Resonant metal sound effects captured with Korg CM-300 and AKG C411 PP contact microphones at 192 kHz, spanning barbed wire rubs, fence shakes, rope creaks under tension, and door hinges.
TENSION & TONE SFX is a collection of materials under stress: rusty springs stretching, barbed wire dragged across itself, fences and gates shaken on their posts, ropes creaking as they take a load, old doors grinding on their hinges, floorboards giving under a step, and iron bars ringing long after they are struck.
Most of the library was recorded with contact microphones – a Korg CM-300 and an AKG C411 PP clamped or pressed directly onto the object. A contact mic does not hear the air around a sound; it hears the vibration travelling through the material itself. The result is intimate, dry and physical in a way a conventional microphone cannot reach: the grain of the rust in a spring, the internal ring of a steel bar, the fibres of a rope tightening, the structure of a floor flexing. It is the sound you feel as much as hear, and it is exactly what horror and tension design is built on.
Recorded at 192 kHz / 32-bit float, the material responds beautifully to extreme pitch-shifting and time-stretching. Slow a metal tap an octave or two and it becomes a ship’s hull; stretch a rope creak; drop a barbed-wire rub and it turns into something alive.
The library is organised into UCS-compliant categories to streamline your workflow:
• Metal Impacts & Resonance (19 files, 13m) – The core of the library. Metal bar hits and a long bar-strike drone, surface strikes and taps with natural echo, loose metal parts rattling, fences and gates shaken on their frames, barbed wire rubbed and dragged, a blade sharpened against a pole, and tonal iron resonances – including a rope slapping a metal pole – that ring out into sustained, pitched tails.
• Wood (5 files, 6m) – Footsteps on wooden boards with creaks, flexes and thuds, recorded close and dry. Long, continuous takes for haunted houses, attics, ships’ decks and old stairs.
• Metal Friction & Squeaks (5 files, 3m) – A metal gate grinding on its bars, tubing dragged with friction, an old metal door squealing, and a rusty spring stretched to its limit.
• Doors & Creaks (5 files, 3m) – A metal panel creaking open, old door hinges, a slow horror-style door creak and a squeaking key lock.
• Rope (3 files, 2m) – Rope creaking and straining under tension – gallows, rigging, bridges, anything taking weight.
• Chains (2 files) – Light metal chain handled and moved.
• Total Files: 39
• Total Running Time: approx. 28 minutes
• Format: WAV – Mono and Stereo
• Sample Rate: 192 kHz / 32-bit float (38 files), plus one file at 48 kHz / 32-bit float
• Recording Gear: Zoom F3, Zoom F6, Tascam Portacapture X8; Korg CM-300 and AKG C411 PP contact microphones, Metal Marshmallow, Audio-Technica AT897 and BP4025
• Metadata: Fully integrated with the Universal Category System (UCS) standard, with embedded descriptions and originator info
