Why are there so few stock sound effects?

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Also pig sounds, if you hear a pig in a videogame or in a movie and its snorting its always the same sound, 1 short snort, one long and another short one.
 
The way I see it, the entire stock sound library market was dominated by a few handful of companies throughout the 90's and most of the aughts. Sound Ideas, Hollywood Edge, and not much else really... If you go check out the websites of some of these companies the web layouts make them look like they haven't been updated since 2001. It just seems like a sign of complacency from all the years of complete market dominance.

It has gotten a lot better in recent years though with many smaller SFX companies popping up and offering high quality, more specialized stock libraries. Like, you could get one with just tons upon tons of different metal clang noises, instead of having to rely on the same douzen or so you've heard a million times from the more generalized old libraries. They are often cheaper and provide exponentially better value as well. Last time I looked, the old Sound Ideas libraries were still ludicriously expensive, and you don't exactly get much value out of them these days since overuse has greatly eroded their uniqueness, and more modern libraries are often available in 96khz rather than 44.1 which is a great boon for sound designers using them (you can do stuff like pitch them down heavily and still retain a lot of brightness, since those previously inaudible super high frequencies are also shifted down into the audible spectrum)

But a lot of studios still rather use their old legacy libraries instead of investing in new ones. You'll most often hear them in cheap TV productions. Even if they employ freelancers that might have access to different stuff, they'd rather they just use the same old libraries they already have the rights for internally so they don't have to bother with multi-user licenses and such.

Yup. All of this is very accurate. Sound designer for many years here.
 
Wilhelm scream ruins any scene it's in and completely drops my respect for a film.

I hate the Wilhelm scream. I hate the idea of these sound guys patting each other on the back putting their fucking stupid in jokes in the movie when it just fucking ruins it for anyone who knows what it is. Well done guys you've shown you've shown you can reference one of the most well known sound effects around, now do your fucking job and create a soundtrack that keeps me immersed in the movie please.

It's a stupid, lazy tradition and breaks immersion for anyone who recognises it.

The only use of it that made sense was in Team America: World Police as a parody.

Watch out yall, we got some haters up in here. :p

Personally it always gives me a nice internal chuckle when I hear it in a movie. I don't think I've ever heard it and thought it detracted from the film, especially when it's an action/adventure flick.
 
Return of the King uses the Wilhelm Scream at least twice (it's in Two Towers too, during Helm's Deep. Not sure about Fellowship). Like Jackson... why? Is it that hard to record a scream?
 
I like how Jurassic Park deliberately went with a completely fresh slate and did all new sound effects, and half of them wound up being extremely popular stock sounds. Raptor sounds in particular are used often.

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By the way, the absolute worst thing is not Wilhelm, it's baby sounds. There's like two laughs and two cries for the entirety of film history.

Return of the King uses the Wilhelm Scream at least twice (it's in Two Towers too, during Helm's Deep. Not sure about Fellowship). Like Jackson... why? Is it that hard to record a scream?
It's almost always used as an intentional reference, rather than any sort of necessity. It's one of Hollywood's biggest in-jokes.
 
What's really interesting is how anime seems to be incorporating American sound effects a lot more. I hear a ton of them all the time in One Piece.
 
Return of the King uses the Wilhelm Scream at least twice (it's in Two Towers too, during Helm's Deep. Not sure about Fellowship). Like Jackson... why? Is it that hard to record a scream?

Yeah it's a joke. They're used in every Star Wars film too and, I think, a bunch of Spielberg films.
 
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