Websites for Free Sound Effects, Loops and Music

Improve Presentations with Free MP3 and WAV Audio Downloads

Adding background music or sound effects to your presentations increases viewer engagement. It also contributes to message understanding and retention by setting the mood and drawing attention to key points. If you're developing a presentation for school or personal use, there are a vast number of online resources that provide free-to-use loops, clips and tracks. Commercial developers will need to review the usage guidelines carefully before using any of the free offerings on the following websites.

Sound Effects
Sound effects can help you bring your animations and videos to life. People expect to hear a certain sound when they see rain falling or a train whiz by. You can also create an audio cue for key points so that, when your viewer hears the cue, he or she will (even subconsciously) perk up and pay attention. Here are some websites where you can find sound effects for animals, people, household items, vehicles and other things:

• A Zillion Sounds 2.0 offers about 5,000 clips in MP3 format. If you have the Shockwave player installed on your computer, you can preview each file through your browser.
  
• AudioMicro offers about 2,000 free sound effect clips in WAV format. There are tens of thousands of more available for sale by subscription or single-file purchase.
  
• FlashKit, a website mostly dedicated to Flash development, offers more than 5,000 free sound effects among its resource offerings.
  
• Public Domain Sounds offers hundreds of free sounds for personal or commercial use.
  
• Sound Bible provides both free and for-purchase audio files in both WAV and MP3 formats. Some files are free even for commercial use.
  
• SoundByter is a blog that posts a free sound effect every day with an archive of effects, vocals and music loops.
  
• Freesound.org offers a searchable database of sound effects along with music loops, vocals and other audio files.
  
• SoundJay offers sound effects, loops and music tracks in both WAV and MP3 formats.
  

Music
Adding introductory or background music to your presentations can set and control your viewers' moods. Elicit fear with spooky music or calm with some classical strings. Excite them with upbeat tempos. Here are some websites offering quality background music tracks and loops:

• Freeplay Music is one of the highest quality music providers currently on the Web. They offer more than 15,000 songs in varying lengths.
  
• Looperman offers thousands of free music loops and vocal clips along with full-length tracks.
  
• Partners In Rhyme offers royalty-free WAV music loops for personal or commercial use, even providing an authorization form for you to use.
  
• If you subscribe to the Play In Music newsletter, you'll get access to its archive of music loops. They claim to post 20 new loops every month. Offerings include individual instrument loops and songs created with those loops.
  
• Free Music Archive offers downloadable MP3s of music in a variety of genres under varying licenses.
  

Miscellaneous Audio
Perhaps you need a clip from a famous speech or television program; you can turn to one of these websites for free files:

• The Internet Archive's Audio database offers millions of audio clips for audiobooks, poetry, music, news, podcasts and public safety radio dispatches.
  
• Move Sounds Central provides hundreds of MP3 and WAV clips of movie quotes and dialog clips from classic and modern film.
  
• WavSource.com offers free WAV clips from movies, famous people, and television, in addition to miscellaneous sound effects.