8 ms·

Show HN: Professional sound effects for UI projects

166 points by iambrakes 12y ago

TheSisb2 12y ago
I simply love those video demos. Great presentation! Gives me high hopes for the quality of sound files. Purchased immediately.
- iambrakes 12y ago
  I'm happy you like them. We worked hard on the product. Credit for the animations goes to http://chika-yeah.com http://chika-yeah.com
- ryanthejuggler 12y ago
  Seconded; I think the swishy UI interactions and the sound effects are perfect for each other. There's nothing worse than a terrible site hiding a great product, but you guys nailed it. Purchased!
swandive 12y ago
Good job on these!
adamnemecek 12y ago
What SW/HW did you use to make these?
- iambrakes 12y ago
  On the software side it's a combination of Reason for synth sounds and Audition for recording and editing. Sounds were recorded with the Reason Balance box and with a Zoom H6 portable recorder using various mics. Everything was mastered in Pro Tools at another studio for consistency.
zellyn 12y ago
The swoosh sounds are pretty funny: sounds like someone recording themselves making swooshing sounds :-)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- iambrakes 12y ago
  We will not share our secrets. :)
JonnieCache 12y ago
If you need something a bit bigger and fancier, I can recommended The Interface from Boom Library: http://www.boomlibrary.com/boomlibrary/products/the-interface http://www.boomlibrary.com/boomlibrary/products/the-interfac... It's considerably more expensive but also considerably larger. I'm a huge fan of everything Boom do. Their nature stuff is amazing. SFX design is in my list of fantasy jobs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2prl_DTrukc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2prl_DTrukc
kekub 12y ago
Thank you so much. I was recently looking for a UI sound library, but was not able to find one to fit my small hobby projects. This is just awesome. I love your license! Best luck with it.
- iambrakes 12y ago
  Hope it serves you well. We welcome feedback and will hopefully be able to offer more sound packs in the future.
salimmadjd 12y ago
I've been using freesounds. They have a large selection of free sound effects: https://www.freesound.org https://www.freesound.org
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  But Creative Commons doesn't permit the use of the art past marketing. Not allowed to include it in the actual project for instance. Do I have that right?
  - iambrakes 12y ago
    CC can be great for a lot of things. The biggest issue is that many people require attribution which can be tricky depending on the project. But there are some good options for CC that work well.
    - TillE 12y ago
      Just curious, which kinds of projects make attribution difficult? The worst I can come up with is that you'd have to include it in the small print at the bottom of an ad. Most other things (software, videos, websites) will have a more discreet place to shove all your credits. In general, I think CC-BY is fantastic. CC-BY-SA is typically useless for anything except open source projects.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Think playing cards with CC images, or business cards with CC logo. Small things with no room for the possibly-large attribution url.
  - janzer 12y ago
    None of the CC licenses that I know of distinguish between marketing and other forms of use. The CC licenses have a range of restrictions depending on the specific one used. Freesound has a faq at https://www.freesound.org/help/faq/#licenses-0 https://www.freesound.org/help/faq/#licenses-0 The actual name of the license pretty much tells you what the restriction is though.
jamespitts 12y ago
Awesome work, definitely keep going at it. This is an overlooked aspect of UX and you could write a lot about how to use sound effectively in an app. At rapt.fm I would spend time hunting for the right sound, it was often really hard and rewarding. Sometimes I ended up using effects seemingly unrelated the intended action, but in a humorous way (for example, a smack sound for challenging people to rap battles). A lot of thought has to go into sound design. Games have done it for years but with phone, pad, and real-time web apps it is becoming crucial.
incision 12y ago
Very slick. I would definitely use this if I had a need for it beyond changing the default notifications on my phone/desktop. One suggestion, I think the those little 'devices' are the perfect way to demonstrate why I would want this, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me that they were interactive at all. A unique color or subtle animation for the play buttons to make them eye-catching might be worthwhile since clicking was definitely a revelation.
- iambrakes 12y ago
  Great feedback. We'll look into making it more clear for future visitors.
jrochkind1 12y ago
Neat. The license terms make it difficult/impossible to use for something created by a business, or other kind of team, rather than a single individual: > The maximum number of users of this sound effects library is limited to ONE. It is unlawful to distribute any of the audio files to ANY ADDITIONAL USERS. This license allows ONE individual... So... if a company (or university department, or non-profit entity, or small volunteer team) wants to use it, they need a license for... every employee that has access to the source code repo? And another one for every new hire? Or...?
- iambrakes 12y ago
  The license is designed to work like a font or stock photo license. It's allows for a specific user individual or within a company to use the sounds for as many projects as they'd like. From my experience this is typical for most licenses on most royalty free items. The same type of license can be found at sites like Shutterstock at the Boom Library that another user mentioned in the comments. It's just the nature of the business. I believe the prices are fair for the quantity and unlimited project use. But it wouldn't be fair to just then share all of them with as many people as you had in an organization.
  - jrochkind1 12y ago
