2015-11-23 04:11:40 (edited by nyanchan 2015-11-23 04:13:48)

Hi.
I've released a sound effects library called "CatTools SFX Library", mainly for game developers and sound designers. The library is about 800MB and contains over 2200 sounds. Also, for smaller budget projects, you can buy each sound categories separately.
If you are interested in, please visit
http://www.nyanchangames.com/soundfx/
for more information.

I don't speak as good as I write, and I don't listen as good as I speak.

2015-11-23 19:57:30

Hmmm. At 85 US dollars, if I hadn't just purchased the NS Studio's sound library, I might have been interested.

But, for now, I believe I'll pass. thanks anyway, I save the site to my favorites, in case sometime in the future, I decide I want the library.

2015-11-24 03:46:20 (edited by defender 2015-11-24 04:03:32)

Thumbs up for putting this tool out there!


This is really interesting, I don't think 85 bucks is a price point I can afford right now, but the fact that I can buy specific parts of this library is great!


I like how you've done the demoing of this product, with the downloadable lower quality but still usable 22.5KHZ files, but I'd love to see a full track listing as well, with some descriptive info, as those really help me not only when I have the library it's self for finding exactly what I need.
Still, most of the descriptions of each category are pretty good, even if some are kind of lacking, like the swishes.

I would consider also making a Christmas discount with a relatively small window, maybe 3 to 7 days before December 25th, possibly cutting 20 to 25 dollars from the price, for those that want to purchase this as a gift for someone else, and putting another topic up on this sight in somewhere other than the developer's room with an eye catching title if you do so.
You may also consider asking Dark or another moderator to mention it in the news posting at the front of the site, or in addition adding a second smaller discount on a nearby date with an even smaller window for those that missed the first one but still want to get the library at a reduced price, possibly 16 dollars off on January 1st in celebration of 2016?  Just make sure to advertise it the day after the first discount ends if you do, to catch the people that still want to see if it's open.


I should also mention that the page for the Machines category displays in Japanese even if English is selected.


As a side note, you really do like cats don't you? smile

2015-11-24 04:02:01 (edited by nyanchan 2015-11-24 04:04:30)

Thanks Defender. I've fixed the typos. Also, uploading full tracklist and christmas discounts sound great!
Yes, I love cats. In BK3, dogs are attackable, but cats are not. In BK2, cats are much stronger than dogs. I like dogs too, but no animals can beat cats. lol

I don't speak as good as I write, and I don't listen as good as I speak.

2015-11-24 04:05:47 (edited by defender 2015-11-24 04:37:14)

I mentioned this in the last post but only because I edited it, though since you posted while I was still doing that you probably didn't see it.
The Machines category displays in Japanese even when English is selected.  Also, the swish category could use a better description if possible, and so could the Foley one.


With me it's the other way around with dogs and cats, but only because it seems like it's really hard to find a nice cat that's willing to be around people, and with dogs, almost all of them seem okay with it, but if I do find a cat like that, I usually end up wanting to be around them more than the dog.
Cats are also just so fun to watch doing what they do, the way they sneak around, or suddenly jump up on the chair beside you to say hi, with their tails twitching at the tip or tucked under their paws, or how they run across the floor to chase after things you can't see, like shadows or bugs, they also have the best ears ever, even though most hate when you touch them, and they have great noses too, though some types of dog are close behind, smile
Have you ever played with a cat using a laser pointer on a wall? It's the best! They climb up the wall because they think it's a bug.

2015-11-24 04:16:18

I'll be watching for any discounts offered.

2015-11-24 05:18:30 (edited by defender 2015-11-24 05:24:30)

After listening to the demo pack, I have to say that while many of the sounds are still usable if you aren't very picky, and some like most of the ambiance are just fine, the library isn't currently worth 85 dollars to me, and here's why.


1. Allot of the sounds have noticeable additional background noise that could easily be removed with a bit of careful noise and base reduction.
2. Some shorter sounds have long silences at the end that need to be cut out by hand before they can be dropped straight into a project, something which the average game developer that needs sounds fast, who is your target buyer, isn't willing or knows how to do.
3. The pack needs some normalization in terms of volume between files, with some being far too loud and others being a bit too quiet, and while some variation is natural, you probably want to get it as close as possible without breaking your back over it, since out of the box reliability is important here.


