The Sound Board

Only 13 hours left on this at time of writing, at VST buzz [EDIT - that's nonsense from me, I was reading days as hours!]. Often people post about needing sound effects - I own a ton, but there's no such thing as enough. 10,000 sounds, 30 GB in 16/24bit WAV form. This looks like a genuinely excellent bargain, am ordering now...

http://vstbuzz.com/deals/75-off-studiob ... t-service/

99 euros (+VAT where applicable)

It looks to me like there are 12 days left on this one, Guy.

But thanks for pointing it out. As someone who doesn't need or use SFX very often, it's nice to hear that you think it's useful and a good value. I have shied away from buying SFX because, years ago, I bought some and then found the license to be so restrictive that I never used them. So, I went to the Best Service website, and this is the license listed there:

"License Agreement"

"Basically, all the sounds from Studio Box MK III may be used royalty free."

"The purchaser of the media or download is authorized to use the sounds for his music-, multimedia-, film-, TV-, radio-, games-, webcast- or similar production in context, and only as long as no isolated samples, loops or phrases become available for a third party as a similar kind of sound file. It is not allowed to use the samples and programs within a network if this opens the possibility to be used simultaneously by multiple users."

---

Seems pretty fair and not very restrictive. What do you think?

Did you buy them from Big Fish, Joe?

Do you mean the ones with the restrictive license? I don't remember, but I don't think that they came from Big Fish. They've been deleted from my hard drive, since I didn't use them. It was long enough ago that they came on CD's, which have probably been pitched or recycled.

Joe - doh! Thanks for pointing it out, now corrected. And good news of course - I'm doing a lot of charging around for work and family at the moment, but by tomorrow I should have downloaded and will give a bit of feedback. I'm not expecting any nasty surprises - the quality in the short examples sounds just fine and they're mostly part of old and well respected collections as far as I can tell.

With SFX, it's not exactly a reversal of the old quality / quantity argument, but I do find quantity very important - if that quantity represents true variety, not tiny variations. From the most banal workaday stuff to the most esoteric or fantastical, sound effects are a bottomless pit and you never know what you might need tomorrow. I don't get too excited if there's 700 sfx on just water drops, but if there's a high quality, broad high volume set on at a deep discount, I tend to pounce. The gaps in my arsenal accordingly have reduced to very few.

Good realistic electric cars... still need those....

A very quick first impression - I'd say 75% of the library is terrific, and 25% poor, mostly because of truncated ends. It afflicts certain sections of the library and not others - the human section for example, all the laughs and applauses are essentially unusable because they just cut off. That's shockingly bad. If that were the whole library I'd be ranting and raving, but so much else is great and useful, I can live with some holes for a hundred quid.