Ultrasonic Dry Ice review

In this review, we will be looking at the latest sound effects library from Mattia Cellotto called Ultrasonic Dry Ice. Let us see if this is something you might need?

Content and Sound

Sound effects library comes at just below 5 GB and features designed and raw sound effects of various metal objects on dry ice. In case you don’t know, dry ice is a carbon dioxide in a solid form and when it comes into contact with metal objects it produces a very much known sound that you hear in almost every horror movie. The sound would be very similar to waterphone or a thin metal sheet played by a string bow.

Ultrasonic dry ice features plenty of objects resonating on dry ice. You will find baking pan, tray, bike wheel, CD rack and plenty of other materials each producing a different sound from harsh screeching to various distorted noises. There 500+ raw sounds and additional 117 designed sounds but I will get to that in a bit.

Complete library was recorded with a Sanken CO100K, Sennheiser MKH8040 and a MKH416 at a 192 kHz and 24 bit. Higher rate means that you can pitch and stretch sounds as much as you want and will almost always get an interesting results thanks to Sanken microphone.

The designed sounds are interesting varying from bunch of stingers to various UI elements. Unlike in the Polarity, a previous library by Mattia, these designed sounds are more balanced in volume. Having said that, some designed sounds could use a bit more work. For instance, UI sounds could be a bit longer with less delay effect on them and some files could be edited a bit better (cutting out the click that happens right before the sound starts). Latter is sort of a nitpick and not really a deal breaker for me. Overall, designed sounds are a nice addition to the whole pack.

The real value of the whole package are the raw sounds. It is incredible satisfying pitch shifting and stretching sounds in this library. Each sound will provide a different texture and can be used in various applications from rotary sounds to alien like vocalizations. When going to extreme (stretching the sounds 500 or more percent) you will get a bit of a noise but that is normal in such cases.

Metadata

Like with previous library, Ultrasonic Dry Ice doesn’t come with the embedded metadata but it has a well named filenames. This might be a bummer for some and I can understand that. For me it is not a problem since I mostly use Reaper for browsing sounds and it can read filenames when searching for sounds. If I’m not mistaken, Soundly, Basehead and Soundminer can also read filenames. If I am, please let me know in the comments below. As always, I am attaching screenshots from Soundly, Reaper and Metadata Touch so you can see for yourself.

Example

For this example, I got a bit carried away and made an animation that required me to pitch shift and stretch the sounds. Granted, it wasn’t necessary but I really wanted to. All of the sounds are from the library and without any edits except stretching and pitch shifting.

Conclusion

For the price of $65 US, I feel that this library is a no-brainer if you are in need of a nice collection dry ice sounds. Some designed sounds are not to my taste and there is no embedded metadata which might turn some of you off. Having said that, the raw sounds are well edited, they sound great, are usable in various applications and very much worth the price.