# Sound FX that need to be retired



## timprebble (Sep 24, 2018)

Following on from thread about the role of older sound libraries, can we agree there are a number of sounds in some of those old libraries that quite frankly need to be retired and never heard again... Note I am not denigrating entire libraries, I am specifically talking about over used sounds that most sound effects editors would identify within 2 seconds, sounds that make me cringe since with access to near unlimited resources and the ability to edit and/or manipulate them, I cannot understand how they are still used in their plain tired form...

Name your least favourite over-used sound effects?

SI: Dog next door
HE: Whistly wind
HE: Doppler truck horn
HE: Metal hatch cover


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## tmhuud (Sep 24, 2018)

There’s this weird ‘Zhhhhaaaazing’ that just wont go away. 

(Used mostly as a transition)


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## Dr.Quest (Sep 24, 2018)

Ha! I know each of those sounds so well! For me I've never used them without layering and pitching them in some way. That metal hatch was so overused. It still has elements that I broke out of it and layer in occasionally.

HE had a door squeak that was used a lot! It's in almost every episode of the Simsons but they are overusing it on purpose there.
SI dog barking
I'll think of others I'm sure.


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## gsilbers (Sep 24, 2018)

lol. i did plenty of tv show and movie stuff and this is funny. for me was that eagle sound. i dunno from where but any sort of bird on the sky scene its that eagle sound.


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## gregh (Sep 24, 2018)

Flickering fluro light buzz


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## germancomponist (Sep 24, 2018)

"Pause"


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## YaniDee (Sep 24, 2018)

Feedback just before someone uses a microphone to make an announcement (esp in comedies)
That high pitched sound when you see (usually green ) text spelled out in action movies


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## tmhuud (Sep 24, 2018)

gsilbers said:


> lol. i did plenty of tv show and movie stuff and this is funny. for me was that eagle sound. i dunno from where but any sort of bird on the sky scene its that eagle sound.



haha - thats too funny. I remember when I first heard the ‘Zhhhhaaaazing’ sound I went crazy for it. I started putting it in my own shit then I heard it so many times I couldn't stand it anymore so I purposely stopped putting it in. So one day I end up in a final mix and I hear it and I thought I'd lost my mind and I find out the sound designers put it in all over the place. hahah. We ended up winning an award for that crazy soundtrack so I guess the jury didn't mind that sound so much. 

any who- i think I've told this boring story before so ill shut up.


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## benatural (Sep 24, 2018)

Good thread! All the electricity zaps in The General, wish I knew how they made the cause I'd love to record a big library of my own


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## Jaap (Sep 24, 2018)

That eagle was the first thing that popped in my mind when I saw the thread, so another vouch for that one. Also there seems to be an fx with crickets out there which is always used when you see a warm rural image. The Wilhelm Scream was also maybe funny for a decade, but that joke is long passed and it gets on my nerves 



tmhuud said:


> haha - thats too funny. I remember when I first heard the ‘Zhhhhaaaazing’ sound I went crazy for it. I started putting it in my own shit then I heard it so many times I couldn't stand it anymore so I purposely stopped putting it in. So one day I end up in a final mix and I hear it and I thought I'd lost my mind and I find out the sound designers put it in all over the place. hahah. We ended up winning an award for that crazy soundtrack so I guess the jury didn't mind that sound so much.
> 
> any who- i think I've told this boring story before so ill shut up.



Had not read it before. Love it haha


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## Satorious (Sep 25, 2018)

Braams... so 2012


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## David Chappell (Sep 25, 2018)

"Rusty Spoke" in Omnisphere has to be one of *the* most overused sounds I know, even before I knew where it came from - can you even have a tv thriller drama without it every 30 seconds?

I'm also relatively convinced that there's only one recording of an eagle screech in existence, but I don't know what library it comes from.


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## RCsound (Sep 25, 2018)

timprebble said:


> I am specifically talking about over used sounds that most sound effects editors would identify within 2 seconds....



The "wilhelm scream", oh please kill me!, not again!.....is all over the place, i recognize it immediately, overused to death, you can hear also in Star Wars franchine.


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## Christof (Sep 25, 2018)

Bass drop.


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## timprebble (Sep 25, 2018)

One of the hardest things as a sound editor is sometimes being told to put some of these over used sounds into films - I would never put the Wilhelm into a soundtrack myself but a director made me once (black comedy/horror Black Sheep - on the directors cameo as he is attacked by a mutant sheep) and same for that cliche Hawk screech (different director made me put it in a film) so I do appreciate it is not often/aways the editors choice


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## dgburns (Sep 25, 2018)

Oh I have a good one-

That blasted car siren alarm sound that seems to be in all the ads on tv. Pretty sure it’s Sound Ideas. It really needs to go away.


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## Robo Rivard (Sep 25, 2018)

All the sound effects that annoy me come from 100% of the trailers that I hear RIGHT NOW...


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## Anders Wall (Sep 25, 2018)

SI 3000 - "ROOM TONE, LARGE - DEAD QUIET AMBIENCE"

/Anders


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## wst3 (Sep 26, 2018)

One of my mentors (we're talking a LONG time ago) really impressed upon me the need to be original in all you do. Learn from others, use SFX libraries, but always put your own stamp on it. That is so much easier today that it was 40 years ago. And yet I acknowledge that there are a lot of sounds that have grown long in the tooth.

I've used, in one form or another, most of the sounds already listed (except the eagle, haven't used that yet!). But I never use them by themselves, or unedited/unprocessed.

I suppose I never wanted my mentor to watch a show I had designed and then ask me why I used the "Ford passenger door slam" from SI volume X. No, neither his memory nor his ears were quite that good (close, but not quite.) - the point was I worked hard to create my own sounds from the source material in order to be able to really call it my own.

