Dear Freesounders, For more than a year now we’ve been promising you an upgrade of freesound. Dates got shifted into the future, things took (much) longer than expected, … About half a year ago everything shifted into higher gear when the team of Vincent, Gerard, Frederic, Stelios and Jordi started getting involved deeply in freesound code. Stuff starting whizzing along, more work was done than ever on freesound "2″ or "nightingale", or now just… freesound.org again. So many things were rebuilt, reenvisioned and reimplemented that it would be rather useless to try to list them all. But let it be clear that we started from zero: the old -and relatively broken- codebase was replaced by a bright shiny new one, based on the great django framework. We know the new site creates emotional responses as you have been working so closely with the old one. For us it’s such a big change which will let freesound "breathe" again. Hopefully this new freesound site will serve us for many years to come. For us (the people behind the scenes) the biggest advantage to this new site is probably the maintainability: it will be so much easier to adapt the code, add new features, fix bugs… Talking about bugs: feel free to post bugs in this forum or via the contact form. Thanks for waiting and special thanks to the beta testers! Greetings, - The Proud Freesound team (Bram, Gerard, Vincent, Jordi, Frederic, Stelios and Xavier)

Service announcement! We’ve been experiencing some problems with the email queue on freesound because we’re sending too many emails. Practically this means that your activation / password reset / … emails might arrive a bit later. Give it some extra hours. Some of you might even encounter a whole day of delay!

Due to some needed operations on the server, we will be closed for maintenance, starting today at 12h GMT+2. Hopefully the down time will last only a few hours. You have been warned!

Hello all, a quick blog post to tell you all we are currently experiencing some problems with freesound. We’re very busy trying to figure out what exactly is going wrong and it looks like our database server is badly configured… Hold on while we tweak the settings! You might experience some glitches or more downtime today…

Hi all, As you probably know Freesound has had some difficulties lately… We managed to bring the service back to the previous standards but there’s still quite a lot of work to do. So in short tomorrow at 11h GMT+2 we will have to shut down the server, hopefully not for long. The plan is to fine tune our database and in addition deploy a new version covering various bugs. The good news is this version adds packs descriptions . Please report any bugs you may find here or via email. Thanks for your patience as we are as well trying to learn this new beast called Freesound and optimize it for a better service. stelios

Hi all, Freesound has been struggling to regain stability over the last few weeks but we are happy to announce that we finally made it:) The problems started about a month ago when we realized our DB configuration was completely wrong for our hardware and the kind of traffic we are serving. After fiddling around with it we settled for a setup that seemed to work OK. Even so, problems didn’t stop with the sounds page 404ing at times, resulting in the whole site 404ing. We’ve finally pinned this down to some horribly constructed queries our Django ORM was doing for us… After we rewrote those queries the load average of the DB server was reduced dramatically as you can see from this beautiful Munin graph which shows the load average before (pre 18:00) and after (post 18:00) we deployed the version with the fixed queries   Essentially these changes made the site more stable but our problems were far from over. Load average on our webserver machine was off the roof, making impossible for any sane sysadmin to sleep… While checking web servers logs we found repeated error of broken connections… This time the culprit seemed to be the flup module that Django uses by default to serve fastcgi. All efforts to isolate this problem proved fruitless and we finally decided to ditch flup and move to Gunicorn which in general is a good idea concerning how things are moving in the Python world. After a period of testing we deployed to production the 3rd of November and are happy to announce that the results are really good! Have a look at the graph below. Load has dropped from peaking at 11! to peaking at 4! and being most of the time at around 1. Which is expected and acceptable for the limited hardware we are running on. So sorry for the long technical post but we really felt we had to give an explanation for the poor service you’ve seen lately. With this stability we’re back at working on application bugs and even better new features Thanks Stelios

