About

About pdsounds.org

Mission

The mission is to record and share recordings of everything that we can hear. This will only be limited by what personally struck us to record it, and by common sense.

Let's capture acoustical images, enviroments, things, do fieldrecordings, effects, and collages. Let's put the recordings in the public domain and offer them for download so everyone can make use of them how they wish.

The Name

The idea behind the name pdsounds is simple and straighforward - it translates to "public domain sounds".

Underlying concept

We 'look' for information but seldom listen, because our visual senses are dominating. We like photography, don't we? With pdsounds we try to shift our mode of perception for a moment and concentrate on the information that sounds give us. Do some "phonography."

Sounds have qualities and characteristics, and they evoke reactions as much as pictures do. But we rarely really listen to the stories they tell.

Basic Principles

1. pdsounds is a non-commercial, non-profit and ad-free project
2. pdsounds donates its recordings to the public domain
3. pdsounds is powered by volunteers
4. pdsounds maintains a loose and open structure
5. pdsounds welcomes all volunteers from across the globe

Who's idea was it?

I'd like to claim this idea, but the idea is a result of being around HughMcGuire, the founder of LibriVox.

Hugh had the idea to have a bunch of friends record chapters of a book with him and turn it into an audiobook as a collaborative effort. The goal was to have the full audiobook recorded and put on the net for free.

Hugh saw the potential and expanded the idea of a collaborative effort to record books for free - he put up a small website to found a community, which since then continues to evolve the idea on its own. It has quickly grown to be a huge community of thousands of volunteers recording many douzens of works EACH MONTH in a well-organised fashion. They reached a bigger output rate than the biggest commercial audiobook publishing groups.

I first became a LibriVox enthusiast and spent lots of time thinking and working for it and was designated admin. While i participated in the editing of the Ulysses project I needed sounds. I had the idea to have the LibriVox volunteers also record and share public domain sounds, to be used for bigger LibriVox audio projects. With the input of other Librivoxers, it became clear that such a project would be worth a site and a community of it's own.

About me

I studied at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences and have a degree in Communication Design.

You can contact me at: