What can I find here?

 A web community of volunteers collecting and offering a vast, free, public domain sounds library with all audible sounds of the world.

Everyone who logs in may upload his recordings of the world. If you record for pdsounds, you must agree to release the audio files you make into the public domain.

This means that everyone can download the sounds and use them at will - use them for education, use them to create art, use them for commercial purposes too - there are no copyrights, no strings attached to the files.

What sounds can I expect to find here?

Field recordings of cities, of nature, animals, appliances, machines, locations... People yelling, booing, muttering, humming... Crackling, wooshing, booming, zirping, beeping sounds... Scary, lovely, mystic sounds. Experiments and phenomena...

Quality

As not everyone who uploads sounds has studio-quality recording gear, nor expertise, the quality of the sounds might seem bad to some and great to others. pdsounds does not differentiate between qualities. If you like to hear a sound of starting jet-engines in a better quality, we very much welcome your second version.

What sounds will I certainly not find here?

Copyrighted music. No songs at all. Recordings of movies, plays, TV or radio shows or any other performances. Talk. Pornography.

For some more information visit the Submission Guideline.

How to participate in pdsounds?

Volunteering - Don't be shy to upload your amateur recordings.

Volunteering is easy. Grab any device that can record sounds, go on discovery, record lots of wonderful sounds, come back and upload your acoustical discoveries here.

If you like, you can upload your sounds yourself. Or you can ask for help in the forum. Somebody will help you at once. Remember that quality is of no concern.

With what can i record?

Perhaps you are fixed to the surroundings of your computer, because your microphone cable is 2m short.

Perhaps you a have a portable mp3-players or mobile phone with recording capabilities. They are mobile and easy. The recording quality that come out of those things is probably the worst, but more importantly it's a good way to start discovering all those surroundings with new eyes - your ears.

You can also plug in a microphone into your mini-disk player or dat-tape-recorder, if you are lucky enough to have such a wonderful setup - record away. Converting the recording into the needed mp3 format is no biggy. If you need help ask.

In any case, at the end we need you to have an mp3-file ready on your harddisk so you can upload it to pdsounds.org with your browser.

At the moment what this project needs most is MORE sounds. Of course there are more way you could help:

1. This project can turn into anything that its user like it to be - forming it after their needs. Think about pdsounds. Think about how it could be improved and post suggestions in the ideas-forum.
2. write articles and tutorials for the pdsounds help.

What may i upload? Submission guideline

The sound must be recorded by you!

Else you wouldn't be able to surrender the rights of that recording to the public domain, as they're not yours.

The sound can be a recording of almost anything!

A sound-panorama of your special place, a precise rendering of a needle falling on the floor, a collage, something you artistically made, synthesizer experiments, any impression you like to capture or recreate. What's the sound of 'clean'? What's the ultimate sound for 'gigantic'?

"Dont's"

We have a few exceptions. Your upload may not contain any of the following material:

1. recognizable: explicit, adult, or pornographic material
2. samples of any existing software or hardware, as the manufacturer still owns the rights on these sounds.
3. Clearly audible or recognizable material of TV-Shows, Movies, Songs, Shows, Performances, Readings...anything of which you don't have complete ownership of authors rights. Even if you can provide a written statement of the author that you have his copyright, we are not going to take it.
4. pdsounds.org is not a platform to publish your music or writings.

Talk

Note that recording talking people might be illegal in some countries just like it is illegal in some countries of the world to take photographs of people without asking for permission first. It will always be a good idea to notify people of your intention to record them and ask for permission, say for instance in cafés etc.
'Talk' in your recording should be incomprehensible.

Copyright infringements

This guideline, if followed correctly, should help you to steer clear of any copyright infringements.
If you are unsure if a recording would be ok to upload, please don't hesitate to ask in the forums first. Use a free service like mediafire or yousendit.com as a temporary storage to upload the file to. Send the file to your own emailadress. Then post the yousendit-link in the forum together with your question. This way we can download the file and have a listen before you upload it to pdsounds.

Be reasonable!

How do i upload a sound?

How do i upload a sound?

Please read our submission guidelines before you upload a sound.
Please know about proper tagging.

