My June 2025 SFX Swap Submission

Hey there, I wanted to share a video I made about my contribution to this month's ( June 2025) SFX Swap.  This video has taken me a while. I have scrapped it, redone it a few times, been unsure if I should share - but here it goes. I am not a video guy - though I have been learning fast haha.

  I have never done a SFX Swap before - but I want to make sound effect libraries professionally and this 100% felt like that with the training wheels on. So it was amazing practice with professional results.  My contribution was recording my dads 1960s ATC Super Toy Cash Register. With two different microphone sets / mixes.  I made sure to record everything at 192kHz and 32 bit. With the end results being mono mixdowns at 192khz 24bit.

Mic Set A was my Rode NTG3 and my AKG C411 Contact mic recorded into my Zoom F3. This gave me some amazing bassey sounds. The buttons were weighty, the impacts were hard and punchy, it was awesome. 

  By contrast Mic Set B came out much different. I used my Rode NT5 and Earthworks SR20. This as you will hear in the video had a much different end result. The sounds were brighter, crunchy and rang out differently. The shakes and rattles were light with a lot of high end movement present.

  I then pulled everything into my DAW - In this case Reaper and edited away using some RX and Waves plugins. Even though I recorded in a very noise reduced environment I still had a good amount of editing to do.

  The next learning curve was MetaData and UCS naming conventions. Thankfully Reaper has a built-in tool for adding MetaData, but I had no idea what UCS naming conventions were coming from an inhouse video game sound designer background. A big shout out to @Danny Runciman and all the help, feedback and advice he gave when it came to this area.

All in all I ended up with 28 files containing 214 finished sounds for submission. It was an incredible learning experience and a great step forward to my goal of releasing and publishing my own libraries.

The final sounds were:
Mic Sets A and B:

• Button Presses Slow 

• Button Presses Fast ( Groups)

• Button Presses Singles ( Pause and hold)

• Cash Bell and Tray Open and Closes

• Shakes 

• Handling and Squezzeings 

• Drop Impacts ( I tried to light and soft)

• Cash Register Body Tapping / Impacts

Coming from the video game world that's what led to my decision to record this many variations. As this is what I would want from a sound pack. So I tried to replicate that in what I recorded and submitted. 

Please enjoy the video.