Tag yourself, I'm "VHF receiver with aerial disconnected."

June 19, 2024 12:34 PM

BBC Rewind has a collection of freely downloadable sound effects available, as well as a mixer mode you can use to play around with them to your heart's content. For the deep-cut retrotech enthusiasts among us, I call your attention to the Electronics section, but there's a lot here to enjoy.
posted by mhoye (12 comments total)

Important to note that these are only free for personal, non-commercial use with attribution to the BBC. That probably rules out advertising-funded social media use.
posted by Lanark at 12:57 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

*clicks "destruction"* ooo, i'm gonna have fun with this
posted by HearHere at 1:02 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

Here for the post title.
posted by mykescipark at 1:05 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

I am "Telephones: American - American Telephone: Western Electric wall telephone loud ringing tone." Also I looked into how much it would cost to buy one of these sounds and they are super reasonable. That one was $5.
posted by jessamyn at 1:25 PM on June 19 [2 favorites]

This is wonderful - back in college radio/theatre days (which for me was late 80s), you could have the BBC sound effects library on a stack of *records* with a nice index! I'm sure a lot of these were on those albums.
posted by scolbath at 1:31 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

THIS IS AWESOME OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH
posted by capnsue at 1:32 PM on June 19

A lot of the weirder electronic sounds (some of them mysteriously labeled "(Specially created electronic sound.)") have a distinct... Whovian flavor to them, which I enjoy.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:54 PM on June 19

the Who link is no surprise, since after the Goons stopped, Dr Who became the Radiophonic Workshop's main customer
posted by scruss at 2:02 PM on June 19 [1 favorite]

→ "American Telephone: Western Electric ... That one was $5.

My recording of a Western Electric Princess you can have for free: it's CC-BY.
posted by scruss at 2:06 PM on June 19 [4 favorites]

I'm Comedy Sounds - Chemical computer., btw. I think every 1970s BBC children's programme that had a mad professor in it (it was a theme) had to use this sound effect.
posted by scruss at 2:51 PM on June 19 [3 favorites]

Oh sweet.

Related - a lengthy article on the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:33 PM on June 19 [3 favorites]

I use these all the time for community radio production, it's an invaluable archive and the search function works very well.
posted by jordantwodelta at 10:00 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]