Being an indie developer, it is tough to gather a good sound pack for an app or game. You can hire a sound artist, and some of them do offer real cheap. For me it is a problem, because I do not have PayPal account. If a sound artist were to offer me for him to create a whole sound effects (of about 20 short sounds + 2-3 short music loops) for a simple game for USD50, I'd definitely buy it. But without PayPal account, it is hard to do so.
So, today I am going to share with you how I get my sounds done. For free. And Legally!
Generate Your Own Sounds!
You guessed it. The cheapest method is to generate your own sounds. There are many sound fx producer. But the one I use is a royalty free sound creator called - cFXR. Google it up. In my opinion, cFXR is a SUPERB sound producer. I particularly love the "Random" mode.
Another way to generate your own sounds is - record them! I have recorded some of my own voice and other sounds (like "pop", click etc) and edited them in Audacity. Audacity is also a great royalty free sound editor. You can trim the sound clip. You can also apply effects to them, like Echo, or make it sound like its coming from a walkie talkie, and so on.
Get Royalty Free Sounds From Other Creative People
I have so far, found 3 SUPER GREAT website that offer royalty-free (with Attribution) sounds.
1. www.freesound.org
This site concentrates mostly on sound effects, and not so much musics.
2. www.ccMixter.org
This site has a lot more variety on musics. For ccMixter sounds, be sure to read the author's note on how to use their work. As I understand, not all are free to use commercially. So be careful.
3. YOUTUBE!
I just found another source of good royalty free sounds. At Youtube.com! Just search for "<something>
sound effects" and you will get some. Be sure to copy those sounds where the author allows a free commercial use. Use any free online youtube-to-wav or youtube-to-mp3 services to extract the audio from the vids. Then, as normal, edit them in Audacity.
There you go.
Hope that helps.
