Looking for a cool sound effect for your video or audio editing project? With simple to use video editing programs like Windows Movie Maker and iMovie, just about everyone knows how to create short movie from video clips. I have thousands of videos taken from my digital camera and smartphone and using WMM or iMovie, I can create titles, add sound tracks, put in transitions, overlays, and lots more!
Click these links to preview low-quality MP3s made from the actual 16-bit 44khz WAV / AIFF stereo samples. 100% of the samples on this site are free, but registration helps us fight robots. DRUM LOOPS and BREAKS.
However, sometimes you need to “jazz” up your video a little bit with some extra audio. Adding MP3 music files is one way to go, but that’s usually if you want a long background track. If you are looking for a sound to match some type of action in the video, you’ll need to look for free sounds effects online.
Luckily, there are a lot of sites out there that have sounds you can download for free. There are also high-quality sound sites like SoundSnap, but you’ll have to pay for those professionally created sounds. If you just need sounds for your home movie, the free sites will work just fine.
FreeSound
FreeSound.org has a large database of sounds that are licensed under Creative Commons. This makes it really easy to see which sounds you can do anything with, which ones you have to attribute and which ones you can’t sell in a commercial product. For home or personal use, you can pretty much use any sound on the site.
You can search sounds or browse by tags, geotags, or packs. I really like the packs feature because you can find a bunch of similar sounds quickly because they are all grouped into a pack. You can preview the sounds, but have to login in order to download.
AudioMicro
AudioMicro.com has about 2,000 free sound effects that I found to be of good quality. They have a lot of other sound effects, but you have to pay for those. It’s not a whole lot of sounds, but it’s a decent database nonetheless. You do have to login in order to download the original sound file.
freeSFX
freeSFX has several thousand free sound effects that are also of very good quality. They also have hundreds of categories, so it’s pretty easy to find the exact type of sound you are looking for. Unfortunately, the search box on the site produces an error, so you can really only browse via the categories.
SoundBible
SoundBible.com has about 2,000 free sounds that are licensed under Creative Commons. If you want to use a sound effect that will be for commercial purposes, you can click on royalty-free sounds. This is one of the few websites where you can download the sounds without having to create an account or login.
PacDV
PacDV is a small business site with a few hundred high quality sounds added for their clients. They have a couple of interesting categories like machines, mechanical, and interfaces. On this site, you have to right-click on the link and choose Save Link As in order to download the audio file.
Flash Kit Sound FX
Flash Kit Sound FX has several thousand sound effects for flash developers. Luckily, anyone can download them without needing to register or login. Also, on this site, you have to right-click on the download link and choose Save Link As in order to download the MP3 file.
GRSites
GRSites has a couple of hundred simple sound effects that you can download for free and without registration. All sounds are free for personal use. If you need any sounds effects for commercial use, you have to purchase the commercial license.
SoundJay
SoundJay has few hundred sounds that are completely free and can be downloaded without any need to login. The files are good quality also, mostly 16-bit stereo 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz.
SoundGator
SoundGator is another site with a decent number of good quality free sounds. You do have to register and login in order to download the files. The site probably has a couple of hundred sounds.
99Sounds
99Sounds is a cool site because it has a bunch of collections of high quality sounds created by various sound designers. The collections are quite large and the audio quality is superb.
Those are 10 sites I have used in my own work that will get your just about any sound you will need. Of course, if you are willing to pay, there are lots of sites with a lot more sound effects of better quality. In this post, I wanted to only focus on the free sites. If you use a website not mentioned here, post a comment. Enjoy!
A file with the .WAV or .WAVE file extension is a Waveform Audio file. This is a standard audio format seen mainly on Windows computers. WAV files are usually uncompressed but compression is supported.
Uncompressed WAV files are larger than other popular audio formats, like MP3, so they're typically not used as the preferred audio format when sharing music files online or buying music, but instead for things like audio editing software, operating system functions, and video games.
WAV is an extension of the bitstream format Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) which you can read a lot more about at soundfile.sapp.org. WAV is similar to AIFF and 8SVX files, both of which are more commonly seen on Mac operating systems.
How to Open a WAV/WAVE File
WAV files can be opened with Windows Media Player, VLC, iTunes, QuickTime, Microsoft Groove Music, Winamp, Clementine, XMMS, and very likely some other popular media player applications as well.
It's highly unlikely that your .WAV or .WAVE file is something other than an audio file, but it's possible that it could be saved in a different format but with one of those file extensions. To test this, open the WAV or WAVE file in a free text editor to view it as a text document.
If the first entry you see is 'RIFF,' then your WAV/WAVE file is an audio file that should open with one of those programs listed above. If it doesn't, then your particular file may be corrupt (try downloading or copying it again). If the text reads something else, or you know for sure it's not an audio file, one thing you can do is try to look for another word or phrase in the file that might help start your search for what type of file it might be.
In the highly unlikely situation where your WAV file is just a text document, which would be the case if the text is readable and not gibberish, then any text editor can be used to open and read the file.
Considering all number of audio player programs out there, and that it's very likely you have more than one installed right now, you may find that one program automatically opens WAV and WAVE files when you actually would prefer a different do it. If that's true, see our How to Change File Associations in Windows tutorial for help doing that.
How to Convert a WAV/WAVE File
WAV files are best converted to other audio formats (like MP3, AAC, FLAC, OGG, M4A, M4B, M4R, etc.) with one of these Free Audio Converter Software Programs.
If you have iTunes installed, you can convert WAV to MP3 without having to download any extra software. Here's how:
- With iTunes open, navigate to the Edit > Preferences menu in Windows, or iTunes > Preferences on a Mac.
- With the General tab selected, click or tap the Import Settings button.
- Next to the Import Using drop down menu, choose MP3 Encoder.
- Click OK a couple times to exit the settings windows.
- Select one or more songs that you want iTunes to convert to MP3, and then use File > Convert > Create MP3 Version menu option. This will keep the original audio file but also make a new MP3 with the same name.
Some other free file converters that support converting a WAV file to another format are FileZigZag and Zamzar. These are online converters, which means you have to upload the WAV file to the website, have it converted, and then download it back to your computer. This method is great for smaller WAV files.
More Information on WAV & WAVE Files
This file format can not hold files that exceed 4 GB in size, and some software programs may even restrict this further, to 2 GB.
Some WAV files are actually used to store non-audio data, such as signal forms called waveforms.
Still Can't Open the File?
If your file isn't opening after using the programs from above, there's a really good chance that you're misreading the file extension.
It can be easy to confuse one file extension for another if they're spelled similarly, which means that even though they might look related, they could be in two entirely different file formats that require different file openers.
WVE is one example of a file extension that resembles WAVE and WAV, but it's not an audio file at all. WVE files are Wondershare Filmora Project files that open with the Wondershare Filmora video editing program. Others might be WaveEditor Project files used with CyberLink Media Suite.
If it's not really a WAV or WAVE file that you have, research the actual file extension to learn which programs can open or convert it.