That said, I love this pack for it's variety either way, especially household items from a hole other country, one with allot of differing culture, and would still use it, but I wouldn't pay 85 bucks for it in it's current state, I'd pay 50 at most, simply do to the sheer amount of material there, which may seem kinda harsh but I want to give it to you straight, specifically because I like what your doing, not because I want to be a jerk about it... smile


At most these fixes would take a week of moderate work on your part, and issuing updates to those that have already bought the pack wouldn't be much trouble.
I also just want to make it really clear that I am taking the lower quality of the demo sounds into account when I make these comments, and that I've listened to all sorts of libraries of widely differing sound quality in the past.

By the way, I absolutely love that Tag Toy thing and want one now, big_smile

2015-11-24 08:50:27

Do you know any good noise reduction software that will effectively work for these sounds? A solution I currently have is only WavePad's noise subtraction feature, and it is extremely bad. It is relatively easy for me to cut silences at the end of some sounds.
Since URLs of the library archives are not security-garded, updating existing files is no problem for those who have bought the library. They can redownload and extract the files again using the same password they've been given.
Especially, some old sounds recorded by my previous equipments are bad. I want to make them better, but not sure what solutions to use.

I don't speak as good as I write, and I don't listen as good as I speak.

2015-11-24 10:29:12 (edited by defender 2015-11-24 10:29:50)

Thumbs up! It's awesome that your taking this well...


I use Gold Wave personally, which is a good step up from Wave Pad, and has decent scripts that work with Jaws below V5.7, along with a decent NVDA Add-on that works with the most up to date version, I believe that's V6.11? but even without external accessibility features it's quite usable.


The program used to be 50 dollars USD but it's now 60, though the demo is quite good and lets you do 50 actions before giving you a warning and giving you a few more actions, I think 5, before the next one, and on like that until you restart the program to get 50 more, but it lets you save your work, and the only disabled feature that really matters in my opinion, is the batch processor.
The included presets aren't that great even if you can later make your own, and some of the filters are kind of lacking, but you can do tweaking and preview what it will sound like, and the help file is very good, even for a blind user.  You can also do allot of work in the file dialog, like previewing, copying and cutting, pasting, and renaming, which almost no other editor allows.
That said, if you decide you like it, it's well worth the cash, and doesn't have a super steep learning curve, to be honest if you worked at it, you could be up and running at a very high level of efficiency in just a few days.


Audacity is a powerful free alternative with higher quality built in tools and way more room for expansion via VST plugins, but it's quite advanced and going from Wave Pad to that would be very hard without putting allot of time in to learn the interface, it's also way more geared for music than GW, which is more generalized.

2015-11-24 10:46:44

I also have SoundForge, but I don't khow how to apply noise reduction using it. Anyway, I'll try GW now. Thanks.

I don't speak as good as I write, and I don't listen as good as I speak.

2015-11-24 15:56:24

I tried some denoising using GW, and here is the result.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/102 … 20demo.wav
The rambling noise could be cleared, but I couldn't get rid of the higher one. If I try to clear it, the process affects the actual sound. Maybe, I should lower the price of the whole library rather than discounts.

I don't speak as good as I write, and I don't listen as good as I speak.

2015-11-25 07:42:25 (edited by defender 2015-11-25 09:10:11)

I usually start with the very light hiss rumble remover preset and go from there by plus or minus 3DB, then narrow it down by 1DB increments at a time until I get exactly what I want. You have to pay close attention but it's the least destructive way and you get used to it after a while.
To get rid of clicks at the ends of files, especially those that are supposed to be loopable, I use a logarithmic fade out to 0% if simply chopping it off is impossible.
To reduce sudden and unwanted noises that overshadow the main sound, I carefully isolate the exact part with a high zoom setting and directly reduce the volume as much as I can without compromising the clip, but if that's not possible, I use a partial linear fade on it instead.


For your current needs, the best thing to do would be to figure out how exactly to root the start end finish markers to the play marker position, how to trim VS just delete a sound and what that does in this program, how to set up the play controls just the way you want them through the control properties, and how to zoom on the fly, all of which can be found in the manual.
A tip is to always save in 44.1KHZ 16 bit PCM .wav format when your working on something, to never close the file completely when your done until you've checked to see that it's exported correctly, and to enable the save warning, you have a much better chance of not corrupting your project then.
Also, if you save to .MP3, get the LAME Encoder which it prompts you for when trying to save in that format anyway because it's way better than PCM.


For some files though, it's simply impossible to fix them without a really expensive software suite and allot of time, so the best thing to do is just rerecord them better or drop them in favor of a different sound.

2015-11-25 14:07:39 (edited by TalonTheDragon 2015-11-25 14:08:22)

I love REAPER for any kind of editing, not just music. I use it for all my sound production at the moment.