I should not have said never... there have been times when I have used raw sounds without doing anything else. Sometimes the director really wants a specific sound (usually because they have heard it used elsewhere), and sometimes it is a matter of time and/or energy - I'm too lazy or the deadline is too close. But that does not prevent me from trying to make them my own when I can.

If I had to guess I would guess that the sound designers seldom choose to use a canned effect like that.


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## timprebble (Sep 26, 2018)

Another way these sounds can end up in a mix is due to the picture editor using them, and the director hearing them so often they become 'normal' - to try & avoid this I always made a point that as soon as I was confirmed for a film project I would contact the picture editor and offer them help with any temp sound FX or ambiences they might need while cutting...


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## JEPA (Sep 26, 2018)

timprebble said:


> Another way these sounds can end up in a mix is due to the picture editor using them, and the director hearing them so often they become 'normal' - to try & avoid this I always made a point that as soon as I was confirmed for a film project I would contact the picture editor and offer them help with any temp sound FX or ambiences they might need while cutting...


you'r so right. Same with music temp tracks, i ask the editor to use my mockups as soon as posible..


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## yannistzav (Dec 17, 2018)

Ka-ching..!!! (Coin rain)


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## Mikro93 (Dec 17, 2018)

That damn vinyl scratch sound. Please, no more.


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## Eckoes (Dec 17, 2018)

I had to look up the “Wilhelm Scream”

I have never worked in film so I had no idea what it was. What a revelation!

I’m sure I’ll start hearing it all over the place now


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## Loïc D (Dec 17, 2018)

Computer chirps & blips everytime a guy uses a computer on screen.

I mean, if my machines would beep this way, I’d toss them by the window instantly.


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## reddognoyz (Dec 17, 2018)

that same damn hawk sample whenever you see a forlorn desert/western vista

I would wish to continue the wilhelm scream for ever


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## Parsifal666 (Dec 17, 2018)

Not sure it's an effect, but that "frozen" minimalism thing that was apparently popularized by Arnauld (and which I believe is part of the inspiration for Albion V, which helps ensure I never own that library).

I like stretched out minimalism better in Doom metal, to be perfectly honest.

And the braaaam just won't die. A couple years after Inception it should have died.


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## studiostuff (Dec 17, 2018)

I love the Wilhelm Scream...! It says to me the guys in post just don't give a shit anymore.


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## Mikro93 (Dec 17, 2018)

LowweeK said:


> Computer chirps & blips everytime a guy uses a computer on screen.
> 
> I mean, if my machines would beep this way, I’d toss them by the window instantly.


Same goes for iPhones and stuff. Can you imagine this in an Apple commercial? Like, a guy takes his iPhone 100S out of his pocket and texts his girlfriend, and it sounds like Star Trek's Enterprise from the 70s?


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## Reid Rosefelt (Dec 17, 2018)

From Wikipedia:

The Wilhelm scream originates from a series of sound effects recorded for the 1951 movie Distant Drums. In a scene from the film, soldiers are wading through a swamp in the Everglades, and one of them is bitten and dragged underwater by an alligator. The scream for that scene was recorded later in a single take, along with five other short, pained screams, which were labelled "man getting bit by an alligator, and he screamed." The fifth scream was used for the soldier in the alligator scene—but the fourth, fifth, and sixth screams recorded in the session were also used earlier in the film—when three Native Americans are shot during a raid on a fort. Although takes 4, 5, and 6 are the most recognizable, all the screams are referred to as "Wilhelm" by those in the sound community.

The Wilhelm scream's major breakout in popular culture came from motion picture sound designer Ben Burtt, who discovered the original recording (which he found as a studio reel labeled "Man being eaten by alligator") and incorporated it into a scene in Star Wars in which Luke Skywalker shoots a Stormtrooper off of a ledge, with the effect being used as the Stormtrooper is falling. Burtt is credited with naming the scream after Private Wilhelm (see The Charge at Feather River). Over the next decade, Burtt began incorporating the effect in other films on which he worked, including most projects involving George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, notably the rest of the subsequent Star Wars films, as well as the Indiana Jones movies. 

In February 2018 it was announced Star Wars will no longer use the Wilhelm scream, with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) being the last known film to use it. Other sound designers picked up on the effect, and inclusion of the sound in films became a tradition among the community of sound designers. In what is perhaps an in-joke within an in-joke, one of the scenes from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom actually features a man being eaten by a crocodile (closely related to the alligator) accompanied by the scream.

Research by Burtt suggests that Sheb Wooley, best known for his novelty song "The Purple People Eater" in 1958 and as scout Pete Nolan on the television series Rawhide, is likely to have been the voice actor who originally performed the scream. This has been supported by an interview in 2005 with Linda Dotson, Wooley's widow. Burtt discovered records at Warner Brothers from the editor of Distant Drums including a short list of names of actors scheduled to record lines of dialogue for miscellaneous roles in the movie. Wooley played the uncredited role of Private Jessup in Distant Drums, and was one of the few actors assembled for the recording of additional vocal elements for the film. Wooley performed additional vocal elements, including the screams for a man being bitten by an alligator. Dotson confirmed Wooley's scream had been in many Westerns, adding, "He always used to joke about how he was so great about screaming and dying in films." Despite the usage of the sound, no royalties are paid.

It sounds in the video game Red Dead Redemption (2010) during gunfights.


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## Eldhrimnir (Dec 17, 2018)

This hydraulic sci-fi sound (popularized by the Doom door, but originally from a SI library IIRC):



Also, this electrical zapp sound:


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## desert (Jan 10, 2019)

kid laughing


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