BBC Sound Effects free to use

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You might not believe this (alright, you’re bound to believe this) but when I was younger I used to buy sound effects records from the BBC. It was all part of a growing up process that involved a number of reel to reel tape recorders and duties as sound man for the local amateur dramatics society. It got so that I could actually recognise familiar effects when I heard them on TV and radio.

Anyhoo, if you also have an interest in sound effects (and who doesn’t) you might like to know that the BBC has just released a whole bunch of them which are free to use for fun if not profit. You can find them here.

You might be asking “When will I ever need the sound of ‘Single cylinder compressor pump operating with start and stop. (Sewage pump with belt drive)’?” but that is not really the point. There are loads of sampler based musical instruments out there looking for interesting inputs. You can have a lot of fun using sounds like these as raw materials. And they are a great way to enliven a boring Teams meeting if played at the right volume level.

They’ve actually got one of my all-time favourites in the collection….

Teenage Engineering OP-Z as a Windows 10 sound source

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I’m loving my Teenage Engineering OP-Z. Great fun. One of the things I like about it is its versatility. The usb port can be used to make it into a usb MIDI host (so that you can hang other devices off it) or a usb MIDI client (so that it can hang off other hosts) or a sound output (so it can sample sounds sent over USB) or a sound source (so that other devices can grab digital copies of the sounds the OP-Z produces).

The only problem has been that I can’t get the last option to work on my Windows 10 PC. If I want to record stuff I’ve created on the OP-Z I’ve had to send out of the OP-Z headphone socket and then re-digitise it. Which seems a bit silly for a digital device.

Anyhoo, today I was able to try the OP-Z on a non-Windows device and discovered that it worked perfectly. Knowing that something is possible is very useful if you are trying to make it happen, and so I put a bit more effort into making it work. And I managed to do it. Here’s how, if you are having the same problem:

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After you’ve plugged in the OP-Z, open up Device Manager on your Windows 10 PC by right clicking the Windows icon in the bottom left of your screen and selecting “Device Manager” from the menu that appears. Then open up the Sound, video and game controllers item. You can see that the OP-Z is a speaker (so we can send it sound) but not a microphone (so we can’t listen to it). Wah.

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No matter. We’ve got this. Type “Control Panel” in the search box on the task bar and hit enter to open the Windows 10 Control Panel.

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Now type “Troubleshooting” into the search window at the top right of the Control Panel and select the troubleshooting icon from the list that appears.

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Now click Troubleshoot Audio Recording in the middle of the page.

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Now click Next.

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Select “Synthesizer - OPZ from the menu that appears and click Next again.

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Windows 10 will do something magical that it should have done first time. Close the Troubleshooter and the Control Panel. Go back to your Device Manager and you should now see another input.

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You now have another input device that you can connect to Audacity or whatever you fancy.

Line Filters and OP-Z Earth Loop Noise

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When I was much younger, and vinyl records were a thing, I used to have a problem with earth loops between the turntable and the amplifier. The problem was that both the turntable and the amplifier were connected to the electrical earth for health reasons (my health not theirs). Then, when you connect a cable to send the signal from the turntable to the amplifier you add a second ground connection which causes induced noise. You had to fiddle around with the earth signals to get rid of it.

Fast forward to today and I’m connecting my OP-Z to my computer using the audio and usb inputs at the same time. Which makes another ground loop and more noise. There is a way that you can try to address this by turning off the USB charging on the OP-Z (Press [Screen] + Keyboard (E) - Spark) but this limits how long you can play with it and doesn’t always work. Instead I’ve got hold of a ground loop isolator which contains a tiny transformer that electrically isolates the input from the output. It reduces the level a bit, but it also makes all the nasty noise go away, which is what I want.

Great book for the Teenage Engineering OP-Z

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There are some great videos about the Teenage Engineering OP-Z synthesizer. I can strongly recommend ones from Cuckoo. However, I rather like having a proper book to look at. And that’s where SynthDawg come in. They’ve written some lovely books, including an OP-Z one. Their prices are very reasonable, the books are supplied as pdf documents that you can read on any device or print out if you fancy real old school bookery.

Teenage Engineering OP-Z

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The Teenage Engineering OP-Z is an amazing little device. In around the same space as a remote control (see above) it packs in a bunch of synthesizers, a sequencer, a sampler, a DMX lighting controller and and a 3D video controller that talks to Unity. You can use it as a midi host or client, plug it into your PC and add samples and pull back recordings of pieces you have stored or just listen through the tiny speaker. It’s battery powered, so you can write tunes on the bus if you wish. In my case that might even help with social distancing….

There is no display. You can use a phone or tablet to see what it is doing, but the coloured leds in the buttons means that once you get your head around the fundamentals it isn’t too hard to see what is going on, especially if you have a programming bent. I’m not sure if its cleverness can compensate for a lack of musical talent, but I’m having a lot of fun trying to bash out silly tunes with it.