    I guess i haven't worked with this kind of stuff before, but i'm having trouble figuring out how it would work with these sounds. These sounds are meant for web apps, right? I would imagine they will wind up in a source control repository for a web app. So there's only one individual that's allowed to add them to the source control repo? The license says "It is unlawful to distribute any of the audio files to ANY ADDITIONAL USERS", does that mean it's unlawful if other individuals have access to that repo and check it out? Or they can check out the repo, but they can't... write code that uses the sounds added to the repo, only that one guy can write code? Can another individual fix bugs in his code? Can another individual deploy the code? Or to the other extreme, as long as you have one individual committing all the sound files to the source repo, the entire rest of the company can then write code using them? None of those make much sense, I can't think of anything else that does. But if Boom Library has the same sort of license and has been succesful, then either it makes sense in a way I don't understand... or nobody uses Boom Library for projects from companies or team entities, just one-man operations... or everyone's just ignoring the license and doing what they think probably makes sense. Looking up the Boom license, it does say "If you want to purchase a multiuser license, please contact us directly." So I'd guess some are doing that, and others are probably ignoring and violating the license.
j-hernandez 12y ago
Awesome effort and always great to see Atlanta on HN! Thanks so much for sharing this, can't wait to pick it up and give it a try. The demo was one of the best presentations I've seen in a while. Minor nit - I went to check who was behind it and the https link in the footer hangs, http://dunktank.co http://dunktank.co works fine though
- iambrakes 12y ago
  We just fixed the link. Thanks for catching this!
jbverschoor 12y ago
Nice... will buy.
jordansthings 12y ago
These are some nice UI sounds! If you're interested in learning more about the use of sounds in UI, I have a blog just about that called Beyond The Beep http://beyondthebeep.tumblr.com http://beyondthebeep.tumblr.com
- wingerlang 12y ago
  Interesting, although without videos or animations along with the sounds it's not very effective. I don't get the feel for the UI with text/sounds/static images.
- aymeric 12y ago
  I second the comment about the lack of videos / gifs. Also, what websites would you use if you'd needed sounds for your app?
gearoidoc 12y ago
Purchased! This is just what I was looking for Hipster CEO
- iambrakes 12y ago
  As a Hipster CEO owner, I think this is perfect!
  - gearoidoc 12y ago
    Glad we could help each other out :)
alexissantos 12y ago
Great stuff! I don't need them for any projects at the moment, but I'll probably wind up buying 'em for future use.
Spearchucker 12y ago
Cool. Problem is though that on the rare occasions where I need sounds I need very specific sounds, and if I can't listen to/preview the sound I'm not going to buy the library. Case in point, a stopwatch app I build a few weeks ago that needed beeps like a hand-held stopwatch makes. http://bit.ly/12dOjeH http://bit.ly/12dOjeH
weewooweewoo 12y ago
I was about to buy, but the sound of Bongo Beat Down cuts off too quickly. How can I be sure that I'm getting quality sound effects out of the set 300?
- iambrakes 12y ago
  I'm not sure if there was a playback issue, but I've replaced the sample anyway to be safe. The point of the product is to be a good value for the price. I encourage you to listen to all of the sounds available in the videos and listening samples to decide if it's a good value.
iambrakes 12y ago
Thanks everyone for the support today. The biggest concern has been the license and uses. In trying to make it easier to understand, we have rewritten the license in simpler terms. For anyone who purchased previously, no rights have been removed. In fact, the new license is more flexible. If anyone has questions, please reach out. The new license can be found here. https://soundkit.io/license.html https://soundkit.io/license.html
GuiA 12y ago
I just bought this. I was very excited about it - it seemed like the sounds would be varied and of good quality; and for $18 it would be a complete steal. Sadly for UI work the selection and quality are just not there. First of all, a lot of sounds (especially those in the MUSICAL TONES / RHYTHMIC / SPACEY folders) are more than a second long and use more than one note/sound. This is extremely distracting and out of place for UI - the sounds have too much "story" to them already. In UIs, the sound should subtly accompany the action, give it some weight, and that's it. It should definitely not become the user's center of attention or even be noticeable at all. That's a really hard thing to do, that even the big players fuck up - a lot of alert sounds on major operating systems are terrible, if not down right terrifying (one of my favorites ~good~ examples, as a contrast is Tweetbot 2). There is also the problem that a lot of sounds have audible static/background noise. A very noticeable one is Air Pop.wav in INPUTS. On my K240s it's borderline painful. The names of the folders are quite disappointing. SPACEY? LOOPS? RHYTHMIC? A solid set of UI sounds would have folders like APERTURE SOUNDS (with sounds from dozens of existing cameras + synthesized ones), CLICKS (with sounds from a variety buttons, some clicky, some soft, some very short, some a bit longer , some plastic-y, some metal-ly, etc.), SLIDERS (same as buttons but with sliders), and so on. Those are the sounds that UI designers need. The best ones are in INPUTS - some amount are usable, some could be usable with some editing (e.g. the slider sounds that'd need to be split into 3-4 distinct sounds for each file and then mapped to a slider), but some remain completely useless for UI work (e.g. Twangy.wav, which would make any interface feel like Microsoft Bob, or Reverse Woodpecker.wav which would make the user feel like their computer is glitching). I'm disappointed because I feel like what I've bought has nothing to do with what I, as a UI designer, was led to believe I'd get :(
- iambrakes 12y ago
  Please send a message to the support link with your email and I'll issue you a refund. Thanks.
  - nnnnni 12y ago
    Wow, that's great customer support/PR! Hopefully you'll take his(?) feedback into consideration for the sound packs -- it's a great idea, it just needs to be refined some more.