Hello everyone, we have been working in some small new functionalities that we would like to show. Here it goes: Pack descriptions: now you can textually describe the packs of sounds you create. It is as simple as going to the pack page and clicking to "Add a description for the pack…" button that will appear if you’re logged in as the author of the pack. Browse by comments: in the sounds page there is a new browse link called "browse latest comments". Following that link you will find a paginated list of all the comments that you are writing about sounds (sorted by date).  This functionality introduces a new way of browsing sounds by reading what you people are saying about them! Captcha in messages: from now on, people that have uploaded at least one sound won’t have to fill the captcha form when sending messages. Sharing geotag maps: another new feature is the possibility to share and embed geotag maps. Once you are navigating in the geotags page (sounds > browse geotags), you’ll see a new "Share this map" link below the map (this link only appears when your zoom level is greater than 2). Clicking to this link you’ll find html code for embedding the map in an external page such as a blog (preserving the current displayed sounds, zoom and map position) and an url pointing to this "portion" of the map that you can easily share. Tweaking a bit the given iframe code, embedded maps can have custom with and height parameters. Just as an example for you: Shareable link to this portion of the map   New API features: finally, we have also implemented two new features for our API. We added a new resource (the sound geotags resource) that allows to retrieve a list of sounds geotagged inside a defined rectangular area. In the other hand, we have implemented a new way to select the information about sounds that is returned in any sound list. From now on, this can be done using an optional "fields" parameter that allows to specify a list of properties separated by commas (e.g. fields=id,duration,tags). For more details check the API documentation. Well, that is all for the moment, enjoy the new features and keep freesounding!!! - frederic

