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Pack: Vintage Ambience 2 (Red Lib)

Pack sound's overall rating (9)
craigsmith

August 16th, 2019

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The Red Library is a collection of over 1,500 nitrate optical sound effects from the 1930s & 40s created for Hollywood studios. They were collected by a prominent sound editor who worked in the industry for 44 years. The fragile optical elements were donated to USC, and transferred to tape by USC Cinema students in the early 1970s.

I’ve nicknamed this “The Workbench Library”. These optical recordings were not masters, but leftovers. Editors always transferred more than they needed, because printing optical tracks was a slow process. The Red Library effects had been filed away in boxes for later use. Because of this, they aren’t as sonically clean as the Gold Library (also on Freesound.org). So I’ve done a little cleanup on these sounds, mostly fixing splices. But the goal of this project is preservation, not restoration. So embrace the noise!

Note: Gold Library file names start with a “G”, Red Library with a “R”.

Read more at (https://blog.freesound.org/?p=901)

I have been recording and manipulating sound since 1964. After graduating from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, I worked as a sound editor and production mixer in Hollywood, specializing in noisy action-adventure films that are blamed for the downfall of society. I am now Academic Sound Coordinator in the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts.

Ambience
Optical
Vintage
Western
Traffic
Room
Tones
Urban
Construction
Industrial
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R22-04-Cityscape with Horse-Drawn Carriage.wav
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Urban Ambience with horse drawn carriage and car horn …
R21-53-Very Noisy Room Tone.wav
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Very short take of a very noisy room tone.
R21-47-Noisy Room Tone.wav
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Very indistinct noise with some movement. Impossible t…
R21-03-Large Metal Cars Roll By with Motor.wav
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Rail cars roll slowly by with strange fast-running eng…
R20-09-Distant Highway.wav
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Roar of traffic on distant highway. Nothing in foregro…
R20-08-City Traffic Near and Far.wav
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Urban street scene. Constant distant traffic. Few cars…
R20-05-Distant Traffic in City.wav
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Urban landscape. Sparse traffic in background. Reverbe…
R19-52-Distant Urban Traffic.wav
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Distant urban traffic. Two takes. Old car horns
R19-51-Vintage Highway Medium Distance.wav
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Good recording of highway with many cars moving by. Qu…
R17-31-Noisemakers and Bells.wav
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Noisemakers, toy horns or harmonicas and bells ringing…
R17-12-Movement in a Room.wav
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Walking, chairs being moved, a voice in the very dista…
R16-60-Outdoor Scene with Train.wav
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Outdoor scene. Muffled train going past, some squeakin…
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