 Have you ever found yourself wanting 26 variations of an alpaca mating call?
Have you just realized that you now want 26 variations of an alpaca mating call? Yeah, that’s basically what happened to me too. I’m pretty new to sound design - it started out as a hobby during my first year of college and since then, I've found myself in not insubstantial debt to a lovely college in Chicago and with an incurable addiction to awesome sound effects. Most of my experience in school had me weaned pretty cleanly onto the Sound Ideas and Hollywood Edge standard libraries, but once I had graduated and starting working on my own podcast series and contracting with my friend’s growing studio, I needed my own library and one without a price tag that made me cry inconsolably. The Hybrid Library found it’s way onto my feed as the result of a mass ‘liking’ spree via social media. One of my teachers (wisely) advised us to follow others in the business and take advantage of job and equipment discounts they would occasionally post. Pro Sound Effects ended up falling in that mix, and I really really liked the $1500 price tag they had assigned to the Hybrid Library. After spending most of the day pouring over the demos and PDF files to see if it had some of the random effects that I’d been having recent trouble finding to see if they were just as good as advertised (I really needed bullet shell casings dropping on not wood floors, and yes, they had them), I applied for the discount and was accepted almost immediately. The ordering process was extremely smooth, my contact at Pro Sounds Effects (hi Jeremy!) was very friendly and helpful the entire time. The hard drive arrived about a week after it shipped, and I managed to staunch my hemorrhaging cash flow enough to start working with my new library. It’s really pretty. I like it a lot. The variety on this hard drive is fantastic. A couple of blind spots I've had continuous complaints with for Sound Ideas and Hollywood Edge were a lack of updated tech/sci-fi sounds, game interaction sounds, whooshes, animals, and clean sounding small foley. The Hybrid Library contains an abundant amount of all these effects (remember the Alpacas?) and I can already see this will be a boon to my sanity. I also like how much cleaner and to date many of these effects are compared with my experience in Sound Ideas and even Hollywood edge. Not that they skimp on the standard fare of a lot of ambiance, mechanicals, weaponry, etc, but it feels much more balanced and well rounded. In particular, having both the Foundation Library and Sonopedia working together to lay your groundwork really boosts the variety and amount of sounds you have to work with. My complaints are very few and far between. There are a few packs that are less cleanly recorded than I prefer to use. In particular, the Buzzsaw 2 library felt very repetitive and Rare Animals in particular doesn’t give a lot of close range, isolated sounds. Beyond this, for my personal taste, I wanted a bit more options for footsteps, and impact/close combat foley. And to Pro Sound Effect’s credit, it looks like there’s an expansion (also on sale right now) that looks to address those concerns. Since I already had Boom’s Fantasy and Sci-Fi Packs (areas that the expansion also seemed to address and supplement), I picked up a few other libraries that also went on sale for the holidays to patch my own solution together, and I’m very pleased with the results. I’m coming out very much in the green in this case and I couldn’t be happier for the opportunity. I’m still getting my feet wet with this library, so this is mostly my initial impressions of things, but so far it was unquestionably worth the investment as a new and independent creator. The Hybrid Library is currently available at a special low price of $1500 for qualifying freelancers through the end of the year, and as of the writing of this review, there are still 30 units left. For more information and to apply, visit Pro Sound Effects Website for details.
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