Field Recording Gear Tips: Wind Protection

One of the great things about blogs, forums, Twitter and the digital age in general is the ease with which information gets passed around.  There are so many makes and models of studio and field recording gear, and more innovations being marketed all the time,  that without all these new ways to access information, we'd have a much tougher time narrowing down what gear is right for every individual's needs.  I have come across a few great articles and discussion forums about what items other professional field recordists have in their kits and I have stolen more than a few ideas.  So I thought I would throw my hat in the ring and describe my recording kit and how it has evolved over the years.  This post is not meant to be a gear fetish article so I am going to skip over the actual microphones and recorders in my kit (for a great mic fetish article read this though!)  and talk about the accessories and handy items that fill out my equipment locker.

This will be a four-part series, with each post covering a different portion of my current kit.  In coming weeks I'll cover Stands/Booms/Mounts, Useful Odds & Sods/Tools, and Storage/Transport Solutions, but today I will write about what items I use to protect recordings from wind and other unwanted environmental noise. 

Wind Protection is possibly the most important microphone accessory category, as not everything that one wishes to record can be put in a sound-isolated recording booth.  Out in the field, wind can be a really tough enemy to overcome and I find I can never be too prepared to battle the unpredictable elements.  Wind can ruin a great recording, and Murphy's Law of Location Recording dictates that if it's nice and calm while you're setting up your mics, then the wind is going to pick up as soon as you start recording.  Ways to minimize how wind affects a microphone sometimes are as simple as creative placement of objects (or a willing body) at the side of the mic to act as a baffle, but eventually you are going to need more than makeshift solutions to save your recordings.  As wind speeds increase you have to up the ante and get a proper covering for the mic.  Over the years I have used a bunch of different techniques that vary from standard professional gear to more DIY/McGyver-inspired solutions.

 

In terms of the professional gear, I have both a Rode Blimp and a Rycote Windshield and they both have their pros and cons.  One big positive for the Rode is its price, as it's much cheaper than a Rycote.  But with that discount comes some trade-offs.  The Rode Blimp is bigger and a little bit heavier than the Rycote and if I am using a boom pole or using the hand grip for extended periods then this extra weight becomes a problem.  It also has an annoying little rubber piece that holds the mic cable in place where it exits the blimp and this little rubber bit is always falling and bouncing/rolling away when you change out the mic in the blimp.  I have spent lots of time on my knees scavenging through the grass looking for it, time that could have been better spent recording whatever I was trying to capture in the first place.  The Rode Blimp is also more susceptible to wear and tear. The structure of the cage is made up of hundreds of plastic hexagons and over time some of these thin hexagon sides have snapped.  This hasn't caused any problems for me yet but I imagine that if enough of these bits break, I'll start hearing wind-noise creeping into my recordings.

In this photo you can see cracks in the Blimp's body design.Here you can see the Rode Blimp's rubber insert described above.

As befits a somewhat higher-end product, the Rycote windshield seems to be much more adaptable for different length mics as it has extensions that can be added or removed as needed.  The Lyre system used in a Rycote also makes it much easier to change out microphones with different body circumferences  - as opposed to the Rode's rubber-band suspension.  The Lyre lets you simply pop out one mic and pop in another, while with the Blimp’s suspension, swapping out two different-sized mics takes time and fiddling. The Blimp comes with a variety of different mic clips that can be put in the suspension system to accommodate various mic diameters, so if you want to swap out the mic, you have to completely dis-assemble the rubberband suspension, attach a new clip and then rebuild the suspension again.  It is not difficult to do, but it is a 'stop-everything' kind of process. In terms of comfort of handling, if you tend to spend a lot of time holding the mic with the pistol grip, the contour on the Rycote’s grip is much less comfortable then the Rode’s, but I feel like this is off-set by the fact that the Rycote is lighter.

On the left is the Lyre Suspension found on a Rycote, while on the right you can see Rode's rubber band suspension.The more comfotable Rode pistol grip is on the right, while the lighter Rycote is shown here on the left.