Where do good sounds come from and who makes them and how are they recorded? Questions we thought we should ask a professional in field recording: Félix Blume, sound engineer for documentary films and Freesounder. Here is the full interview. by Kay Burki: What is your Profession, how would you call yourself? The usual name for my profession is "sound engineer", and I work most of the time on documentary film shootings, sometimes for video-artists too. I like the word "Preneur de son" (in French) which means something like "sound catcher".   Can you describe a typical work flow? The good thing about independent documentary filming is, there is no "typical" configuration. If I try to describe the most usual work flow, it begins of course with the shooting, which involves only one person in the sound department. Most of the time, sound is recorded on a separate recorder, and synchronized with the image by timecode. During or after the shooting, rushes (raw material, KB) are synchronized, and the editing begins. Once  it’s finished, it’s time for sound post-production: sound editing, sometimes some extra recordings of music or foleys (additional sound effects,KB) and later the sound mix. At the same time, they’re doing color correction or special effects, in order to make a final report on tape,  digital copies and in some good cases film copies are made for screenings, film festival contributions and TV broadcasting. How did you come to your profession? I came to sound through music, at first I wanted to do sound reinforcement for live music in concert. I studied and worked a bit in that way at the beginning, but I quickly found more interest in shootings and sound for video. I discovered at the same time a passion for documentary films.   What was your training for your profession, do you have a degree? I studied 2 years in France, at an audiovisual school, with a technical formation (BTS Audiovisuel in Toulouse); after that, I studied 3 years at INSAS film school in Brussels, in the sound department.   What would you advice people who would like to do such work for a profession also? I would say that it can be beautiful work, and a really good way to travel and meet people, but you first need to be passionate, to love sound, to be patient, curious and to be really specific in your choice. If you know what you want to do exactly, people will know what you’re able to do, and they will call you for their projects. And the most important thing, as most of passion-works: you must do what you really like, and not search for money with that job!   What can you tell about the copyrights on recordings of yourself? At what time do you own the copyrights of a recording or someone else does (like a publisher or producer of a movie)? Most of the contracts don’t specify anything about sound copyrights. For the pictures that’s clear though, the camera-operator doesn’t keep any pictures, and all the rights are owned by the producer and the director. For sound, it’s different. I’ve got a copy of all the sound recording of each shooting I’ve done, and I made a lot of wild-tracks during the shootings, which can be seen as a still picture made by the camera operator (can he use it for himself or not? ). I take the right to use and share all the wild-tracks, as long as they are not directly in relation to the subject (no music, no voices for example). If I’m not sure, I talk about that with the director and ask him his point of view… And since I share them for free, there’s no problem.   What did make you decide to add your sounds to Freesound.org? I think internet is a beautiful opportunity to share things, ideas, video and sounds. Unfortunately, most of the sharing platform are used by "pirates" to share things they don’t own. Freesound.org is for people who want to share the sounds they do own, with anybody who would like to use it or need it for any other project. I like the idea and I try to put in the best sounds I have! I add all the sound under Creative Commons 0 License, that means I share the sounds, for any use you want, without any need to mention me. I’ve recorded the sounds by myself, or on projects, and I think the best way to make this sound travel and exist is to share them. The end of the copyrights? Maybe… And I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing !   What equipment do you use? I usually use (and own) a Sound Devices recorder 744T, a Sound Devices Mixer 552, a MS microphone setup with 2 Schoeps CCM41 (super cardioid polar pattern, KB) & CCM8 (figure 8 polar pattern, KB) in a Zephyx windscreen, a Sennheiser MKH8060 hypercardioid microphone in a rycote, 2 lectrosonics digital hybrid HF transmitter & receiver, some additional wireless Sennheiser Evolution sets (ew 100-ENG, KB) i.e. to send sound to the camera and director, some Sanken COS11D lavalier microphones (for the wireless sets),  some HD25 Sennheiser headphones and a PSC boom. I do most of the sound with a MS setup. It’s a really good way to make good sound in documentary shooting!   What are your best sounds on Freesound? I really like the one recorded in South Argentina, in a farm close to Ushuaia, during the "Patagonian Rodeo". Once a year, the farmers go in line through the fields and the forest, screaming and whistling, in order to send the sheep to the corner of the field, and take them to the farm for the sheep’s shave. They can’t see each other but can recognize themselves with their specific screams and keep in line.   Which countries or regions impressed or did you like most on your trips? I really like America and it’s big spaces (each time it is more difficult to find a place in Europe where you don’t hear cars far away). I work a lot in America Latina and I love the people there. Lately I worked a lot in Mexico, a beautiful country!   What other interests do you have? I think human relationships are the most important thing… I love meeting new people, discover different lifestyles and listen to stories people tell me. What is your next project? I’m about to shoot a documentary in USA. We will stay in a small town close to a marine base. After their mission in Afghanistan, the marines stay there for a few weeks, to make a "debriefing", re-adapt to "real" life, and try to forget about war. They’re hanging around and we will film their deambulation in the town…     Thank you Félix Blume for your contributions to Freesound.org and for this Interview! http://www.freesound.org/people/felix.blume/ http://www.felixblume.com http://soundcloud.com/felixblume Everything is published with kind permission!

Dear Freesounders, Freesound has run some dares (friendly challenges or competitions) around 5-6 years ago. Interestingly, posts continued to be made against the original dare threads with some entries comming years later. Obviouly, this means there was some interest from the Freesound community in this type of activity. I have personally entered similar competitions on various internet sites and I would say that for the training or hobbyst musician they are a unique opportunity to work on a specific project with constraints and deadlines imposed on you. They are an excellent way to train your skills and to get feedback and learn from others. In the specific context of Freesound I believe there is a lot to be gained from interaction between Freesounders. Freesound is not just "a database of sounds" or even one that reacts to "sample requests". Freesound is a living community of people who share an interest in sound, and within this community there are considerable amounts of both knowledge and goodwill. I hope the ‘New Generation’ Dares which I have started a couple of months ago (just after the launch of Freesound 2.0) will be interesting and inspiring enough for you to participate or to follow what is going on (and perhaps vote for your favourite). But most of all, I hope they will encourage you to interact with Freesound and other Freesounders in new and exciting ways. The latest Dare is open and waiting for your entries: http://www.freesound.org/forum/dare-the-community/17489/ Closes 20 December 2011.

