Sound effects are a huge part of the entertainment industry, as they add extra atmosphere to what we’re viewing, listening to, or playing. While the concept has been around for centuries, it’s interesting to see how the latest technology from companies like Pro Sound Effects is used to make sound effects more valuable than ever.
Where Are We Now?
Top Gun: Maverick won the Oscar for Best Sound at the 95th Academy Awards, while Netflix’s introduction of spatial audio on their premium packages shows how important a part of the streaming service this is. Modern sound effects can be achieved in many ways, with synthesized sound effects making up a large proportion of what we hear in modern movies and TV shows but traditional techniques are also still used.
Playing a selection of the best online casino games is another way of understanding how far this industry has advanced. Online slots are largely developed around specific themes, and the sound needs to match this theme to create an immersive atmosphere. For example, Zeus vs Hades: Gods of War mixed a rousing, classical theme with traditional slot noises, while Buffalo Blitz Mega Merge goes for a sound that reflects the wide, open spaces where buffaloes live.
The History of Sound Effects
Sound effects have been used since ancient times, with theatrical performances in Asia including a variety of ways of using sound to set the scene. This was added to by the Greeks and Romans, who went to great lengths to create ingenious machines that could replicate natural sounds like storms, wind, and thunder during presentations.
These devices got better and produced more realistic sounds over time, with the famous rain box and the thunder machine among the best examples. These 18th-century contraptions were gradually replaced when radio and movies could use more subtle, small-scale sound effects by manipulating props such as books and vegetables. Jack Foley was one of the pioneers in this field and many of his techniques became used across the entertainment industry.
This look at how sound effects are added to radio shows tells us that digital mixers and sound FX libraries are two of the current options. Other ways of creating the right atmosphere for listeners include creating your own effects or paying one of the companies that offer this as a commercial service.
What Happens Next?
Since sound effects have been a huge part of the entertainment industry for so long, we can expect to carry on hearing them. With home streaming services now so popular and speaker technology improving all the time, we can appreciate the sound effects that have been created more clearly than ever before.
The technology used to create these sounds will also carry on advancing, but the basic concept of sound effects will remain the same. Therefore, the aim of these advances will be to make it easier for content creators to introduce the right sounds at the right time, while it’s difficult for the quality of sound effects to improve greatly on what we’ve heard in the past in movies like Jurassic Park, Predator, and the Star Wars franchise.
Listen out for sound effects and you’ll hear them in every type of home entertainment. They’re made in a variety of ways, with some of these using cutting-edge technology and others from tried-and-trusted methods using physical props, but the key point is that they need to add to the atmosphere and realism.
