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Kaoma - Lambada - 1989

Normski Takes No **** in Booty Shake Mania

Kaoma - Lambada [With Lyrics]

When choosing a sound effects library, what do you look for? For people new to the industry, there are a few key questions they need to answer in order to determine what kind of sound effects library that need for their productions. To start off with, while there are a variety of sound effects library publishers, there are a few that one would consider to be the premium sound effects publishers and that have been around for quite some time, two in specific: Sound Ideas and The Hollywood Edge. Both these companies have been in the industry publishing sound effects for a very long time, and focus on high quality sound effects.

Sound Ideas started by creating their first sound effects library– the Series 1000 - on reel to reel tape in 1979. Since then they have created sound effects for the past thirty years, moving from CD formats to hard drive sound effects libraries as of late. Sound Ideas has established themselves as a premium provider of sound effects by constantly innovating and creating exclusive partnerships with providers such as 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.

The Hollywood Edge is seen by many as the Hollywood sound effects library. The Hollywood Edge contains the Premiere Edition sound effects libraries which contain a great selection of general sound effects for film productions. Many of their sound effects are used in award winning Hollywood movies and productions. Other note worthy mentions for a sound effects library are the BBC Sound Effects Library, Digital Juice Sound FX Library, and the acclaimed Sound Storm Sound Effects Library. Here are a few items to look for when you choose a sound effects library created by a premium publisher.

An important item when choosing a professional sound effects library is that it comes with metadata. Metadata is essentially a description of the sound effect. Today, much of the metadata would be created with software called the Sound miner toolset which allows the sound effects to be easily indexed. When it comes to indexing and searching for sound effects, the metadata is there to make sure you can find the sound effect you are looking for once you need it!

Further, if you want true feature film quality in your production, it’s important that your sound effects library come either in Red Book Audio format (for a CD sound effects library) or WAV files (if you are looking at a hard drive sound effects library). If you are purchasing a sound effects library in a hard drive format, premium sound effects providers will provide their sound effects in WAV format, either in 16 bit or 24 bit WAV files (24 bit preferred if your workstation can handle it). If purchasing a sound effects library in CD format, the Red Book Audio Format is the audio standard format the audio industry adheres to so that all CD players can read the CD (important if you want your sound effects!) Even with a CD in Red Book Audio format, you can still rip the files to WAV format to use in your productions. In summary, make sure your sound effects library publisher has a reputation for creating a high quality sound effects library.

The trend in distribution of sound effects is toward distributing sound effects collections on hard drives or USB drives. By doing this, publishers are compiling a greater variety of formats and much higher quality sound effects then in the past.

An example of a hard drive collection is the Series 6,000 Hard Drive produced by long time sound effects producer Sound Ideas. The hard drive comes with more than 20,000 sound effects with all sound effects in digital broadcast WAV file format. Sound effects on the Sound Ideas Hard Drive can be selected in multiple formats such as 24 bit / 48 kHz, 16 bit/ 48 kHz, or 16 bit/ 44.1 kHz. At the same time, every WAV file is embedded with metadata (information about the file) that allows for easy searching of sound effects through asset management software such as Pro Tools or Itunes. The digital hard drive also contains enabled metadata from the Sound miner Toolset for easy searching of the productions.

In summary, a collection such as this could have never been compiled on CDs or DVDs in the past as it would have taken up way too much space! The Sound Ideas Series 6000 hard drive series contains the following:

• The “original” “General” Series 6000 CD collection which contains more than 7,500 sound effects from 40 different CDs with sound effects such as Animal & Birds, Construction, Crowds, Household, Military and much more.

• The second in the series, Sound Ideas Series 6000 Extension I which contains a wide variety of in demand sound effects from 20 different CDs digitally recorded.

• The third series, Series 6000 Extension II, which contains sound effect collections such as snowmobiles and huge variety of modern telephone sounds. All together approximately 10 CDs of the most comprehensive professional sound effects.

• The third, Sound Ideas Series 6000 Extension III which provides the Series 6000 Hard Drive with an endless variety of terrain vehicles and amazing selection of guns and weapons.

• The next Sound Ideas Series 6000 Extension IV which has a collection of airplane sound effects, water, rain and other liquid sound effects.

• The Sound Ideas Extension V which features selections of airplanes, motorcycles and trucks.

• The Series 6000 Extension VI adds 10 CDs and more than 2,500 sound effects once again. Many sounds such as vintage airplanes, crowd sounds to whoopee cushions.

• The Sound Ideas Series Extension VII adds sound effects such as unique “hits & impacts” with 10 more CDs and 2,000 more sound effects.

The trend to large hard drives and USB storage sound effects is going to continue as it makes for easier handling of large collection of sound effects. When you are looking for a hard drive sound effects collections look at the quality of the recording, the search software and whether the files come in multiple formats. This in summary will give you a great start on how to differentiate and compare some of the hard drive and USB collections.