I was browsing Robert Nagle’s blog and ran across an excellent link to a Creative Commons licensed database of sounds called Freesound. It’s a community project that offers sounds, effects and samples free for use in video and audio production via the Creative Commons Sampling Plus license.

The Freesound Project community offers a variety of ways to find samples, you can browse by pack (themed collections of sounds and effects), title, tags & description keywords, and they also have “Find similar sounds” and “Find dissimilar sounds” links for each sample. All the downloads that I played with were 16-bit 44k uncompressed wav or aiff files. Pretty sweet, eh?
Currently, there are over 6700 samples available for download (and you can add your own as well).

From the “What is Freesound” FAQ:
The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, … released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.

We also aim to create an open database of sounds that can also be used for scientific research. Many audio research institutions have trouble finding correctly licensed audio to test their algorithms. Many have voiced this problem, but so far there hasn’t been a solution.

Note we are not looking for songs, or compositions. We are looking for sounds. Field recordings, kit recordings, generated sounds, … as long as the sounds are not copyrighted (in a non-compatible way) or if the sounds are made by yourself and you want to release them under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.

It really does look like a great resource for creators and producers of digital media, and a great community to boot. As a matter of fact, I’m adding it as a resource on the FresHDV Downloads page. Check it out, download a few samples, and get involved!

[Freesound]
[Creative Commons Sampling Plus license]
[Robert Nagle's blog]
[FresHDV Downloads & Useful Things]