know of any sound effects site?

I'm looking around for sound effects. There's a lot of sites out there with wavs, but I would like to know if there's any one with a big bank of sound effects.

Then, I wouldn't have to keep browsing endlessly. On ething is for sure: Kazaa is not a good source.

I hate to burst your bubble, but...

Most sound effects range in price from about $5 to (an average of) $50 per sound effect.

For entire libraries, they usually range from about $1,000 to upwards of $4,500 for endless collections of CDs.

I've been an amateur sound effect designer for quite some time now, and it still blows my mind how expensive they are.

Just a quick rundown. There are 3 different kinds of sound effects:

1) Free sound effects
2) Royalty-Free sound effects and
3) Loaded sound effects

1) Free sound effects are just that: They're free. But they suck. Usually sampled at 11KHz or less, on mono, 8-bit channels. Don't waste too much time with them, although you CAN find some descent free SFX. Most sound effects websites advertize "free" sound effects, but usually what ends up happening is you get caught up in advertizement schemes. Just keep out of em.

2)Royalty-Free SFX you have to pay for, but you don't have to pay the sound effect designer royalties if you use them to make money (like in a game that you sell). Royalty-Free SFX are usually mediocre, but there are some really good ones out there, though. But be prepared to fork out some cash. Usually they'll charge you alot up front since they won't be drawing cash off you as you make money from their use.

3)Loaded sound effects are often the best and of the highest quality, but they come at a price. You pay to obtain them, and you pay to use them. With these sound effects, you may have to sign contracts guaranteeing that you will use a certain number of SFX in your product, so that they can get a certain amount of money from you every time you sell your product.

The best place to find free, good quality SFX is from other games (erm... I didn't tell you this). Download a utility called MRipper. It will strip sounds from games' archive files (the sounds must be in .WAV format in the archive).

Also, some SFX pay-sites allow you to sample sounds before you d/l (buy) them. Usually they will down-sample the sounds and filter em so they sound sort-of crappy, but you can leech these sounds from them and do a few things to SLIGHTLY improve their quality. Try places like

www.soundrangers.com
www.sounddogs.com

These two sites let you sample sounds. Just pull up a sound recorder and record the wav out port and you can rip these sounds from them.

In professional (movie grade) sound design, the sound people usually make all their own sounds.

Think I'm ever gonna pay $4,500 for a set of 20 SFX CD's? :gfu:

Hope this helps.