Sample libraries for audio production

Free Download Sample libraries for audio and video production

Sample is a piece of audio information, cut or recorded from an existing source. For example, it can be the sound of an acoustic musical instrument, or the sound of man-made or natural origin. Samples are used to create a dramatically new sound, or even entire musical compositions.

Samples can be both fragments of ready-made music, and, for example, fragments of film soundtracks and the like.

In this subcategory of our site you can find a huge number of samples which can be used for various purposes. For example, you can use them to make some cool tracks you can use in your video games. You can also use them for creating videos.

What are the samples?

Samples are divided into:

• Musical - these are snippets of songs or specific instrumental parts;
• Voice samples are recordings of different voices. These samples also include dialogues from movies.
• Natural - these are sounds of nature like the sound of raindrops, waves, birds crying, leaves rustling, etc.

How do I use samples?

Here are some ways you can use samples in the right way:

Mix them up

Unfortunately, you can't just find the necessary material, cut the sample and insert it into the track. To make the song sound right, you'll have to process the sample and the track. First of all, you have to prepare the sample for mixing.

A cut sample usually contains a lot of noise that must be removed. You can do it, for example, with special utilities, that remove noise. Once you've dealt with the extraneous sounds, you should try to combine the sample with the track. Our site has a really big selection of different samples, and we're sure that you'll find something to your liking.

To get the most out of your sample and track, try beat slicing. It lets you slic a sample down to the individual beats, which helps a lot when merging.

Copy them

However, you don't have to bother and just copy almost completely the fragments from other tracks with minimal changes. It's hard to consider a track like that as an independent piece of work, but if you're talented enough, you can make a pretty good mashup.

Sampling processing

Let's pretend you downloaded a sample from our site. But if you want it to be really good, you will have to do some work with it.

Here's how to transform the sample step by step and make it much better:

• Trim it - any DAW program will suffice for this. It's easy enough to cut the right piece. Just set the trim points at the beginning and end of the sample. If it's a loop, make sure that the end point is set correctly so that the sample loops correctly. Also, don't trim too sharply. There is still a lot of important information about the sound before the audible beat. Likewise, removing too much tail can leave you with an unpleasant dry and harsh sound.
• Normalize it - normalize the sample to a peak at 0 dB full scale.
• Darken it - To avoid unwanted clicks, check the beginning and end of the sample and find where the waves cross the zero axis. If you can't find suitable zero crossing points, use short fades at the beginning and end. Make sure that the piece of the track doesn't cut off abruptly.
• Save it - save your sample in whatever format suits your purposes. 24-bit WAV is often the best option. It's such an uncompressed audio file format that is compatible with almost any audio program.