Simple Steps for uploading a sound

1. Preview first:

2. Click the "upload sound" button on the frontpage or in the siedebar menu.

3. Click the "choose"-button under "Add a new audio file:". A dialog box pops up. Pick your mp3-file from your harddrive and hit "open".
   

4. Scroll to the bottom and hit the "Preview"-button. Please hit it only once. The file will now upload quietly without you getting much feedback. Hang in there - depending on your internet speed an upload might take many minutes. When the upload is done, the page will refresh and you're good to continue with the entering of information.
   

5. Entering information:

6. Start at the top and go through the entry fields and checkboxes to enter information. A good title is helpful for the sound to be found. If an id3 tag was found in your file, the title box may already display a title it found in the file. You may edit that. Use a short title that best describes the essence of your recording. The artist box may contain your real name or nickname or simply be empty.
   

7. Please take time for proper tagging and categorisation. Good tagging is everything for this catalog and will let many more people find your sound!
   

8. Please give a bit of description about the recording into the "body". It's always good to know what, when, where or how a sound got recorded. You musn't do this, but it will be good for searchability and a good service to the people who use the sounds. Advanced users can use bbCode to format the text.
   

9. Hit "Submit"

 

What are the sound types/categories when i upload a sound?

The sounds get roughly classified into 7 sound-categories i made up to sort sounds into broad categories. The finer categorisation is done by freely tagging the sound with your keywords which also automatically build the index of this archive.

You can categorise your sound as:

1. Single Subject
2. Collage
3. Natural
4. Characteristic
5. Human
6. Synthesized
7. Tone / Tune
8. Experiment

Explanation

1. Single Subject
   The great devide of sounds between "single subject sounds" and "multi-subject-sounds".
   The sound tells of only one subject. It's concentrated on the sound of only one thing. It does not consist of different sounds of different things.
   Example: if you a hear a dog bark, and yelp and pant in a sound it can be a single subject sound - the subject is the dog.
   Negative example: If you hear people talk, a dog barking and a bicycle drive past in one sound it is NOT a single-subject sound.
   
2. Collage
   Copy and pasted mix of sounds that are put in a set. Say, i made a collage of different dog barking sounds to show a full range of different dog barking aspects. They were not recorded like that in real-time. I mixed the best pieces into one collage.

3. Natural
   Recorded the subject as is and did not alter it in any way. There is the sound-source and here is the mic. Can be a football-game, can be a duck, can be an elevator or anything. Sounds can be either natural or synthesized.

4. Characteristic
   Ask youself: is the sound you recorded characteristic for the think you recorded, or rather uncharacteristic? Is it a very characteristic typical dog bark or rather strange barking?

5. Human
   Any sounds made with the human body.

6. Synthesized
   Wave of the sound is generated with electrical / digital devices. Frequency modulation synthesis.

7. Tone / Tune
   Sound consists of tones. Is a tune perhaps with rythm, perhaps has melody. Or is a tone of a distinct pitch. The cellphone beeping a sharp C (also beeing "synthesized" in this case).

8. Experiment
   You experimented with stuff.

To the first question:
Is there a need for the classification of Atmo sounds? What would be the definition of atmo sounds? What is an atmospheric sound and what not?

The categorisation of sounds is a constant topic to debate and to adjust to the needs of this site. There are countless ways to give the world of sound a taxonomy. I think i have found a quite allright start for a classification for the moment.

What are "Tags"? How do i tag sounds properly?

What's 'Tagging' of Sounds.

Tagging a sound is to give it proper additional keywords. These keywords may describe the sound beyond its narrow context given by its title. The tags of all sounds form a wonderfull automatic index to find sounds by - the Library by Tags.

A title can only describe a sound to a certain extent, but tags can additionally describe what a sound is LIKE! It may describe in simple words where the sound takes place, what causes the sound, what's usually linked with the sound, its athmosphere, its feeling, its connotations.

For instance:
You are looking for a "crunchy" noise and enter that into the search. Without tagging you would not easily find the sound "Eating snacks", although it is just the perfect crunching noise. Luckily "eating snacks"-sound got tagged crunchy, crunching, breakfast, human, eating, cereals.... and more people can find it.

Another Example
Sound: Snoring
Tags: Air | breathing | Human | Night | sleeping | incommoding | steady

How do i tag sounds

Anybody who is logged in can tag any sound freely to a certain extend in order to help build a richly indexed and crosslinked library. Click on a sounds title to get to its detail page and tag away in the tagging field.

