pdsounds.org is back online for another while

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » May 14th, 2009, 2:55 pm

Hello,

some of you i know must be at least a bit curious of what is happening there.

I loved pdsounds. I struggled for a year with the decision, again and again i couldn't get over with it but I finally canceled the web-hosting for pdsounds in march when finalising the deal to buy a house with my beloved made the decision easier. Now i would need the money, and several free hosters i asked to step in, turned me down or never answered. More importantly it became clear that the lot of sound recording people share elsewhere. You might think 620 sounds in two years, thats a good ratio - two sounds per day - other sites would dream of that participation. But it isn't like that. There'd been times when 4 weeks would pass by before another post was made. Aside from short wonderful rushes of contagious inspiring participation, pdsounds limped most of the time of the year. Which made comming to a decision so hard, again and again the question - isn't there a possibilty...? BUT family first. Webhosting cancelled.

Then Mike Koenig emailed me, offered me to continue pdsounds.org in good interest. Turns out he is a nice guy. He likes to use the traffic and googlescore of pdsounds to give his other free-sound related sites a lift. Clever! Sponsoring this established rescource to round-link to his related sites is inexpansice and good SEO. I am happy to see pdsounds going on providing its free sounds to downloaders, many of you recorded and uploaded, for a good while longer. How long Mike is planning to keep pdsounds up, i don't know.

That's the story. It works again but I wouldn't upload any sounds, pdsounds is a patient with a medically induced coma.
I suggest you grab what you can while you can. At best download the archive of all the sounds here: and keep them on a cdrom somewhere.

http://pdsounds.tuxfamily.org/
(Thanks again, Iwan Gabovitch!)

best regards,
Stephan

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » May 15th, 2009, 3:27 am

Could it not be possible to upload to archive.com so we have a permanent storage place?

Esther

Post by **Hokuspokus** » May 15th, 2009, 6:12 am

Good to hear pdsounds is back.
So sad that it only for some time. I had some ideas for new sounds. Looks like I should hurry to get the recorded while I can still share them.

pdsounds is such a great idea.

Steampunk · Post by **Steampunk** » May 15th, 2009, 8:43 am

Starlite wrote:Could it not be possible to upload to archive.com so we have a permanent storage place?

Esther

This is actually something I've been mulling over for some time. I've downloaded the zip and catalog from pdsounds and will begin plugging away at archiving them. Catagorizing them at Archive.org is a problem, so it won't be pretty. But at least it'll be preserved.

Jim

BellonaTimes · Post by **BellonaTimes** » May 15th, 2009, 5:04 pm

Steampunk wrote:
Starlite wrote:Could it not be possible to upload to archive.com so we have a permanent storage place?

Esther
This is actually something I've been mulling over for some time. I've downloaded the zip and catalog from pdsounds and will begin plugging away at archiving them. Catagorizing them at Archive.org is a problem, so it won't be pretty. But at least it'll be preserved.

Jim

What is the problem in categorization? Can you divvy them up by the elements - liquid (waves, rain, spitting), solid (thumps on wood, steel, glass, earth, ice), animal (meow, neigh, oink), human (sneeze, cough, laughter), mechanical (engine rev, oscillating fan, ticking clock), and so on? Create a spreadsheet in Access or similar database with headings for each category and rows for the 600-odd sounds with check boxes. Sort the sounds by category... sounds like me with my record collection. File Sinead O'Connor under Rock, Traditional, Reggae, Alternative, and/or Big Band depending on album.

Steampunk · Post by **Steampunk** » May 15th, 2009, 5:49 pm

BellonaTimes wrote: What is the problem in categorization? Can you divvy them up by the elements - liquid (waves, rain, spitting), solid (thumps on wood, steel, glass, earth, ice), animal (meow, neigh, oink), human (sneeze, cough, laughter), mechanical (engine rev, oscillating fan, ticking clock), and so on? Create a spreadsheet in Access or similar database with headings for each category and rows for the 600-odd sounds with check boxes.

Yep. That's the problem.

BellonaTimes · Post by **BellonaTimes** » May 15th, 2009, 7:20 pm

#
rainthunderandbirds.mp3
Rain, thunder and birds
2:14
2.05 MB
ezwa
Rain | Rainshower | Rainwater | Water | Thunder | Thunderstorm | thundering | Thunderbolts | peals of thunder | Bird | Birds | bird singing
Natural | Characteristic
128 kBit/s
Mono

Rain, thunder and birds singing.