Dear Freesounders, It’s christmas time and the Freesound team has been working hard to bring some presents in the form of new functionalities and bug fixes to celebrate the occasion. First of all we implemented a couple of new features for the forums. From now on, you’ll be able to browse latest posts of all forums in the Latest forum posts page. Moreover, at the time of replying a post you’ll see a list of the last posts in the same thread so it will be much easier to follow the conversation. Finally, we have improved our thread unread markers so they should be working better right now! The second of our christmas presents is a very long awaited feature: deletion of accounts and sounds. From now on, you can get rid of unwanted sounds by deleting them through the Edit Sound page. If you have not uploaded any sounds, you can delete your user account through the Settings Page. If you have sounds, you’ll have to ask us for deleting the account. This is to make sure we don’t accidentally lose a lot of sounds in one go! We have also implemented some functionality to store sound Bookmarks! You will notice that if you are logged in, a new small blue address book icon will appear when browsing sounds (). Clicking this icon will show a small panel to bookmark the sound. In this panel you can set a name for the bookmark and assign a custom category (similarly to what you do with web browser bookmarks). This way you’ll be able to bookmark all interesting sounds that you hear in Freesound and organize them under different categories. You’ll be able also to browse other people’s bookmark lists through their profile page too. Last but not least, we fixed some bugs and tweaked our system to improve performance. One of the most important bug fixes is related with the creation of zip files for pack downloads. Some of you reported that pack downloading was not working properly, resulting in empty or incomplete zip files. This should be solved now (although there might still be some random packs out there that need to be fixed)! A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from… The Freesound Core Developers Team (Gerard, Frederic, Stelios and Bram)

Dear Freesounders, We have recently closed dare 8. It was the first dare to hold a vote for the best entry. Here are the results: 1ST schluppipuppie 67 points 2ND hoscalegeek 63 points 3RD Thatjeffcarter 59 points 4TH afleetingspeck 58 points 5TH AlienXXX 56 points 6TH klankbeeld 33 points 7TH Tarrei 28 points 8TH Kyster 26 points 8TH jgeralyn 18 points Full details here: http://www.freesound.org/forum/dare-the-community/17717/?page=1#post44117 All entries can be found on this thread: http://www.freesound.org/forum/dare-the-community/17489/ In the meantime, dare 9 has been ‘warming up’… We are collecting some thematic samples up to the 10th Jan, see the thread here: http://www.freesound.org/forum/dare-the-community/17659/ But no one knows yet what they will be asked to do with the samples once we got them on the Freesound database… it’s a bit of a mystery… So, come and join us… if you DARE!

Hello everyone, Yes, we know. Freesound is under a MASSIVE spammer attack. We’re discussing internally how we will handle this situation. Just deleting the spam message isn’t enough as those &*%$%! spammers are creating spam quicker than we can delete them. A few of the options we are discussing: More Captchas (funny words you have to type). All users who haven’t uploaded sounds yet and want to post on the forum will need to fill in the guess-the-squiggly-words thing. First-post-moderation. The first post of every new user is moderated. If that post is passed, you’re now free to post. We have enough active forum members to make this work, probably. Flood-protection. Right now you’re allowed to post as many messages in a single day as you like. We should limit this to max W per X minutes, max Y per hour, max Z per day. We could get these numbers from looking at the past for our most acive forum members. Akismet. Akismet is a -nonperfect- system/service that analyses a text and tells you if it’s spam or ham. Non-perfect because sometimes it flags spam as ham and vice-versa. We have this already running in freesound but right now we’re not doing anything active with the results. I.e. if a post is marked as spam we just store "hey this post is probably spam" but don’t stop the user from posting more. No posting more than X url’s in your first post. We used to have this in freesound "1″, we could revisit this idea. No posts until you have downloaded at least one sound. Some kind of flagging of spam posts + moderation. [Post your realistic ideas in the comments here!] We know that some of these are more work than others, and none of them are perfect solutions; for each of these options you can always come up with a "yes, but ….". So, we will have to make a choice and implement some of them. This should also apply to sound comments, because I fear the day those $%&#$%# discover those. Hang on people, this is going to take a while - Bram PS: On a more personal note: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh $&%^@#$$$$!