However you can only add tags to sounds but not remove them. So please be extra careful and follow the following tagging-guideline.

---

What's good tagging?

The proper form:

1. seperate tags with commas and a blank. "Tag, AnotherTag, YetAnotherTag, ..."
2. Tags may consist of several words if needed. "New York, 8 Bit, Arc de Triumph, ..."
3. put subjects with an uppercaseletter. "Church, Bells, Big-Ben"
4. put verbs and adjectives in lowercase. "mystic, chanting"
5. always put verbs in infinitive -ing form. "howling, popping, sleeping"
6. Be precise in your description when choosing a verb instead of an adjective or noun: for instance "sleeping"-sounds are different from "sleepy"-sounds.

Tag creatively but sensible!

1. Think about superior topics to the sound. Think associatively "around" the subject of the sound.
2. Is the tag a helpfull connotation? Or is it too far fetched?
3. In the end should this sound really be filed under this aspect?

Rule-of-Thumb: Ask yourself "does it make sense that..."

Example
While you're tagging the sound of snoring, you're thinking of entering "human" as a tag. Now imagine...
A user will click the tag "Human" to look up all sounds "Human". Does it make sense that he gets a sound of snoring in the result list? Yes, "Human" is a good tag for a snoring sound.
A user clicks the "Night"-tag, does it make sense that he gets the sound of snoring? Yes.
He clicks "Sleeping", does it make sense that he will get a snoring sound? Yes.
He clicks "Incommoding", does it make sense that he gets a snoring sound? Yes and no - only if it's a nasty snoring-sound.
"Nightmare", does it make sense that he gets the sound of snoring in the result-list? No, not really. This is going too far off.

Which RSS Feeds can i subscribe to?

List of all available Feeds:

Latest Sounds
Latest News
A single tag's feed. Subcribe to a certain category or tag.
A single user's feed. Visit the users profile by clicking his name, then click on "listen to user X's recent audio files". Then, at the bottom, click on the orange feedicon.

A list of 'Similar Sounds' popped up in the Sidebar. How does it work?

Similar Sounds

'Similar Sounds' is a block appearing next to sound pages. It's suggesting sounds that are somewhat related to the sound you're currently viewing.

'Similar Sounds' lists those sounds from the library that share the most tags with the currently viewed sound.

Example:
The sound "Cats howl" (tagged Cats, Pets, howling) and "Dog barking" (tagged Dogs, Pets, barking) are both tagged as "pets". They are related and perhaps show up as a 'similar sounds' because of that.

The more terms a sound shares with another the higher it will be displayed in the list of similar sounds.

Perhaps later we have more cat-sounds. They will be sharing more terms than just "Pets" but also "Cats", so they will be more related to each other. They will replace the less related dog link.

The more sounds we have, and the better the sounds are tagged, there will likely be sounds very similar in nature.

What does 'Flag as offensive' do?

The "Flag as offensive" Link

On each sounds detail page, you find the "Flag as offensive" link. When you click this link the sound will instantly be marked for review and shortly will be reviewed by an admin or moderator.

Admins and Moderators will not be able to monitor all new uploads for correctness. We need your help to discover abusive or illegitimate sounds that don't conform to our submission policy.

If you find a sound infringes on copyright or is abusive please mark it.

All sounds from a certain user?

How to find all sounds from a certain user?

Visit the users profile by clicking his name, then find the link "listen to user X's recent audio files".
You may also subscribe to an RSS-Feed of any users sounds.

Contact / Imprint

For general information or issues

please post in the "Suggestions & Comments" forum.

Mail to sites administrator:

Imprint

PDSOUNDS.ORG
Stephan Möbius
Ahr Str. 1
51371 Leverkusen
Germany
phone +049 (0) 214 3100764

Guarantee

Pdsounds cannot guarantee that all information included in its pages is absolutely precise and free of error. Pdsounds rules out any liability for damages that directly or indirectly arise from the use of these web pages. Pdsounds provides the information included in these web pages without any assurance or guarantee, whether explicit or implicit.
Pdsounds distances itself from all and any unlawful content on web sites to which a link is provided from a pdsounds page. No liability is assumed for information from these sites and all other sites to which they are linked.