Both of these mic surrounds are quite effective in protecting the microphone from the wind.  They both come with furries that are very similar; Rycote calls theirs a Windjammer and Rode refers to theirs as a Dead Wombat.  I used the Rode Blimp dressed in it's wombat fur during my trip along the coastal roads of Iceland where I encountered some pretty heavy winds. The Blimp allowed me to capture good sound without much difficulty in those wild conditions.  

Before I invested in the Rycote and Rode systems I was using a foam wind cover with a furry fabric sheath pulled over it made by Rode, it continues their dead animal themed naming convention and goes by the name "Dead Cat".  This is not good enough in extreme circumstances but it will get you through light wind in a pinch. One advantage of the Dead Cat is that it is much less imposing and doesn't draw attention as much a full windshield and furry does.  I am not saying it is stealth by any means but it is a bit less conspicuous.

Rode's Dead Cat is a furry cover that goes over top of traditional Microphone foam wind guard.In addition to the windscreens, I carry some extra supplies I purchased at a local fabric store.  I have a roll of foam about an inch thick, and a few yards of long-haired fun fur (I use black but you can get some far-out neon colours if that's your thing).  I have found these supplies to come in handy when I have to get creative in a situation that is not going according to plan.  For instance I've found myself in this predicament: I'm recording a sound that turns out to be too loud for my planned microphone and I have to try another mic, but am missing the right clips to mount in the Blimp. I've cut a few chunks of foam and fur, wrapped them around the mic and secured it all with a rubber band, and voilà -  a homemade solution that saved the recording session.  It's not ideal for getting the sound perfectly but it helped me get something when otherwise I would have got nothing.

Up front is a roll of foam and behind it is a few yards of the fun fur. On the right is a mic with the foam and fur wrapped around it.

I also have some wind protection for other-sized mics.  I have the Rycote Portable Recorder Kit to help cut down wind noise when I am out with my hand-held recorder.  It works quite well but is not terribly effective in really high wind conditions.  To help, I have cut up a piece of the foam mentioned above and shaped it so it can fit over the mics inside the Rycote furry.  This helps with the wind but does colour the sound a bit.

My portable recorder below the foam I cut out to fit over its mics, with the Rycote cover at the top.

For smaller mics, I have a few tiny foams in a couple of sizes to help with lavs and tiny mics.  Again, if needed, in a pinch I can cut off a small square of the fun fur and secure it with a rubber band if more wind protection is needed. 

If I think they will be needed I have 6 sound re-enforcement blankets that I can bring along to try to help isolate a sound from its surroundings.  These can substantially cut down room reverberation or help in deadening down noise leaks from outside.  They can also be used in extreme wind as barriers held on the windy side of the mic, as they are quite heavy and won’t audibly flap around, unless we are talking hurricane-speed winds.  Finally these can be used to place under things that move, so you can cut down on the ground friction sounds they may make.  They are also good for putting under your knees if your recording session requires a lot of kneeling and crawling.

 

Since the blankets are quite bulky I find a good technique to keep them manageable is to store them in vacuum sealed bags.  This process makes them quite a bit smaller during storage and they are easy to get out of the bags when needed and are back to full size in a few minutes.

The final thing I like to bring along for microphone protection is another human being.  A second set of eyes can watch for problems that might go unseen by a recordist concentrating on the task at hand... specifically protecting your gear from theft.  I have had a few occasions where a friend or colleague has noticed something/someone I had not, and I've been very glad for their presence as a result.  Plus, a second set of hands (attached to a quiet and patient body) is helpful in countless ways throughout the whole recording process in the field.  I try to always go out with at least one other person, my wife usually drawing the short straw for this job. 

So that's what I like to have handy in terms of microphone protection on a field recording adventure.  Please feel free to contribute what items you find invaluable in your kit via the comments section below or through Twitter.  You can find me on Twitter @azimuthaudio .

New Demo Reel for Sound Editing in Animation

Working as a sound editor can be an amazing way to make a living but there are a few parts of the gig that I really don't look forward to.  Certainly making demo reels falls in this category.  Making a demo reel is not easy.  Producing a coherent, tight reel for myself is one of the hardest jobs I've been tasked with as a sound editor.  Demo reels are a major time commitment - from tracking down copies of projects I've worked on, to picking good clips and then editing them together - the process seems unduly laborious.  I bring all this up because I have recently embarked on updating my demo reel for the third time in my career.  

