If you’ve ever watched a video – yours or someone else’s – and felt that it was feeling just a little flat, it might be lacking sound design. Sound design, or simply adding sound effects, can elevate a video far above its current state. Whether you’re adding whooshes and risers to animated text or transitions, or ambient paper rustling or rain to weather scenes, sound effects are versatile and fun to use.
Here are 40 amazing free and popular sound effects for YouTube from Motion Array and Artlist. Keep reading to the end of the article to find out how to use them in your projects and our top tips.
Summary
Part 1: 40 Amazing YouTube Sound Effects You Need to Download
Motion Array Sound Effects
1. Free Movie Sound Clips
Try something a little more cinematic for your movies and short films. This pack contains four scary soundscapes, four movie hits, and two cinematic action loops. Each one would fit right at home in a narrative film and they’re all ready to download and add to your project right away. Use them in the editing software of your choice.
Free Movie Sound Clips Download
2. Free Sleep Sounds
Relax your mind and drift off into a world of peace with these three meditative sleep ambient sounds. Calming seas and warming piano elements are perfect to accompany your yoga and meditation sessions or a moment of quiet in your films and videos.
3. Free Rain And Thunderstorm Sounds
Atmospheric, moody, but also relaxing, there are plenty of different ways you can use rain and thunderstorm sound effects. Use it to accompany your videos of weather or a particularly sinister short horror film. Or simply enjoy the sounds of nature to help you fall asleep in your evening meditations.
Free Rain And Thunderstorm Sounds Download
4. Free Crowd Cheering And Applauding
Choose from three versions of a crowd cheering and applauding in a large stadium. Movies, short films, games, commercials, radio shows, social media videos, events – these are truly versatile sound effects with lots of exciting uses. Simply pick your favorite and drop it into your project.
Free Crowd Cheering And Applauding Download
5. Free Explosion Sound Effect
One of the most popular types of sound effects, and is applicable in lots of situations. Download these six different sounds of explosions and add them to your projects. They don’t have to be restricted to action films either, try using them to add sound design to dynamic transitions, logo resolves, and animations.
Free Explosion Sound Effect Download
6. Free Little Bits of Glass
Use this tinkling, shattering glass sound effect pack to bring life to your animations, apps, presentations, and videos. It’s a clean, professionally recorded foley of glass breaking with three different options to choose from.
Free Little Bits of Glass Download
7. Free Water Pouring From The Tap
Use this high-quality water pouring foley to illustrate your videos and animations. There are four clips to choose from of water pouring from a tap, available as WAV files. Use them in commercials, animations, short films, and video games to enrich your audio design.
Free Water Pouring From The Tap Download
8. Free Movie Sound Clips
Try something a little more cinematic for your movies and short films. This pack contains four scary soundscapes, four movie hits, and two cinematic action loops. Each one would fit right at home in a narrative film and they’re all ready to download and add to your project right away. Use them in the editing software of your choice.
Free Movie Sound Clips Download
9. Free Glass Breaks Pack
Whether you’re smashing windows, glasses, bowls, vases, or mugs, there’s something in here for you to use. Breaking glass sound effects are useful in a wide variety of situations including video productions, trailers, animations, and apps.
Free Glass Breaks Pack Download
10. Free Car Braking Skid and Crash
Car brakes, skids, and crashes are fundamental parts of anyone’s audio library, and these are exceptionally high-quality versions. Choose from three variations to add great sound design to your multimedia projects.
Free Car Braking Skid and Crash Download
11. Free Pop Up
Pops are incredibly versatile sound effects that can be used from accompanying video transitions to animated bubbles, to text appearing on screen, and magical spells in video games. There are six variants to choose from in this pack, so pick your favorite or mix and match to create the ultimate combination.
12. Free Talking People
This general hubbub of chattering people is ideal for adding an extra layer of audio depth to your crowd scenes. Bring your marketplace scenes, airport scenes, shopping mall scenes, and street scenes to life with this atmosphere of a crowd of people chatting amongst themselves.
13. Free Comedy Drum Roll
Ah, yes. The comedy drum roll. Famed the world over and a comedian’s best friend. You can use these in loads of situations, from video games to game shows and comedy sketches. There are three to download in this file, so grab them and go have some fun with them!