166 points by iambrakes 12y ago

I simply love those video demos. Great presentation! Gives me high hopes for the quality of sound files. Purchased immediately.

iambrakes 12y ago
I'm happy you like them. We worked hard on the product. Credit for the animations goes to http://chika-yeah.com http://chika-yeah.com
ryanthejuggler 12y ago
Seconded; I think the swishy UI interactions and the sound effects are perfect for each other. There's nothing worse than a terrible site hiding a great product, but you guys nailed it. Purchased!

swandive 12y ago

Good job on these!

adamnemecek 12y ago

What SW/HW did you use to make these?

iambrakes 12y ago
On the software side it's a combination of Reason for synth sounds and Audition for recording and editing. Sounds were recorded with the Reason Balance box and with a Zoom H6 portable recorder using various mics. Everything was mastered in Pro Tools at another studio for consistency.

zellyn 12y ago

The swoosh sounds are pretty funny: sounds like someone recording themselves making swooshing sounds :-)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
iambrakes 12y ago
We will not share our secrets. :)

JonnieCache 12y ago

If you need something a bit bigger and fancier, I can recommended The Interface from Boom Library: http://www.boomlibrary.com/boomlibrary/products/the-interface http://www.boomlibrary.com/boomlibrary/products/the-interfac... It's considerably more expensive but also considerably larger. I'm a huge fan of everything Boom do. Their nature stuff is amazing. SFX design is in my list of fantasy jobs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2prl_DTrukc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2prl_DTrukc

kekub 12y ago

Thank you so much. I was recently looking for a UI sound library, but was not able to find one to fit my small hobby projects. This is just awesome. I love your license! Best luck with it.

iambrakes 12y ago
Hope it serves you well. We welcome feedback and will hopefully be able to offer more sound packs in the future.

salimmadjd 12y ago

I've been using freesounds. They have a large selection of free sound effects: https://www.freesound.org https://www.freesound.org

