Best Free Sounds Effects and Musical Samples (2026)

Introduction

As I explained in the previous articles of this series, REAPER installer is extremely lightweight compared to other DAW, mostly because it doesn’t come with sound libraries. So, if you are a REAPER user, and you want a collection of audio files, you will need to build you own. Good thing, there is a lot of websites from which you can download sound packs for free!

Resources below are entered in two main categories, depending on what type of sound they offer the most: Sound Effects (non-tonal abstract or real ambiences, non musical hits…), and Musical Samples (loop, melodies, riffs…). Keep in mind that these websites often propose samples of every kind, so the distinction is mostly to structure this article.

I will only point you to some must-known websites. I would advice to download only what you might need, to avoid flooding your hard drives unnecessarily and to loose too much on collecting sounds rather than making projects. What can be considered useful really depends on what type of projects you work on. Maybe you will be just fine with musical samples proposed by Instruments Packs you already installed. But surely having few packs from resources proposed here could be the spice on the cake of your productions. 😉

Note these sound packs are often introduction offers to some other paid products (pack or services), so you might consider taking a look at these as well, to support their initiative.

Well, enough introduction, we all know how this kind of article is read: just scroll down, and click on whatever seems to be nice to you!

Note: This article isn’t sponsored in anyway by any third-parties, and took days to write. It isn’t generated by a thoughtless IA, but by an actual human, with real experience in sound creation (audio and music) and sound technology. If you want to support my work it will be very appreciated! ❤️

Sound Effects

In a very basic definition, sound effects are what is audio files which are not musical samples or spoken voices. They can come from recorded materials (like an animal, a city ambience, an explosion etc…), or they can come from synth. They can be raw recording, or designed ones, with FX and multiple layers.

Sound effects are useful for any kind of audio work needing sound effects (video post production, game audio, audio fictions…), and also in musical projects. Indeed, adding non-tonal sounds to your music production can spice it up a bit: for eg, you can add some non-tonal risers, followed by cinematic hits right at your chorus start, for maximum impact, or you can just put some hits in a sampler and trigger them as if it was part of your drum patterns. Lots of creative usage to explore.

They are a lot of websites for sound effects, though a lot offer stolen sounds without their authors authorization, which is a shame especially considering that the amount of free high-quality legal stuffs is huge. So here is a selection of trusted resources for sound effects.

Soniss – GameAudioGDC

Soniss is a professional grade marketplace from which you can buy a lot of good sound libraries. It offers an ultra huge quantity of free sounds (more than 100 of GB easily), as part of their almost yearly GameAudioGDC bundles. These libraries are selection made from their sound design studio partners.

99 Sounds

99sounds is a label of independent sound makers, created by the founder of BedroomProducerBlog (the best website to follow if you want to see new free plugins and musical sample packs releases).

It features a lots of very cool sound libraries, mostly sound effects (like their excellent Cinematic Sound Effects), but also some musical ones (like their Drum Samples libraries).

Freesound

Freesound is an open community of people sharing sounds for everyone, in a crowd-source fashion (meaning, anyone can contribute by uploading sounds, including you!).

It needs a user account for download, but considering the nature of the project, I wouldn’t consider that as a con. It is actually useful as you can find your downloaded sounds history, add comments etc…

Musical Samples

Musical samples are about melodies, drum patterns or single hits, loops and every other audio files related to music, or made by an instrument.

This type of samples is often shared by companies oriented toward sample based music creation, so the number of place to download them from is quite big.

I personally don’t use a lot of third-party samples, outside those built-in with sampler plugins I owned, and I don’t use any ready-made loop, so this category will be pretty small. Feel free to continue the search on your own afterwards, they are a lot of manufacturers, and independent and marketplaces, who share musical samples for every genre!

W.A. Productions – Free Sound Packs

W.A. Productions is a company specialized in electronic music production. They propose all kind of stuffs: soundpacks, plugins, guides, templates, presets, MIDI files etc…

Among these, they have a collection of free sample packs, which can be useful if you need some hits or pre-made loops.

Side note about their plugins: they do have some cool especially stuffs, like TriVox or Vocal Shaper, often on sales.

Pros:

• Lots of free packs

Cons:

• Despite my report, the website don’t provide a clear way to display only free sound packs on search results (it also include PDF and synth presets)

BPB Samples

I already spoke about BedroomProducerBlog on every article of this series, telling how great this website was to follow new sound related free releases (mostly plugins and sample packs). The creator is also mentioned above for the great 99sounds website.

From time to time, BPB team also crafts sample packs and share them freely with the readers. A good way to have various free curated sample packs.

Pros:

• No user account needed

Cons:

• Some great packs are just temporary (like the Christmas 2019 pack)

Black Octopus – Free 1GB

Black Octopus is a studio specialized in modern incisive electronic music (dubstep, house, tech house, trap, hip hop, psy trance…).

They offer a 1GB pack of sound as intro offer, with pretty nice sounds in it!

Pros:

• A lot of high quality sounds

Cons:

• Require 0$ purchase with user account

Cymatics – Free Downloads

Pros:

• Good sounds
• Various packs

Cons:

• Require subscribing to the newsletter
• Free downloads aren’t sorted by types, so you also have MIDI files and plugins on the same page
• There is a free “mystery pack” samples which is huge (1.6 GB – great!), but it appears randomly as popup on the website, which asks for email address, without even telling what it contains. Though the huge pack is appreciable, this kind of gamification is IMHO annoying.

Going Further

As you can see, it is relatively quick to get hundreds (if not thousands) soundpacks for free! If you need something more specific, there is also a lot more free sound packs here and there all other the internet that you can pick drom. Though, I would encourage to only download necessary packs for your projects, to be focused on it as much as possible, and not be distracted by samples choices. 😉

I encourage you to take a look at these sound packs manufacturers websites, because if a company makes a great plugin, there is a high chance it has other nice stuffs to propose (free or paid). Buying a paid product to these designers would also be the best way to support there work, and allow them to continue sharing stuffs for free!

To find other free soundpacks, and follow new releases, check up these websites:

• KVR
• BedroomProducerBlog

If you think I miss anything very special, you can put them as comment. I also opened a dedicated thread on Cockos Forum.

This list took days to elaborate, so once again, please consider supporting my work, thanks!

In the next article, we will surely go through free samples, or MIDI effects, not sure yet. Meanwhile, please share this list to your fellow REAPER users companions, or any other DAW users! ❤️ Stay tuned!