At the moment the votes for dare 9 are being counted and considerable computing power is being used to calculate the points for each participant (what a complicated points system that was!) While this takes place in the background, the Dare 10 has opened! This is the second dare inspired by suggestions from the ‘daring’ community so I hope you will enjoy it twice as much. It is great to have your participation both by entering and voting, but also by making your suggestions / comments / criticisms. So… if you are reading this… don’t just be a Freesounder… be a ‘daring’ Freesounder and join us for Dare 10… if you dare!

Hello all, On the 23rd of March I will be talking at the International Film Forum in Udine-Gorizia, Italy. My talk will be about freesound in general and its usage in Film/Video. I’m looking for additional examples of correctly credited Freesound usage in film and video. Have you ever had your sounds used in a video (with credits)? Have you ever used Freesound sounds in a video production (with credits)? Please let me know with as many details as you can, below. If you have screenshots of the credits, that would be great too… [EDIT] If you want to help: please send me screenshots and perhaps a small quote about your freesound usage: i.e. something that explains very shortly how you used freesound, what your experience with it was and maybe tell us if crediting was problematic or not. You can send this directly to me at support @ gro.dnuoseerf (reverse this last bit, but I’m sure you can guess it ) thanks a lot, - Bram

Hello everyone, We’re glad to announce that we have updated our Freesound t-shirts with the new logo! As you can see in the picture, new t-shirts are available in three different colors, men and women versions. They look amazing! Don’t they? Buying a t-shirt is another way to contribute to Freesound. For each t-shirt sold we get 5€ that will be reinvested in the maintenance of the site. Go and get yours before they are over! Then take a picture of yourself with the t-shirt and post it as a reply in this forum post! US, Canada and Asia shop: http://freesound.spreadshirt.com/ EU shop:  http://freesound.spreadshirt.net/ - frederic

This is really a short post aimed at anyone who has not yet heard of the ‘Dares’. These are friendly competitions that I run once a month. The themes change with every dares, essentially you are asked to do something with Freesound samples, adhering to a number of rules and then post your work for others to enjoy, comment and vote on. The list of winners from the previous dare is here: http://www.freesound.org/forum/dare-the-community/32358/ And the current dare is open for submissions up to 11pm GMT on 31st March 2012. The rules and entries posted so far are on this thread: http://www.freesound.org/forum/dare-the-community/32336/ All entries from recent dares should be available at the following Soundcloud group: http://soundcloud.com/groups/freesound-dares

Hello everyone, as most of you will know Freesound is a site that was started six years ago in the context of the Music Technology Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. One of the aims of the project was to create an open database of sounds that could also be used for scientific research. Freesound is being maintained by current and former members of the Music Technology Group - the Freesound team - and we are continuously researching about Freesound to learn about sounds and online communities, and to be able to use our scientific outcome to improve the site. For this reason, we are now conducting a very small survey to better understand your motivations using Freesound and at the end the nature of Freesound itself. Please, go to the this forum thread and participate in the survey! You’ll find the instructions there. Thank you very much in advance for your participation, we really appreciate your feedback… We’re looking forward to read all your answers that will help us in our research and in the improvement of Freesound!   frederic

A note from our friends running Sounds of Barcelona: "Our Sounds of Barcelona project is participating in a EU contest for best innovations related to technological iniciatives with an educational and social impact. The  project Sons de Barcelona was created as an educational initiative around Freesound.org, running workshops in schools to foster interest in music technologies among the students community by using the Freesound ideas and technologies. You can find more information about the contest entry in: http://engageawards.com/entry/68 If you think that Sounds of Barcelona is a good initiative worth promoting, please vote for it." We love the work that the Barcelona people have started and basically love everything that combines kids and recording sounds. They are the future, you know! Please vote for them so they can continue their great work. - Bram