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
But Creative Commons doesn't permit the use of the art past marketing. Not allowed to include it in the actual project for instance. Do I have that right?
- iambrakes 12y ago
  CC can be great for a lot of things. The biggest issue is that many people require attribution which can be tricky depending on the project. But there are some good options for CC that work well.
  - TillE 12y ago
    Just curious, which kinds of projects make attribution difficult? The worst I can come up with is that you'd have to include it in the small print at the bottom of an ad. Most other things (software, videos, websites) will have a more discreet place to shove all your credits. In general, I think CC-BY is fantastic. CC-BY-SA is typically useless for anything except open source projects.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Think playing cards with CC images, or business cards with CC logo. Small things with no room for the possibly-large attribution url.
- janzer 12y ago
  None of the CC licenses that I know of distinguish between marketing and other forms of use. The CC licenses have a range of restrictions depending on the specific one used. Freesound has a faq at https://www.freesound.org/help/faq/#licenses-0 https://www.freesound.org/help/faq/#licenses-0 The actual name of the license pretty much tells you what the restriction is though.

jamespitts 12y ago

Awesome work, definitely keep going at it. This is an overlooked aspect of UX and you could write a lot about how to use sound effectively in an app. At rapt.fm I would spend time hunting for the right sound, it was often really hard and rewarding. Sometimes I ended up using effects seemingly unrelated the intended action, but in a humorous way (for example, a smack sound for challenging people to rap battles). A lot of thought has to go into sound design. Games have done it for years but with phone, pad, and real-time web apps it is becoming crucial.

incision 12y ago

Very slick. I would definitely use this if I had a need for it beyond changing the default notifications on my phone/desktop. One suggestion, I think the those little 'devices' are the perfect way to demonstrate why I would want this, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me that they were interactive at all. A unique color or subtle animation for the play buttons to make them eye-catching might be worthwhile since clicking was definitely a revelation.

iambrakes 12y ago
Great feedback. We'll look into making it more clear for future visitors.

jrochkind1 12y ago

Neat. The license terms make it difficult/impossible to use for something created by a business, or other kind of team, rather than a single individual: > The maximum number of users of this sound effects library is limited to ONE. It is unlawful to distribute any of the audio files to ANY ADDITIONAL USERS. This license allows ONE individual... So... if a company (or university department, or non-profit entity, or small volunteer team) wants to use it, they need a license for... every employee that has access to the source code repo? And another one for every new hire? Or...?

iambrakes 12y ago
The license is designed to work like a font or stock photo license. It's allows for a specific user individual or within a company to use the sounds for as many projects as they'd like. From my experience this is typical for most licenses on most royalty free items. The same type of license can be found at sites like Shutterstock at the Boom Library that another user mentioned in the comments. It's just the nature of the business. I believe the prices are fair for the quantity and unlimited project use. But it wouldn't be fair to just then share all of them with as many people as you had in an organization.
- jrochkind1 12y ago
  I guess i haven't worked with this kind of stuff before, but i'm having trouble figuring out how it would work with these sounds. These sounds are meant for web apps, right? I would imagine they will wind up in a source control repository for a web app. So there's only one individual that's allowed to add them to the source control repo? The license says "It is unlawful to distribute any of the audio files to ANY ADDITIONAL USERS", does that mean it's unlawful if other individuals have access to that repo and check it out? Or they can check out the repo, but they can't... write code that uses the sounds added to the repo, only that one guy can write code? Can another individual fix bugs in his code? Can another individual deploy the code? Or to the other extreme, as long as you have one individual committing all the sound files to the source repo, the entire rest of the company can then write code using them? None of those make much sense, I can't think of anything else that does. But if Boom Library has the same sort of license and has been succesful, then either it makes sense in a way I don't understand... or nobody uses Boom Library for projects from companies or team entities, just one-man operations... or everyone's just ignoring the license and doing what they think probably makes sense. Looking up the Boom license, it does say "If you want to purchase a multiuser license, please contact us directly." So I'd guess some are doing that, and others are probably ignoring and violating the license.

j-hernandez 12y ago

Awesome effort and always great to see Atlanta on HN! Thanks so much for sharing this, can't wait to pick it up and give it a try. The demo was one of the best presentations I've seen in a while. Minor nit - I went to check who was behind it and the https link in the footer hangs, http://dunktank.co http://dunktank.co works fine though

iambrakes 12y ago
We just fixed the link. Thanks for catching this!

