Nov 23, 20214 min read

REVIEW: Spectravelers Quantum.

Welcome back to the 344 Audio Blog. Today we have a review of a new sound effects library from our friends at Spectravelers. The library, which is called Quantum is based around the theme of electromagnetic field sound effects and contains a colossal 60+GB of content. Let's dive in and take a look!

Company: Spectravelers

Product: Quantum

Price: $144

Our Rating: 5/5

Specstravelers

Spectravelers is comprised of the two-man team of Benoit Marsalone and Arnaud Noble, both of which are seasoned professionals in the field of video game sound design. They have multiple AAA credits to their names including Ghost Recon Wildlands, Deus Ex and Rayman Legends.

For anyone who has come across the work before, their passion for the craft of sound design is clearly on display, and they like to inject a lot of fun into both their products and how the brand themselves, which is a refreshing thing to see in the world of sound effects libraries.

Overview

At first glance, this library packs quite a large punch for its cost, as you would normally expect to find a much higher price tag attached to a 60GB+ library. This alone is quite a big selling point for Quantum, but its size does not tell the full story. Dig deeper into Quantum and you will find that there is very little filler, which is quite impressive for a library with this much content packed into it.

The library is separated into three distinct categories, Raw, Designed and Toolkit, which makes navigating through and finding the right sound effect a much more time-efficient process.

Raw - "Captured with different microphones like Elektrouši, Elektroucho Pro and Priezor, we recorded a lot of devices and wild signals which allows you to sculpt, create, and edit your own sounds with more than 340 individual sounds."

Designed - "This section provides you ready-to-use sounds (over 1897 individual sounds in 371 files), all created and designed only from the Raw and Toolkit section materials. From huge to tiny, this collection delivers Impacts, UI, Ambiences, Whooshes, Pass-By, Energy, Machine, Electricity sounds and many more Hard-SF things." Toolkit - "This is a NEW section and we are very excited about this. We have created a Toolkit section organised in different categories (Energy, Drone, Forcefield, Machine…etc..) to allow you to create a unique flavour sound."

As you can see, the Spectravellers team have clearly put a lot of thought into what kind of content is included in Quantum, and how it is structured. No one wants to spend ages trawling through 60+GB of sounds, so top marks for showing such a careful consideration for the end-user experience!

In their own words, Spectravellers give us an overview of their quantum library.

Enter The Quantum Realm

While there are many commercial libraries available that have an electromagnetic theme, Quantum takes things to another level both in terms of the variety of content and the sonic quality of the sounds.

One of the core focuses of this library was to create sounds that fit the "Hard Sci-Fi" aesthetic. HARD Science-fiction - "A category of science fiction characterised by concern for scientific accuracy, logic and technological consistency." Think of films such as Black Mirror, Moon, The Martian and Arrival. The sounds in Quantum all sizzle with a sense of the spectacular and futuristic, whilst also feeling intensely grounded in reality and something that could actually exist in our world. This is due to the methods and sound sources used during the recording of this library.

Electromagnetic pickup microphones were used on a variety of common gadgets and pieces of tech such as a PlayStation, 3d printer, Blu-Ray Players and digital cameras.

A selection of the specialist microphones used in the creation of Quantum. (Priezor, Elektrouši and Elektroucho Pro from LOM.

With over 3450 sounds to choose from, Quantum gives you a huge palette of sounds to play with and should be more than up to the challenge of modern Sci-Fi projects. All sounds are delivered in 24bit, 96KHz format and are tagged with detailed Metadata and Universal Category System (UCS) complaint.

Where We Would Use It

If we were working on a Science Fiction or futuristic themed project then Quantum is a library we could see ourselves coming back to time and time again. We would use the Raw section sounds as starting points for crafting bespoke effects for technology interactions in a film such as weapons, vehicle pass-bys and spaceship doors. The designed section would be extremely useful for quickly building up an atmosphere with its wealth of high-quality ambiences and drones. We would also use the designed section for enhancing action moments with whooshes, energy flashes and mechanical sounds.

The toolkit section contains sounds that would make excellent layers with other sound effects to give them a more futuristic field. these include start-up and power-down sounds, alarms, buzzes and countless bleeps and bloops that are perfect for designing UI sounds.

The Quantum Teaser video highlighting the extensive range of sounds that can be found within the library.

The Bottom Line

All in all, Quantum is a terrific sound effect library that is a must-have for anyone who is working on science fiction projects, and the quality of the sounds make them highly versatile for other genres too. The attractive price tag means that it is an appropriate purchase for sound professionals at any stage of their career. The main thing to consider would be hard drive space and whether or not you want to give up 60+GB of space for a single sound library. Follow this link for more details on Quantum and purchase information: https://www.asoundeffect.com/sound-library/quantum-electromagnetic-field-library/ We hope you enjoyed checking out this review!