Aside from looking good, a top-notch media production also needs to sound good. Most video and animation productions at some point require the addition of sound effects to enhance the viewing experience. Certain sound effects, such as ambiances, work in the background to add realism to a scene that may have been staged such as in a restaurant or on a city street. Other sound effects are used to enhance a poor or missing recording such as a door slamming. Producers and video editors often turn to a variety of methods listed below to find needed sound effects.
1. One method, though the most time consuming, can often be the most rewarding. One would need to purchase a digital recorder and make your own sound effects by either capturing background ambiances in the world around you or doing foley.
2. Search the web to find a capable sound designer to custom make sound effects for your production.
3. Search online through manifold sites that offer free sound effects to download. Though free of charge, be careful to pick higher quality sounds as some of the quality of the files on these sites can be dubious.
4. Find online sound effects libraries which offer professional quality .wav or .aiff files as single downloads. This method allows you to purchase only what you need at that moment as opposed to buying entire catalogs.
5. If you anticipate the need for hundreds of sound effects you may want to invest in a multi-CD catalog of effects across a wide array of categories.
6. Invest in a subscription to a sound effect site which will allow you to download sounds as necessary for a basic fee per year.
Try out some of the methods above to find the most efficient way for you to quickly get top-quality sounds. As digital downloading becomes more common place and CDs a novelty of the past, you may find that the single downloading of effects is the easiest and most cost efficient.