Stephan,
Do you have the text data in a spreadsheet database? The format on http://pdsounds.tuxfamily.org/list.html looks like labels. Do you have them broken down into basic categories like wet sounds, mechanical, human-generated, animal-generated, etc?

If not,

Steampunk,
I would do a search and replace of the " | " signs with commas* then cut & paste the lines of data into the keyword field on Archive.

*Rain | Rainshower | Rainwater | Water | Thunder | Thunderstorm | thundering | Thunderbolts | peals of thunder | Bird | Birds | bird singing
Natural | Characteristic

Rain, Rainshower, Rainwater, Water, Thunder, Thunderstorm, thundering, Thunderbolts, peals of thunder, Bird, Birds, bird singing, Natural, Characteristic

Chop up Stephan's database into the main sections and upload at 100 entries per page. I suppose time to do it is an issue....

Steampunk · Post by **Steampunk** » May 15th, 2009, 8:33 pm

Steampunk,
I would do a search and replace of the " | " signs with commas* then cut & paste the lines of data into the keyword field on Archive.

*Rain | Rainshower | Rainwater | Water | Thunder | Thunderstorm | thundering | Thunderbolts | peals of thunder | Bird | Birds | bird singing
Natural | Characteristic

Rain, Rainshower, Rainwater, Water, Thunder, Thunderstorm, thundering, Thunderbolts, peals of thunder, Bird, Birds, bird singing, Natural, Characteristic

Yep. That's what I'm doing, more-or-less. I made a comma delimited hack from the file names and labels. Catagorizing them generally. No matter what you're looking for, "pdsounds" will get you everything; add label(s)/category keywords to narrow the search.

I suppose time to do it is an issue....

Yeah. It's still pretty manual. Still, it beats spending time on Real Life work...

Jim

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » May 16th, 2009, 4:11 am

Yes, Archive.org wasn't flexible enough for the purpose. Starting with the unnescessary soundformat conversions... It would take endless.

But if you ask me, the only thing that would need to be preserved is this ~600mb ZIP-file with all the public domain sounds and the text list that neatly stored all the descriptions and tags. The text-file should help everybody find what they need easily enough with simple old-school text-searches.
Having it all in a filterable hyperlinked database is pure convenience.

I think Iwan did well organizing to get the pdsounds-archive stored solid on tuxfamily.org (see Link above). That should stay for a good while, no?

cheers,
Stephan

mkoenig · Post by **mkoenig** » May 28th, 2009, 6:14 am

This is Mike the guy that re-stored the site and is paying for the hosting.

PLEASE continue to ad sounds to PDSounds.org

It will be up forever, it will not change, no ads will be implemented.

I loved the site, although i never submitted content I used it, and recommended it often.

I even listed in an E-Book i wrote about a year ago. (the book was a flop by the way)

Im a long time supporter of "Creative Commons" and have several sound sites that push for the free movement. Public Domain audio is thus right up my alley.

I record with a Zoom H4 nothing to professional, but it gets the job done and the audio quality is great.

So again... please continue to use the site, it was, still is, and will always be a great resource. Stephan still co-manages the site, im just here to pay the bill

In return I have a banner on the top of the site. It's a win win situation, really.

Post by **kayray** » May 28th, 2009, 8:45 am

Just had to say hi to you Stephen! So nice to see you here -- I've been thinking of you! Hope your family is well :)

And thanks to Mike for helping!

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » May 28th, 2009, 9:06 am

Thanks for posting and introducing yourself Mike. Thanks for the financial support too!!

Esther

mkoenig · Post by **mkoenig** » May 28th, 2009, 9:13 am

Starlite wrote:Thanks for posting and introducing yourself Mike. Thanks for the financial support too!!

Esther

Yeah glad i could help.

You must admit that was to good a site to let it slip into the abyss right

To Posterity and Beyond! · Post by **Cori** » May 28th, 2009, 10:55 am

Oh, you're a star, Mike! Thankyou for doing this and supporting Stephan.

I'll be by with some more sounds soon.

Though how I can record anything better than my most popular offering to date (The Making Of Tea) is currently unknown ...

mkoenig · Post by **mkoenig** » May 28th, 2009, 10:57 am

Hahahah...

awesome Cori It will be great to get some new sounds

Im guessing this Tea thing is some inside joke... i just have to go listen now.

Thanks for the praise man.