Feb 1, 2000 12:00 PM, George Petersen

SOUND EFFECTS LIBRARY Founded by former Hollywood Edge head Scott Whitney a year ago, Hollywood Sound Factory was created to provide high-quality sound effects and production music libraries. The company's first release, Wild World of Animals, is a ten-CD collection of elusive sounds such as wild animals eating, mating, fighting and running, captured in their natural habitats. Domesticated animals-cats, dogs, goats, cows and horses-are also well represented. In fact, there's an entire disc devoted to horses, offering trots, gallops, walks and canters on dirt, grass, pavement, rocks, sand and cobblestones. Nearly all the horse tracks are single riders, although creating the illusion of an entire posse or battalion is fairly simple by layering different tracks (or offsetting the same track) on a DAW.

Among the other 850 effects in the library are five varieties of whales, narwhals, seals, sharks, walrus, dolphins, rhinos, wildebeest, leopards, bobcat, wolves, insects, snakes, gators, elephants, birds of every sort (usual and unusual), along with lions, tigers and bears-oh my! Besides the more unusual tracks of "bull footstep Foley" and "Arcadian Flycatcher," the set includes jungle, swamp, ocean, marsh, meadow, desert, park and night (distant insect) ambiences. My rottweiler thought the "rottweiler barks" track was spot-on. I could feel my skin crawl as thousands of bats flew overhead, and listening to the flies and mosquito tracks is NOT for the faint of heart. At $495, here's an excellent animal collection that will either expand your existing sounds, or add some outer-worldly starting points for creative sound design. Yeah!

Hollywood Sound Factory: 626/576-8634; www.hollywoodsoundfactory.com.

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