I put together my first reel in my last semester of film school in ’97.  In retrospect it was pretty easy, but it seemed like a pain even then.  I only had student films to use in the reel and to pick clips from, so rounding up the content was easy - I only had a few credits to my name.  I also had access to video editing equipment through my college.  After all the effort to put the reel together, I got hired at the post audio house where I interned and never really had to shop around that version of my reel.  I don’t even have a copy of it anymore.

After working at that facility for 6 years I moved to a different studio for a year and then decided to go freelance full-time.  In order to secure some new clientele I needed to put together an up-to-date reel.  By then I had quite a bit of material to draw from after 7 years in the business.  The problem was actually tracking down copies of the material; this took weeks and a lot of phone calls.  Also, I had to figure out a way of editing it all together.  This was in 2004 and home-based video editing was not as cheap or accessible as it is now.  Suffice it to say I did not enjoy the experience.  

Now, eight years later, I need a current reel and I can't put off the big job any longer. I am again going through the process of updating my reel.  Updating is not really the right word since I am basically starting from scratch.  Since I'm approaching this as a completely new project, I have been doing a lot of research online.  I've watched a ton of other professional sound editors' reels and read a bunch of articles on how to make an effective reel.  The information I have collected with all this research has not been very conclusive.  Just about everyone offering advice online has a completely different  take on the best way to go forward.  There is no consensus on how long a reel should be or how many clips should be used. 

There are smart arguments for both longer and shorter reels.  Shorter? Ah, but if you want to show multiple clips with any kind of context you need time let them play out. OK, then - longer... Yeah, but seriously, what prospective client is going to take the time to watch 7 minutes worth of material for every editor they are considering for a project?  Is it better to show 2 or 3 clips in longer chunks, or go more of a montage route and throw a lot of short clips together?  

I guess the answer is that it depends on the situation for the person making the reel and to a larger extent the person you expect to be watching the reel.  After a lot of thought and discussion I made a few decisions that I hope will work for my situation....... but first off, a little background.

Early in my career I did a lot of post-production work on corporate videos.  Then I moved into documentaries and lifestyle/reality programming.  Then when I went freelance I changed my focus to concentrate on animated series work.  Finally in the last few years I have been doing some feature-length projects.  Obviously no single demo reel can cover off all these bases.  So I am making 3 different reels.  I am not looking hard for corporate work these days, so I am going to focus one reel on animation, another on documentaries and the third on live action/scripted programmes.  

The one I'm starting with, because it's currently the most important for me, is the animation reel.  I've been lucky enough to work on a lot of animated series over the last few years.  In fact, to date I have cut SFX,  and sometimes Dialog, Music or Foley as well (in some cases all of the above on one project), for 393 half-hour episodes of animated television series, plus a bunch of animated features.  With this bulk of work I have a lot of clips that can be showcased.  In order to convey the amount of work I have completed I am opting to go the montage route for this reel.  Each clip will be around 20 seconds long and feature the standard labeling convention of a lower third graphic listing the show’s title, production company, my credits on the production, and how many episodes I worked on for the series.  I also decided to give myself a 2.5 minute limit for the final running time.  

One of the main reasons I settled on this format is that I feel that for animated series at least, post-production supervisors are looking mostly for 2 things: quality audio work  and a track record of accountability.  Obviously they are looking for someone who can make their show sound great, but I think they place a lot of value on knowing they are getting someone who can handle the pressure and scheduling demands of the animation world.  So I am hoping to walk that fine line, showcasing some of the stronger work I have done and at the same time giving a strong impression of the volume of work I've completed - hopefully letting prospective clients know that I have been through the wringer many times and have always delivered.

This Graph show the number of episodes I have cut SFX for on various series.

