FindSounds in a snap
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If you’re planning to add music in your podcast or if you want to design your own ringtones, FindSounds is an interesting search engine to try. The service provided by the Comparisonics Corporation, claims to index over 1,000,000 sounds on the Internet and served some 2 million requests monthly.
The FindSounds’ index base mainly consists of sound effects and musical instrument samples. Results are in AIFF, AU and WAV formats, in both mono and stereo. Unfortunately, they all need to be launched at a separate media player.
Like others, the search engine returns a list of URLs. Above each URL is a waveform display, color coded to convey the frequency content of the recording. Reds signify high frequencies, greens denote middle-to-high frequencies, blues represent low-to-middle frequencies, and dark colors indicate low (bass) frequencies. Similar sounds are mapped to similar colors, and changes in sound are seen as changes in color.
This display serves as a “thumbnail” image providing information about the sounds in a file. Users learn to “read” the waveform, that is, they can get an impression of what a file will sound like simply by inspecting its waveform, which helps them to decide which files to download and play.
FindSounds is pretty good at finding sound clips. The only wish we’d like to see is a “Find human sounds” feature, for example to find opera or just a capella songs.
Mar 6, 2007 | By Nuno
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