Free Comedy Drum Roll Download
14. Free Sad Wah Wah Accent
You’ll be familiar with this sad trumpet sound effect, too. It’s the wah-wah-wah you’ll remember from comedy films when the hero’s down on their luck. Perfect for cartoons, films, games, game shows, quiz games, and other entertaining multimedia projects.
Free Sad Wah Wah Accent Download
15. Free Water Dripping Collection
Water drips consistently into a plastic bowl in this collection of water dripping sound effects for use in any of your projects. This is a great foley to have up your sleeve for a wide range of possibilities. There are a few variants: wet, with long reverb tails, and dry, which are shorter and sharper.
Free Water Dripping Collection Download
16. Free Sport SFX Pack
Whistles, crowds, air horns, shouts, it’s all in here. If you want to create the ambiance of a thrilling sports event, download this pack of eight high-quality sound effects and include them in your video productions, video games, TV shows, and commercials.
Artlist Sound Effect Packs
17. Cinematic Fuel
This royalty-free pack of raisers is the perfect accompaniment to an action-packed, heart-pounding sci-fi trailer. Each file sounds like it’s come straight out of a Hollywood science fiction movie, and will make your projects sound awesome.
18. Lush Effective Elements
Looking for a sound effect to add to as background noise, alarms, and warning signs, or general actions? Look no further than this pack of unique element sounds to download and overlay on your footage. Don’t feel limited to video productions either, why not include them in video games?
Download Lush Effective Elements Now
19. Lush Musical Elements
If you’d like a little musical interlude to transition to a different scene in your YouTube videos, try this pack of YouTube sound effects. Drum fills, musical notes, and other little audio treats are all yours to help bring your YouTube videos to life and engage your audience.
Download Lush Musical Elements Now
20. Office and Business Clips
To kick things off, let’s take a look at this versatile pack of general sound effects for use in plenty of different office situations. The pack contains 50 sound effects including things like telephone rings, shredders, keyboard typing, and even stapling papers.
Download Office and Business Clips Now
21. Saturn
Scratches, stops, transitions, rewinds, and more – this versatile collection of DJ-style sounds is perfect for your audio scapes. There are 24 different audio samples to choose from, or you can use all of them and mix and match however you like. Try adding them to your trailers and radio shows to bring them to life.
22. Cartoon & Quirk
Light, airy and entertaining, whether you’re making a funny cartoon or a colorful gaming app, try all the different 50 cartoon sound effects. It’s a huge selection of jumps, bells, whistles, and other fun sound effects, all available to download and add directly to the project you’re working on.
23. Smartphone Notification Sounds
If you’re looking for some variants of ringtone sound effects to use in your short films, here’s a pack of 50! These can be used in any multimedia project, without the copyright that comes with using ringtones from Apple or Android devices.
Download Smartphone Notification Sounds Now
24. Media Basics
No sound design collection is complete without the sound effects of a typewriter, camera, or computer. The old-fashioned click-clacking of typewriter keys or camera shutters completes any visuals of media in animations and short films. It’s also useful for accompanying animated text or photos in a slideshow.
25. Lush Whooshes
Foley doesn’t need to be limited to just designing the audio scapes of physical objects and actions. Whooshes and risers are really useful for adding sound to transitions, animations, text animations, and camera pans. This pack is perfect for all genres and all uses.
26. Wow & Flutter
Remember the old VCR players with their hypnotic sounds of clunking and whizzing? Or the old black and white silent movies? Here’s an audio pack to take you back to the 60s, 70s, and 80s and relive the glory days of the vintage film strips and video cassettes. Add these to your videos and animations when you’re doing a rewind effect for extra points.
27. Bling
End your project on time with this pack of high-quality bell sound effects. Perfect for apps, animations, short films, commercials, and entertaining presentations. Simply download the track and overlay it on your projects.
28. Insects
Walking outside at night in the summer? Someone tell a bad joke? You need the audio of crickets or grasshoppers chirping away in the bushes. There are 50 variations to choose from, and they would work perfectly to illustrate a nature scene in a film, video game, or animated video.
29. Comedy Soundtrk
Add some beats to your projects with this variety pack of snare drum rolls. Whether you’re working on a game show reveal, background sounds for animated videos, transitions, or simply want to include them in a film score, there’s a wide range of uses to choose from.
