This is a curated list of pro-quality audio tools and resources for indie and amateur videogame developers. This list was originally compiled for Global Game Jam participants in Granada (Spain), and it was last updated on December 12th, 2020.

The criteria to make this list were: quality over quantity, no paid tools are required to use these resources, only the best element for every category whenever possible. For software, additional requirements were: available for both Windows and Mac, no licenses manager (such as iLok) required.

Want more free stuff? Follow Man from Space to keep yourself updated about the new free stuff when I release it.

Content

Sound FX
Software instruments
Software tools

1 - Sound FX

Online web sound FX repositories

ZapSplat

www.zapsplat.com

Free to use sound FX and music with attribution license. They also offer an extended license for a fee.

FreeSound

www.freesound.org

Another online sound FX repository with lots of content and a fairly capable search engine. On the con side, it has absolutely no quality control whatsoever. In order to find usable content with a decent recording quality, you'll need to invest some time.

Espacios naturales

Yellowstone National Park Sound Library

https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/soundlibrary.htm

Yellowstone National Park Sound Library. It includes the sounds of animals and field recordings of the different areas of the park.

Chiptune

Chiptune Sound FX Generator SFXR Remake

Link to Reaktor ensemble https://www.dropbox.com/s/l40pvk7tc15tzc8/rfxr.ens?dl=0

How-to-use video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRoP7iBFZ-M

Please notice this is a Reaktor ensemble, that is, you need Reaktor Player by Native Instruments to run it, therefore you need Native Access Installed and have a free Native instruments user account. As you will see a bit later, this is something I recommend you to do, for different reasons.

Nintendo NES soundwaves for Chiptune

https://www.adventurekid.se/akrt/waveforms/akwf-nes-8-bit-free/

Original Nintendo NES/Famicom sampled soundwaves by Adventure Kid. Please notice you'll need a wave table synth or a sampler to use those simple waveforms. For a free one, I recommend Vital Synth.

2 - Musical instruments

Packages

Native Instruments Komplete Start

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bundles/komplete-start/

For those who are just starting, this is a phenomenal starting package. Requires a free Native Instruments user account and installing Native Access in your computer. It has samples, sampled instruments, experimental synths, drum loops, it touches pretty much all the bases.

Orchestral libraries

Spitfire Audio Labs and Spitfire Audio BBC Discover

LABS https://labs.spitfireaudio.com/

BBC Discover https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discover/

Those two are by far the best orchestral libraries you'll find for free by a long shot. Use BBC Discover for the more conventional orchestral sound, check LABS for different sounds, including ambient and less conventional stuff, with a deep cinematic feeling.

Please notice that although BBC Discover has a 49$ price tag, you can get it for free just by fulfilling a survey.

Pianos

Sound Magic Piano One

https://neovst.com/piano-one/

The Yamaha C7 Concert Grand in a very convenient plugin engine that lets you tweak the sound to taste. It requires you to subscribe to their newsletter, but hey, it's free and pretty decent.

Electric Bass and guitar

Ample sound Ample Bass, Guitar and Cloudrum

https://amplesound.net

Ample Sound offers a free "lite" version of their sampled Bass and Guitar, plus a special Steel Tongue Drum. Just check the "free" category in their product list.

Vintage electronic and electromechanical instruments

Fairlight and Mellotron

Fairlight https://sonicbloom.net/en/free-sb-fairlight-cmi-samples/

Mellotron https://sonicbloom.net/en/free-sb-mellotron-samples/

Fairlight equals Terminator II entire soundtrack, plus a lot of the peculiar sonic signature in Jean-Michel Jarre's Zoolook.

Mellotron was a weird, tape-based keyboard. Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Radiohead are among the least weird people that ever used them. If you want a keyboard sound that gives you 70s psychedelic rock vibes, this is it.

Software

Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Mackie Waveform (Windows, Mac, Linux)

https://www.tracktion.com/products/waveform-free

Need a DAW? This is a fully equipped, fully functional DAW ready to be used. Where's the catch? There's no catch, you get all the basics for free, you pay to get all the bells and whistles.

Virtual Synths

Vital wavetable synth

https://vital.audio/

Vital is a wavetable synth and sample player with a solid sound engine, inpressive capabilities and visual feedback for everything that is happening under the hood. The free edition has a rather short soundbank, but the capabilities are exactly the same ad the paid version.

Niks' K1v

https://www.nilsschneider.de/wp/nils-k1v/

This is a very accurate emulation of the Kawai K1 keyboard, a Japanese keyboard released in 1988, including the original soundbanks. You will get the classic 90's consoles sounds with no effort. Also available for Linux.

Dexed

https://dexedsynth.com/

80's synth pop? Dexed is your new best friend. Modeled after the Yamaha DX7, the keyboard that defined 80's pop sound. It uses FM synthesis. If you want to make your own sounds, prepare for a steep learning curve. If you just want to find sounds, there are tons of banks out there, including classic Yamaha DX7, which Dexed is able to load and play quite accurately.

FM Synth is also the synthesis method used in many videogame consoles in the 80's and early nineties, as those consoles were using a simplified version of the same technology that powered the DX7: the Yamaha OPL3 sound chip.

Wave editors

Ocenaudio (Windows, Mac, Linux, Windows portable)

https://www.ocenaudio.com/en/

This is the most simple audio file editor you will ever find, free or paid. It's like Audacity, but designed and built in this century. It can use VST plugins, drag'n'drop, real time previews and a simple yet well thought-out user interface.

Samplers

CWITEC TX16Wx

https://www.tx16wx.com/

The closest you will get to Kontakt without paying.

In a wrap...

The amount of free resources can be counted in the thousands. But you should be picky about what you get, and make up your mind to compensate the lack of budget investing time, as the available resources go from top-class to almost unusable. And you can't even use other people's opinion as a shortcut, as very few people spend serious time "curating" and comparing the different alternatives. When most people say "this is awesome" what they usually mean, whether they know it or not, is "it's good enough for me, I have no fucking idea what else is there".

In Internet forums it's quite difficult to notice the difference between someone who knows what he/she's talking about and a self-entitled amateur, so you'll have to build your own opinion yourself, little by little, trying different things.

Good luck.

How to move your Native Instruments sample library to an external location (Mac)

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