If you understand how equalizers work, you can already negate a lot of the damage done to most sounds. Just throw on a compressor/limiter to edge out the dynamics of the sound and you're good.

If you want, I can put together a little demo on how to edit sound with REAPER and free VST and JS plugins.

I've started to fall in love with iZotopes oZone for mixing and mastering. It is actually quite accessible with NVDA and has things like a good reverb, a good Equalizer, as well as tools for stereo imaging and noise reduction and a lot of those. Granted, it's a bit expensive, and I have free plugins to go along with it, however I think it's worth taking a look.

Sadly, as its break time at work, I don't have any demos with me, but it's a great start. All those plugins is how I achieve the sound quality of my games. Sound design is a very crutial part of games, and most people don't edit their sounds accordingly. It's just as important how the sound is mixed and equalized as it is to find a good sounding sound in the first place. Things can get loud and muddy really fast if one doesn't pay attention to fine detail.

And now I've talked forever and not even listened to the library once! I shall go do that now. Haha!

--
Talon
Wanna play my Games? Listen to my Music? Follow me on Twitter, and say hi~
Code is poetry.

2015-11-25 16:18:58

I would definitely learn audacity if you're going to do serious sound editing, especially if you want to get into productions like cut scenes or podcasts. You need to know how to multitrack if you want to go far in there. And the noise removal feature in aduacity is far superior to goldWave and wavePad in my opinion. I've tried all three of their noise reduction features, and Audacity does the best, by far, of keeping the stuff that matters as untarnished as possible.

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2015-11-25 16:43:13

My main editing environment is SoundForge + Reaper combo. Does Audacity require addons to make it accessible?

I don't speak as good as I write, and I don't listen as good as I speak.

2015-11-26 02:49:29 (edited by defender 2015-11-26 02:53:37)

No it doesn't, and it's already got accessibility as a feature that matters enough to the developers to show up in the change log for each version, which is pretty cool IMO.


I wanted to try Reaper, but I made the mistake of looking at all of the changes past the version that has the scripts and realized just how much I would be missing by using such an old build. sad
I agree with Keyisfull about Audacity's noise reduction being significantly more effective, but for me at least, even with a large amount of processing power, RAM, and an SSD, Audacity does things sluggishly and doesn't have nearly enough features when it comes to manipulating files in the viewer.
I admire him for figuring that interface out though, to me it feels very advanced, and it seems like multi track is faster over all, but I'm comfortable with what I have in GW, even if I wish the plugins were of a higher quality, since I don't do any music editing and I don't usually work on tracks longer than a few minutes at most.


But if you can figure it out and don't mind using such a powerful tool for such a comparatively simple task, go for it, seriously, Audacity is extremely useful and gets updated constantly.
Also, Gorth, you got a job?  Nice!

2015-11-26 09:30:52

Hi Defender,

Just a quick response about REAPER, OSARA makes the newest version of REAPER accessible. Version 5.11. I use it without any problems, so you're definitely not missing out on much.

--
Talon
Wanna play my Games? Listen to my Music? Follow me on Twitter, and say hi~
Code is poetry.

2015-11-26 11:33:47

Hello,
@yukio: I'll check out the library at some point, it sounds cool.
@ghorthalon: what is, or who is, Osara?

2015-11-26 12:41:20

I thought it was still Ray access?  I gotta check this out! even if Reaper is more fore music and not Foley it may be a viable secondary option...


Thanks for telling me, so with OSARA, which I assume is a set of scripts, and Reaper, how much would it cost in total?
If there are any really good and simple to use VST's that you consider to be vital, I'd factor that in as well.
I received Gold Wave as a gift a few years ago when it was still 50 dollars, now it's 60, but I'd pay up to 150 for a decent and accessible editor.

2015-11-28 21:21:06

Hi Ghorthalon
iZotope Ozone is accessible using NVDA flat review and briding, or is it native?

I'm considering it.

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2015-11-29 14:30:12

Hi,

Defender: REAPER costs $60 for a standard user license. Ozone I think is about $299, but well worth it. But definitely not a requirement. You can achieve everything it does with free plugins...But you might be searching a while.
By the way, you can even edit video in REAPER, so I don't think it's only aimed for music. In fact, you can switch all the musical editing features off to allow sample-accurate editing.

Oriol, it's funny because Ozone is one of the only VST's that I found has native access and makes most of it's controls accessible natively. Not many seem to do that.

--
Talon
Wanna play my Games? Listen to my Music? Follow me on Twitter, and say hi~
Code is poetry.