Hello everyone, we would like to inform you that we are in the process of publishing a research article about Freesound and we would like to share it with you! This is not the first time that we publish an article about Freesound, but in this article we focused on topics that might be of more interest to all of you. The article is called "Characterization of the Freesound Online Community", and can be accessed here. In it we analyze some general aspects of Freesound like the ratio between users that upload sounds and those who only download, the goals of the freesound community, the interactions than happen in the forums and through sound comments, and the usage of tags for describing sounds. Part of this article is based on the answers you all gave in the "Freesound survey" during the last few weeks. Thank you very much for your participation in the survey. This will help us a lot to continue improving Freesound! Enjoy the article and keep on Freesounding!   The Freesound Team

We are very happy to announce that the project Sons de Barcelona (Sounds of Barcelona) has been selected as one of the winners of the "EngageU awards", a European competition looking for best innovations in university outreach and public engagement, for which we asked for your votes some weeks ago. http://blog.freesound.org/?p=229 So, thanks for sopporting the project! Sons de Barcelona is an educational initiative around Freesound, running workshops in schools to foster interest in music technologies among the students community by using the Freesound ideas and technologies. The award will help to keep improving the current activity of Sons de Barcelona and to start working on a new project dedicated to the sounds of multicultural communities within Barcelona. More information about the awards: http://engageawards.com/results  

What if there was a place where sounds could be stored for future generations, like objects in a museum? Wait a minute… There is such a place: Freesound! I could ramble on and on about this but I won’t. Please read the posts instead. Main post here for ‘rules’ and posting links to samples uploaded: http://www.freesound.org/forum/dare-the-community/32555/ (please read the bit about tags and tag your samples accordingly!) Also here, if you want to discuss / comment: http://www.freesound.org/forum/sample-requests/32556/ So Freesounders, I dare you to search high and low (attics and basements, garages, museums and old shops…). Another important point… your school or university may have a considerable amount of old, outdated, obsolete equipment stored away… You might be surprised of what you might discover and be allowed to record if you speak to some of your teachers…

Last week took place the Music Hack Day in the context of the Sónar Festival in Barcelona. The Freesound team was present and showing some new functionalities we have been implementing for our API (check the developers page if you want to learn more about that!). It was a big success, and a lot of hackers used the Freesound API to create amazing new applications! Furthermore, the Freesound Team won nothing less that four awards (given by The Echonest, Reactable Systems and Zvooq) for our hacks! You can read more about all the hacks done in the Music Hack Day wiki. Here it goes a summary of those hacks related to Freesound: MusicGene (http://zvooq.ru/musicgene/): automatic music generator using Freesound samples. Free(CC)it! (http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=Free(CC)it!): automatic creation of license-free covers of commercial tunes using Freesound samples. Soundscape Turntablism (http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=Soundscape_Turntablism): DJing with Freesound samples using a homemade turntable and some Reactivision fiducials! FreestyleSound (http://www.tamats.com/blog/?p=261): amazing iPad interface to play around and perform with Freesound samples! HackRap (http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=HackRap): live performance using a lot of APIs and including Freesound samples.

As many of you have noticed, email from Freesound is currently not working. This means that it is not possible to register, and that emails related with the forum, comments and private messages are not being sent. The problem is that the way we like Freesound to work we have to send many emails. Sending large amounts of email is no simple thing, it may overload servers, and it may bear confusions, such as our email being reported as spam and our domain blacklisted. We use an external provider for sending email, and at the moment our server has been banned from sending more messages. We are working with them in order to clarify and resolve the situation. Hopefully we’ll be back in business soon!

During the days our server was banned, we accumulated a large pile of unsent email. Yet, in order to avoid being banned again, we have to send these at a very slow rate. Unfortunately during this process some emails have been marked as undeliverable and lost forever. For those who asked: delays in moderation have nothing to do with email. Also we have NOT sent any email with "null" sender address or anything like that. We hope that the queue will be cleared in a few days. If you registered and you don’t receive the activation email in 3 or 4 days, you can click "Resend activation code" in the registration page (but please, not yet!). UPDATE: The queue is now cleared, email should be working fine. Back to normal! UPDATE 2: Broken again! Something changed at our provider side, working on it …