As we’ve been revamping and refreshing our website, we felt it only necessary to share a little bit about ourselves, the Undertone Sound Library team, and why we got into the field recording and sound library making business!
Undertone Sound Library (USL) was born out of a burning passion for carefully recorded and crafted sound effects to use in our own work. We are an original music and audio post-production facility, helmed by Tom Hambleton, called Undertone Music, Inc. in Minneapolis, MN. Since the early 90’s we have dedicated ourselves to mastering the craft of film scoring and audio — we have a knack, and continuously strive for the utmost quality! Our Dolby-tuned, Dolby-certified Dub Stage – which is the only in the Midwest — is a testament to that commitment . Feature Films, Shorts, Animated Shorts, Spots, Broadcast TV, Museum Audio Tours and Corporate Productions doing everything from Location Audio to Scoring to Studio Recording to Cleanup to Post Mixing to Original music. In short, we do anything audio.
After 20 years of working and recording sounds, we realized that our backlog of recordings for films were useful enough to share with the rest of the audio editing world! As we prepared for the USL (Undertone Sound Library) launch in June of 2015, we grew excited about taking more frequent field recording excursions in order to bring our commitment to audio quality to the sound effects library realm.
Whenever we create a sound effects pack, we think very carefully about what sounds and sonic viewpoints might be useful, how best to record, edit, and organize them for an editor. We start with a specific need or thoughts of a general need, then develop that idea along with the top-of-line gear (Schoeps, Cooper, Sound Devices, Neuman, Cinela et alia) that we own in our ever-growing field recording kit.. Once recorded, knowing that speed is key for editors, much time is spent deciding how best to organize our libraries in such a way that types of sounds or perspectives are readily accessible. We don’t like spending critical editing time looking – so we don’t want you to either! Lastly, we do necessary but tastefully minimal Mastering of the sound file to provide the highest fidelity possible. Our own sound effects libraries are continually in use here, so we know the care that goes into them. We love using them; we hope you do too!
If you are looking for certain sounds we don’t have, contact us! We welcome suggestions and would be happy to try and plan an excursion to fill in sound library gaps.