How to Edit Sound Effects for a Sound Effect Library | Audio

By SFXsource
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Once you have recorded a large amount of material intended to be used as sound effects, the next step in creating a sound effect library is to edit this raw audio. You will need an audio editing software that will allow you to cut, fade in/out, normalize, and eq your tracks. There are many professional digital audio workstations (DAWs) out there for purchase and also several useful freewares easily found on the internet.

Open your audio software and import all of your new raw .wav recordings. Take a large batch of 40 or so .wav files to import and solo each track, thus muting the others, as you work on each file one by one, though you may of course choose the less efficient method of importing one at a time. At this point you can begin editing your recordings and then mix them into finished sound effect products. The advice that follows provides useful information on creating the most valuable sound effects possible from you .wav recordings.

1. Use normalization on each recorded sample first. Normalization increases the amplitude of each .wav file, in other works amps the volume as loud as can be.

2. Next, cut out unwanted frequencies that degrade the quality of your sound by using eqs. For instance, an unwanted air conditioning sound may be interfering with a bird chirp. To get rid of the unwanted AC simply apply a high pass filter around 2,000 Hz which will kill the AC noise but preserve the higher frequencies of the bird chirp.

3. When your sound is normalized and cleaned up with eq find a clean beginning point to the sound and either create a fade-out or more desirably let the natural reverb ring out for 1-2 seconds.

5. Mix down a 48k 24bit stereo .wav file to be used for video productions. Such 48k 24bit stereo files earn the most money as they are valued by video editors and producers for their higher quality.

5. Make as many versions of each sound recording as possible to increase your number of products. For example, if you have a dog barking 20 times then create sound effects with one bark, three barks, six barks, 10 barks etc. switching up the combinations of barks. This could easily give you 50 or more sound effects from just that one sequence of dog barks.

6. Increase your content holdings even further by using pitch shift. For example, a person's laugh can be pitch shifted down to create a deep giant's laugh or pitch shifted up to create a little child's laugh.

With a little knowledge of audio editing, simply follow the above advice to transform your audio samples into professional quality sound effects for licensing in media productions.

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