult (reson (scale 0.17 (noise 1.0)) (pwl 0 500 1 100) (pwl 0 400 1 40)) (pwl 0 1 0.1 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.1 0.4 0.05 0.5 0.025 0.6 0.0125 1))

That's awesome.

 Lots of places sell cheap compilation CDs with sound fx and music, and let you listen to them all before you buy the, Just do a search for 'royalty free sound effects' or something similar. 'free sound effects' isn't a good search. Most sites filled with free assets are dodgy to begin with, because they are just file dumps where you don't even where they came from, or who they really belong to. I saw one texture site that just dumped the contents of DOOM2.WAD.

Some more sound links:

http://www.flashkit.com/soundfx/

http://www.flashkit.com/loops/

http://www.findsounds.com/types.html

http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/articles/xna-articles/sound-music-and-effects-for-your-xna-applications/

hope this helps