sfxr

Nothing is the same without sound when working on a computer, or playing a video game. Even Windows clicks, and beeps when you press buttons, or trigger specific functions. If it’s a video game you’re interested in, then applications like sfxr can help you create various, unique sound effects from scratch, even through randomization.

On the one hand, the application skips you both the time, and effort needed to go through a setup process, and can run right after download is done. This means you can carry it around to generate sound from other computers as well, without having to worry that the target PC gets affected, because registries remain intact.

The application places all functions, sliders, and buttons in plain sight, with accommodation taking roughly a few seconds, or the press of a button. You only get to work with WAV files, with options to configure bitrate and sample rate before exporting. You can save the current status of the project for later use, in case you consider some further tweaking is required, but no time at your disposal.

Creating a new sound effects can either be done by manually adjusting different sliders for effects, or hitting the Randomize button until you find one suitable for a specific action you want to associate it with. What’s more, there’s also a Mutate button which slightly changes effect sliders for a little variation of the current sound.

Manual configuration can be done in four different modes, like squarewave, sawtooth, sinewave, or noise. These can be linked with various types of actions, while using the built-in generator proves so. With every press of a button, you can generate a new effect for picking up coins, laser, or shots, explosions, powerups, hit, jump, or button selection throughout menus.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that sfxr is a powerful, lightweight, and fast sound effects generator, you can use on the go. Built-in generators allow you to quickly create sounds for multiple types of actions, with options to add close variations through the mutate function, or completely rely on random effects.