30. Skipping
Download this pack of gently skipping sounds to incorporate in your video productions, video games, apps, animations, commercials, and podcasts, or just as a handy sound effect to have in your audio library.
31. Biofeedback
Turn up the tension with this collection of human sound effects. Choose from several variations of heartbeat, cough, sneeze, and even fart sound effects to include in your thriller films, trailers, and game shows.
32. Sonic Transmission
What sound immediately makes you think of submarines? That’s right. Sonar bleeps. Here’s a pack of sound effects that includes several variants of the sonic textures to include in your projects. Whether you’re making an animation, a documentary, or a short film, you’re bound to find the right sound effect.
Download Sonic Transmission Now
33. Melodic Logos
Melodic Logos are incredibly versatile sound effects that find a home in any kind of nature video, app notification, short film foley, vlogs, trailers, and more. Download this pack of high-quality sounds and choose your favorite for your logo reveal.
34. Stampede Sub Booms
This is a pack of 30 wide bass and synth risers to help bring some tension and suspense to your multimedia projects. Use them in the soundtrack of your short films or as transitions to jump from scene to scene in a cinematic way.
Download Stampede Sub Booms Now
35. Classic Cartoon Voices
Looking for the perfect audio file for your comedy sketches? We’ve got it! Throwback to the classic days of comedy and give your pratfalls and pranks the laughs they deserve. Download these high-quality WAV files of comedy today.
Download Classic Cartoon Voices Now
36. Summer Ambients
Is there a more calming sound in the whole world? Certainly not in the whole natural world, that’s for sure. This beautiful soundscape of birds chirping is ideal for use in nature videos, meditation videos, and ambiance for forest scenes in your movies and video games.
37. Desert and Country Ambiances
This is a complete pack of forest and desert ambiance files, complete with bird songs, animal calls, a gentle breeze wafting through the trees, and it’s loopable so you can keep it running in the background of your films and video games. Whether you’re making a nature documentary or a narrative project, this forest and desert ambiance sound effect pack has everything you need.
Download Desert and Country Ambiances Now
38. Cinematic Logos
Use these cinematic logo sounds to illustrate your transitions and text animations when objects fly around the screen. There are 12 options to choose from in this pack, all high quality WAV audio files, and can be used in apps, video projects, animations, and much more.
39. Studio Crowds
Angry or shocked crowd? No problem. Here is a set of 50 sound effects for that. Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: the sound effect of crowd reactions. Use this in your next film or video game when you find yourself at the mercy of an angry crowd.
40. Electrified Magic
Sparks fly and electricity crackles in a vibrant buzz in this shockingly good sound effects pack. Use them to accompany special effects in your films, TV shows, and video games. There are 50 unique electricity, fire, and magic style sound effects to choose from in this pack, all available in high-quality WAV files.
Download Electrified Magic Now
Part 2: Creative Ways to Use Sound Effects in YouTube Videos
So you’ve decided to add some sound effects into your YouTube videos. Where do you start?
Well firstly, have a think about why you want to add sound design. Sound effects have the power to change the entire feel of your film, whether you’re making a sci-fi thriller or a comedy. They add something extra to the atmosphere of your scene, an extra layer of richness that you don’t get with just silence.
Imagine a lonely walk down an eerie corridor. The steady drip-drip of a broken pipe, rats squeaking in the distance, and the echoing of shoes on wet concrete create a much richer experience than just music.
But what about if you’re making an animation?
Sound effects don’t have to relate to physical things in the shot. Not only can you add sound effects to live-action footage but you can also use them to bring some character to animated logo reveals or text animations.
Try adding a whoosh or a riser next time you transition from a scene or introduce a title on screen. You’ll quickly see how much it adds an otherwise static image.
Overall, remember that video is an audio-visual medium. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details of what the footage looks like, but what does it sound like? Spending a bit of time enriching the atmosphere of a scene with sound effects will go a long way to making much better content overall.
Sound effects are incredibly versatile tools and can completely change the mood and tone of a YouTube video when used in the right way. There’s a vast array of sound effects to choose from, and they don’t always need to be used literally. Try adding whooshes and pops to animated text and logo reveals to help bring them to life. There’s a lot that can be achieved with even very subtle sound effects, and you’ll find that by adding sound effects your YouTube videos will become much more engaging.
