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Craig Smith, has digitized and shared a 27GB collection of vintage sound effects. The sounds form three collections. They consist of high-quality, first generation copies of original nitrate optical sound effects from the 1930s & '40s created for Hollywood studios. They were collected by a prominent sound editor who worked in the industry for 44 years. The fragile optical elements were donated to USC, and transferred to tape by USC Cinema students in the early 1970s. There are three collections: The Gold and Red Libraries (Gold effects start with "G", Red with "R") consist of high-quality, first generation copies of original nitrate optical sound effects from the 1930s & '40s created for Hollywood studios. They were collected by a prominent sound editor who worked in the industry for 44 years. The fragile optical elements were donated to USC, and transferred to tape by USC Cinema students in the early 1970s. The Sunset Editorial (SSE) Library was also donated to USC around 1990. It includes classic effects from the 1930s into the '80s. These effects are from 35mm magnetic film. They were often several generations removed from the originals, and not as clean, so some careful restoration was done to make them more useful. SSE effects start with "S" About Craig Smith: "I have been recording, editing, & mixing sound since 1964, and teaching sound design and technology at California Institute of the Arts since 1986. In my spare time, I experiment with implied narrative and accidental sound design -- putting together sounds & images that have nothing to do with each other to create unexpected stories."

"My background is in sound design where I freelanced as a sound effects recordist and editor, location recordist and sound designer on commercials, feature films and documentaries. I also give workshops in sound design and interactive programming. I am founder of Social Sound Design, a Q&A site for sound designers. Please come and visit, we have a superb community."

"Crumpling a thin sheet produces a characteristic sound, comprised of distinct clicking sounds corresponding to buckling events. We propose a physically based algorithm that automatically synthesizes crumpling sounds for a given thin shell animation. The resulting sound is a superposition of individually synthesized clicking sounds corresponding to visually significant and insignificant buckling events. We identify visually signifi- cant buckling events on the dynamically evolving thin surface mesh, and instantiate visually insignificant buckling events via a stochastic model that seeks to mimic the power-law distribution of buckling energies observed in many materials. In either case, the synthesis of a buckling sound employs linear modal analysis of the deformed thin shell. Because different buckling events in general occur at different deformed configurations, the question arises whether the calculation of linear modes can be reused. We amortize the cost of the linear modal analysis by dynamically partitioning the mesh into nearly rigid pieces: the modal analysis of a rigidly moving piece is retained over time, and the modal analysis of the assembly is obtained via Component Mode Synthesis (CMS). We illustrate our approach through a series of examples and a perceptual user study, demonstrating the utility of the sound synthesis method in producing realistic sounds at practical computation times."

"This Sonic Constellation Compilation is part of the ongoing series: WAYBACK SOUND MACHINE, A CONSTELLATION OF SOUNDING TIME, which asks What can we gather from sounding the past-and with that in mind, what is the relationship between soundscape and sound design? This is Part One of a three part series-within-the-series, that shares various artistic forms, and some text, of/on sound from the past, and designing and composing sound for the past."

We are pleased to announce the launch of SoundEffects, a new international peer-reviewed journal on sound and sound experience operating on the Open Journal System. SoundEffects brings together a plurality of theories, methodologies, and historical approaches applicable to sound as both mediated and unmediated experience. The journal primarily addresses disciplines within media and communication studies, aesthetics, musicology, comparative literature, cultural studies, psychology and sociology. In order to push the boundary of interdisciplinary sound studies into new areas, we also encourage contributions from disciplines such as health care, architecture, and sound design. As the only international journal to take a humanities-based interdisciplinary approach to sound, SoundEffects is responding to the increasing global interest in sound studies.

"'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces' is part of the project Reconfiguring the Landscape, which aims to establish a new awareness of our environment. This outdoor versions plays over a specially designed loudspeaker that bounces beams of sound off the surrounding buildings. The documentation was recorded with an EM32 microphone and then transcoded to binaural. Please listen on headphones. About 'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces': Using a high-definition 3D microphone, I capture the sound field of the public space in Graz and break it down analytically. I then amplify the unheard sounds, transform and compose with them, and create an enhanced sound picture. The inaudible becomes audible; putatively ambient sounds become an exciting, dynamic event."

"In the second of a series of articles on sound design in documentaries, Peter Albrechtsen - a sound designer himself - focuses on the visionary sound design of the documentary classic, Tarnation, 2003. The film's sound designer discusses the process behind the extraordinary subjective soundscapes in the acclaimed and extremely personal debut by Jonathan Caouette."

"'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces' is part of the project Reconfiguring the Landscape, which aims to establish a new awareness of our environment. This outdoor versions plays over a specially designed loudspeaker that bounces beams of sound off the surrounding buildings. The documentation was recorded with an EM32 microphone and then transcoded to binaural. Please listen on headphones. About 'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces': Using a high-definition 3D microphone, I capture the sound field of the public space in Graz and break it down analytically. I then amplify the unheard sounds, transform and compose with them, and create an enhanced sound picture. The inaudible becomes audible; putatively ambient sounds become an exciting, dynamic event."

"Sound maps are boring. Why? I would argue it's because they've become stuck in a rut that began when the idea of 'sound map' became synonymous with online, Google API-based or other forms of point-and-click, CD-ROM era interface design. If we want sound maps to become less boring, this needs to stop. But how do we as sound artists (or would-be 'sound cartographers') break free of the point-and-click model? "

"Manual for Acoustic Planning and Urban Sound Design (MAP) is a public artwork based on working for one year within the city council in the experimental role of Dublin City Acoustic Planner & Urban Sound Designer, negotiating the projects' agenda and workflow in response to how this concept is received internally within the council. This project emphasizes a dematerialized practice through which practical outputs (in the form of public sound installations) emerge as residual artifacts that are encountered as design prototypes executed within (or even by) the council itself. This approach opens new channels for the city - as an institution - to engender a sense of responsibility and possibility regarding this mode of working with sound in the urban context as an extension of existing planning and design processes."