jbverschoor 12y ago

Nice... will buy.

jordansthings 12y ago

These are some nice UI sounds! If you're interested in learning more about the use of sounds in UI, I have a blog just about that called Beyond The Beep http://beyondthebeep.tumblr.com http://beyondthebeep.tumblr.com

wingerlang 12y ago
Interesting, although without videos or animations along with the sounds it's not very effective. I don't get the feel for the UI with text/sounds/static images.
aymeric 12y ago
I second the comment about the lack of videos / gifs. Also, what websites would you use if you'd needed sounds for your app?

gearoidoc 12y ago

Purchased! This is just what I was looking for Hipster CEO

iambrakes 12y ago
As a Hipster CEO owner, I think this is perfect!
- gearoidoc 12y ago
  Glad we could help each other out :)

alexissantos 12y ago

Great stuff! I don't need them for any projects at the moment, but I'll probably wind up buying 'em for future use.

Spearchucker 12y ago

Cool. Problem is though that on the rare occasions where I need sounds I need very specific sounds, and if I can't listen to/preview the sound I'm not going to buy the library. Case in point, a stopwatch app I build a few weeks ago that needed beeps like a hand-held stopwatch makes. http://bit.ly/12dOjeH http://bit.ly/12dOjeH

weewooweewoo 12y ago

I was about to buy, but the sound of Bongo Beat Down cuts off too quickly. How can I be sure that I'm getting quality sound effects out of the set 300?

iambrakes 12y ago
I'm not sure if there was a playback issue, but I've replaced the sample anyway to be safe. The point of the product is to be a good value for the price. I encourage you to listen to all of the sounds available in the videos and listening samples to decide if it's a good value.

iambrakes 12y ago

Thanks everyone for the support today. The biggest concern has been the license and uses. In trying to make it easier to understand, we have rewritten the license in simpler terms. For anyone who purchased previously, no rights have been removed. In fact, the new license is more flexible. If anyone has questions, please reach out. The new license can be found here. https://soundkit.io/license.html https://soundkit.io/license.html

GuiA 12y ago

I just bought this. I was very excited about it - it seemed like the sounds would be varied and of good quality; and for $18 it would be a complete steal. Sadly for UI work the selection and quality are just not there. First of all, a lot of sounds (especially those in the MUSICAL TONES / RHYTHMIC / SPACEY folders) are more than a second long and use more than one note/sound. This is extremely distracting and out of place for UI - the sounds have too much "story" to them already. In UIs, the sound should subtly accompany the action, give it some weight, and that's it. It should definitely not become the user's center of attention or even be noticeable at all. That's a really hard thing to do, that even the big players fuck up - a lot of alert sounds on major operating systems are terrible, if not down right terrifying (one of my favorites ~good~ examples, as a contrast is Tweetbot 2). There is also the problem that a lot of sounds have audible static/background noise. A very noticeable one is Air Pop.wav in INPUTS. On my K240s it's borderline painful. The names of the folders are quite disappointing. SPACEY? LOOPS? RHYTHMIC? A solid set of UI sounds would have folders like APERTURE SOUNDS (with sounds from dozens of existing cameras + synthesized ones), CLICKS (with sounds from a variety buttons, some clicky, some soft, some very short, some a bit longer , some plastic-y, some metal-ly, etc.), SLIDERS (same as buttons but with sliders), and so on. Those are the sounds that UI designers need. The best ones are in INPUTS - some amount are usable, some could be usable with some editing (e.g. the slider sounds that'd need to be split into 3-4 distinct sounds for each file and then mapped to a slider), but some remain completely useless for UI work (e.g. Twangy.wav, which would make any interface feel like Microsoft Bob, or Reverse Woodpecker.wav which would make the user feel like their computer is glitching). I'm disappointed because I feel like what I've bought has nothing to do with what I, as a UI designer, was led to believe I'd get :(

iambrakes 12y ago
Please send a message to the support link with your email and I'll issue you a refund. Thanks.
- nnnnni 12y ago
  Wow, that's great customer support/PR! Hopefully you'll take his(?) feedback into consideration for the sound packs -- it's a great idea, it just needs to be refined some more.