It was a breezy Thursday morning last month when New Yorkers and Jerseyans clambered to their office windows as the nation tuned in to catch space shuttle Enterprise make its final flight over Manhattan. The following day, in far away Germany, Chris Wiseman uploaded this short: a NASA video simulation of future space shuttle Orion, outfitted with new, tailor-made audio effects.

That weekend a considerable pocket of the internet tuned in to check out the clip. In just three days Continue Reading

The top three finishers from PSE's recent audio logo contest, sponsored by AudioDraft, reflect on their experiences crafting PSE's new sound logo by taking us inside the process.

Continue Reading

In case you weren't already aware, Pro Sound Effects has over 115,000 of its sound effects available online for you to peruse and demo. If you'd like a brief overview to see how it works, be sure to check out our new how-to video—and get cracking!

Our friends at Glyph recently announced the sleek new GPT50, a redesign of their GT050Q sound effects hard drive. The differences you ask? The GPT50 is smaller, with more environmentally-friendly packaging and a top-notch internal power supply that'll save some outlet space. There's even an intelligent power switch to protect against the accidental power-off disaster, and an LED that indicates power, activity and warns of drive failure, which pretty much makes the GTP50 the most smarty-pants hard drive ever. Continue Reading

Congratulations to Chris Pratt, the winner of the PSE Audio Logo contest held with our friends at AudioDraft. He will be receiving the PSE Master Library.

Our runners up are:
Entry 500 by nmusic
PSE Zapper by RoShaw

And the honorable shout-out goes to:
I want it all by Sonicpurple

You can view the entries here (the top entries have five star ratings, scroll down for Chris's with the title PSE logo female): prosoundeffects.audiodraft.com Choosing the winner was a ridiculously difficult process. In the end, we had to choose an entry that we could listen to over and over again since we will be using the logo at the beginning of all of our videos online and at conventions and trade shows.

Continue Reading

By David Sonnenschein, author Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema. Tune into David's upcoming Webinar Series on April 3rd, co-hosted with our own Ric Viers. It's the latest in their "Secrets for Great Film Sound" series - visit Sound Design for Pros for registration details!

Key 5: Find the physical or dramatic transition in the scene

The flow of drama leads us to turning points in the story that evoke shifts in physical space, intent, emotion and in general a new direction for the characters and plot. When reading the script, note where these occur, as they will serve as signposts for changes in the soundtrack as well. Continue Reading

PSE is teaming with AudioDraft to bring forward a fresh opportunity for sound designers. To illustrate how AudioDraft harnesses prize-based crowd-sourcing to tailor the best-suited audio to original video clips, we are offering the chance to design a sonic logo for PSE's exciting new motion-graphic logo. The contest was recently mentioned on TNW (The Next Web). Check out what's already been submitted here.

The winner of the contest will receive the Pro Sound Effects Master Library of over 118,000 sound effects, valued at $11,900! Continue Reading

Next Monday, March 5th, some 20,000 gaming-industry insiders will descend on San Francisco’s Moscone Center for the Game Developers Conference, or GDC. As gaming expos go, it doesn’t get any bigger than the GDC: an international attraction for multi-platform game designers, producers, artists, programmers and (our favorites) audio professionals. Which means if you're planning to be in San Francisco next week, you can count on seeing Pro Sound Effects there too.
PSE will be exhibiting at the Killer Tracks booth (#837), where we’ll be demoing the Ambient Textures Vol. 1 surround sound library: a new collection by Australian publisher and game sound design expert Stephan Schütze that boasts 1,000 HD surround [...]

By David Sonnenschein, author Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema.  Tune into David's new Webinar Series, beginning Tuesday, February 14th - visit Sound Design for Pros for registration details!

Key 4:  Sound can help express the emotional subtext

Adjectives and adverbs give flavor to the scene descriptions, hinting to the director, actors, production designer, D.P. (director of photography) and sound designer what feeling should prevail.  One can imagine a thousand kinds of “LIVING ROOM - DAY” if no emotional detail is given to the scene description and only blocking of the actors movement is indicated (which is pretty bad screenwriting technique, since this aspect should Continue Reading

Presented by Stephan Schütze on Tue. Feb. 7, 1PM EST

Industry-Leading Sound Recordist and Game Sound Designer

Why Sound Matters Pt. 3: Enhancing the Educational Environment

Register to Attend the Free Webinar

Understanding how sound impacts on our lives and how we use it to communicate is an essential part of using sound in the production of many media. Courses in film, game and music production obviously all benefit from a strong understanding of how we can work with sound.

Beyond traditional media subjects however sound is a rarely used tool in the education environment.

Why Sound Matters part 3 will continue to explore the importance of sound in our world, specifically targeting the classroom environment. Continue Reading