The project set out to give a rich and rigorous account of human perception of and response to soundscapes. To do this it used overlapping methods from a wide range of disciplines, ranging from the quantitative (e.g. acoustics) to the qualitative (e.g. social science) to the creative (e.g. sound art). Qualitative fieldwork (soundwalks and focus groups) determined that people conceptualised a soundscape into three components: sound sources (e.g. a market), sound descriptors (e.g. rumbling) and soundscape descriptors (e.g. hubbub). Lab-based listening tests along with the fieldwork have revealed that two key dimensions of the emotional response to a soundscape are calmness and vibrancy. In the lab these factors explain nearly 80% of the variance in listener response. Interview responses from real soundscapes further indicate that vibrancy can be expressed in two sub-dimensions expressing variation over time and over sound mix. Physiological validation of the main dimensions is provided by images of changes in the brain during listening from fMRI scans and by changes in heart rate. Artistic work and the public responses to it illustrate the huge range of sounds and soundscapes considered positive. Tools for simulating soundscapes have been developed and seem to be effective for several purposes, including design and public engagement - that is, sound play. The project results will lead to new metrics and assessment methods for soundscapes, new ideas for design and user engagement and, perhaps, better policy on environmental noise.

"The act of listening and recording sound effects or capturing potential material for working on sound design is actually a process where the artist finds its activity as that one of the illusionist of sound, a harlequin of time, storyteller of the unknown. There are tons and tons of examples of that, and the creativity of a sound designer is actually found in that way of giving new contexts, meanings and aspects to any sound present in the world. But, as always, the best examples are those that you can identify, so all this comes to the point of inviting you to the process."

"In what we do, sounds don't just happen to exist with an 'in-built' and 'necessary' essence; they don't just have an "in-itself" by default. And even if, from time to time, there could still be a trace of the source that could have produced such sound, it is but one of the many possibilities of what a sound event or a sound object [2] may potentially be or become to us: A sound is, in our hands and in our films, the thing, not in-itself but as it makes itself manifest to the listener"

"Sound journeys is an experiment into how sound shapes the way we understand the world, created by The Principals in collaboration with sound recordist Chris Watson (sound recordist for David Attenborough and formerly of the band Cabaret Voltaire). Shot and edited by Samuel Russell, title design by Olivier Lebrun, sound and lighting technicians Pablo Gnecco and Nate Turley. Sponsored by Ford and B&O Play."

"Music From Nowhere 1st exhibition: Generator Sound Art, New York, 1990 In the Music From Nowhere series a variety of loudspeaker cabinets are transformed into acoustic sound-producing devices. The actual speakers are removed from inside the speaker cabinets and the cabinet interiors are refitted with mechanical-acoustic sound-producing systems. All devices are automated so that they work independently for an unlimited length of time. These may be modified water fountains, mechanical vibrators, or logic and motor-driven systems that articulate acoustic sounds. Each system is designed with built-in mechanical variables to produce variation or indeterminacy within the sound, thus helping to create the illusion that one is listening to a recording being broadcast through the given speaker cabinet. Each speaker cabinet has a plexiglas backing so that the viewer can see inside the box. These fake loudspeakers are exhibited together in a room so that a form of 'real' musique concrete is achieved."

"It's 200 years since Thomas De Quincey wrote On the Knocking On the Gate in Macbeth, the first serious consideration of the strange and powerful psychological impact of sound effects - sounds which aren't language or music but still carry a level of meaning which seem to elevate them above our everyday sound world. To mark the occasion, composer Sarah Angliss meets some of the world's foremost sound designers to consider the enduring power and ubiquity of the sound effect."

"Today a growing group of sonic artists engage with plants as collaborators in their processes and creations. The duo Feral Practice invites audience members to sound walks in forests to reflect on ecological and social issues in the vicinity of trees. Sound artist Mileece senses signals from plants to develop sound-generating algorithms that she combines with field recordings to design immersive sound installations, a technology akin to the one used by Tosca Terán to detect activity in mycorrhizal systems which she converts into musical notes. Cristina Ochoa and Eduardo Vindiola read signalling activity in beets and modulate their rhythmic patterns to perform with them. Leslie Garcia studies plant communication to design prosthetic devices that simulate an abstract voice for plants through a process of biofeedback."

"Fuzzy Logic is a speculative project that responds to noise pollution with music composition. Traffic noise is now the inorganic combination of individually designed sounds. A recent European law states that new models of electric and hybrid vehicles will have to make a noise by 2019: a great design opportunity! Exploiting the potential of current shifts towards electric transport, the project presents an alternative: noise itself becomes the object of design, and traffic is turned into a musical experience. Future e-cars are approached as speakers on wheels and rather than design the sound of single vehicles, we can compose the sound of traffic as a whole. Indian traffic epitomizes the future of noise, in increasingly overpopulated urban ares across Asia and Africa. The focus is on the iconic indian tuktuk. Each one plays an instrument as part of a system designed to be randomly harmonic and make musical sense as a whole - regardless individual tuktuks driving patterns. Traffic becomes a jam session, a kind of moving orchestra."

"A sound artist and musician, Cusack explores the relationship between the sound in an environment, its geography or physical features, and the people living and working there. Peter Cusack ImageHe travels the world to study and collect sounds that uniquely define cultures and ecosystems, from the crack of spring ice breakup on Siberia's Lake Baikal to the sounds of Chernobyl and other sites that have sustained major environmental damage. He is senior lecturer in Sound Arts & Design, London College of Communication, University of Arts London."