Review: Pro Sound Effects Hybrid Library

As video production professionals, we’re always looking for the best tools to help us make our productions the best they can be. Often we buy software products that make our postproduction workflows more efficient. Sometimes we buy hardware that can make our images stand out.

But depending on your clientele and the types of videos you produce, you may also need an extensive sound effects library. Many of us have production-related applications that come with some loops and effects built-in, but when it comes to variety, nothing compares to a dedicated SFX library. New York-based Pro Sound Effects offers the Hybrid Library for your consideration as a next-level SFX package.

Content

The Hybrid Library from Pro Sound Effects comes with more than 56,000 sound effects and is offered on a compact, portable USB 3.0 hard drive (Figure 1, below). In addition to the royalty-free usage, this library offers curated effects from world-class recordists like the BBC, Blastwave FX and BOOM.

Figure 1. The Pro Sound Effects Hybrid Library

If 56,000+ effects isn’t enough for your project, you also get online access to PSE’s library of more than 215,000 effects and free annual updates (Figure 2, below).

Figure 2. Accessing the Online Library

Searchability

What good is a library of thousands of effects if you can’t find what you’re looking for? PSE has addressed this problem by including extensive metadata with each track. Using an SFX library organizer or the DAW of your preference, the Hybrid Library can be searched efficiently by keywords (Figure 3, below).

Figure 3. Searching the library