Once I decided how I wanted my reel to look (i.e. montage-style and 2.5 minutes), I had to pick the best clips to use.  With around 200 hours of footage to potentially choose from, this is a bit of a daunting task.  First thing is to get copies of the shows.  Some of the shows I've collected on commercially-released DVDs, others I received as screeners from the production companies, most I still had on drives from when I was working on the projects.  An element complicating this process is lost data.  2 years ago my studio was broken into and cleaned out (you can read about that experience in this post).  Lost in that robbery was my archive of finished work.  I know it was stupid to have the archives on-site but there's nothing I can do about it now. (Let my mistake be your warning, get a bullet-proof back-up and archive protocol.)  Since I had no access to my original edit sessions for anything done prior to the robbery, my options started to narrow.  I got DVDs of some of the shows but I found a lot of the final mixes have music mixed loudly and I couldn't really showcase the SFX work I did with the music competing for the listener’s attention.  I wanted as often as I could to use clips without the music stem.  In some cases this was not possible, so I'd pick a sequence where there was no score or where the SFX were mixed prominently.

Some of the commercially released DVDs I have done Sound Editing for.

Once a bunch of clips were picked and I'd made a first assembly of my reel, I was faced with a couple of problems.  First, I was way over my 2.5 minute self-imposed limit.  It was coming in at 5 minutes.  Secondly, when I played it for a select few people they all had a similar response:  it was too aggressive.  I had picked a lot of showy clips featuring huge action sequences with explosions everywhere.  I had done some good work on all those explosions, but when they were all put together it was too much to watch all together.  It was like being hit in the face with a frying pan for 5 minutes. I had to find some peaceful moments to slip in to give the listeners' ears a rest.  I also cut out a lot of material to get it down to my 2.5 minute limit.  That is always a difficult task for me.  I put a lot of work into each of these projects and deciding that a bunch of shows were not going to make the cut was tough.

Now that the reel was down to my desired length it was time to polish it up.  I added a few subtle transition sounds to help move from clip to clip. To give it a little extra twist, I called in a big favour at one of the studios where I often freelance.  The studio has a visual effects department and I was able to convince one of their best graphics guys to animate my logo, something to jazz up the opening of the reel.  What he delivered was above and beyond my hopes and expectations.  I now have a really cool motion graphics intro that I love.

So now after way too much thought and effort, and without further blathering is the premiere of my Animation Demo Reel:

Let me know what you think.  

Istanbul's Spice Bazaar

In October 2011, I went on a trip to Turkey and brought along some field recording gear to capture some of the sounds of the country.  I have already blogged about recordings of paramotors at The international Air Games in Ölüdeniz, as well as the Islamic call to prayer.  This post is going to be about the Spice Bazaar located in downtown Istanbul.

The "New" Mosque is on the left and the main doors to the Spice Bazaar are on the right.

Istanbul is an old city, something North American's can have a hard time wrapping our heads around since our historical landmarks pale in comparison.  The building containing the Spice Bazaar is part of the large complex of the Yeni Mosque.  This mosque is known locally by the colloquialism "The New Mosque", because there are so many much older mosques in the area.  Construction on this "new" mosque began in 1597.  1597!  That's 23 years before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock...... and that's the NEW mosque! 

The construction of the Spice Bazaar began in 1597 and continued until it was completed in 1664.

Bazaars are some of the main pulls for tourists in Istanbul, imagine a high end flea market housed within a 400 year old building and you start to get the idea.  The Grand Bazaar is the busiest and most famous and is impressive in its size and diversity. Yet I much preferred the Spice Bazaar.  It is much smaller, maybe one tenth as big as the Grand Bazaar, and also feels a bit less like a tourist trap.  The Grand sells everything under the sun in its massive maze of shops, while the Spice Bazaar concentrates mostly on edible delights.  My favourite part was the amazing colours of all the various foods, spices and powders for sale. 

The people working in the shops had a schtick where they would try to guess where you were from, based on your accent.  I was consistently asked if I was American, and they were always disappointed to find out they had not guessed correctly, and I was Canadian.  When one of the sellers did guess Canadian I had a weird national pride well up and I ended up purchasing some snacks from the fellow.  They were very delicious, as was everything purchased at the Bazaar.  

Another interesting ploy that is used to keep you from moving on to the next shop is free tea.  Each shop will try to get you to accept a free turkish tea, or apple tea, to drink while you look around.  Since each shop is not much bigger than a small bedroom, once you accepted a tea you were in for the full pressure sales pitch as there was no where to hide.  The tea was made somewhere in the bowels of the old building and at the push of a button, in a few moments a boy would come flying out of the hallway with a tray containing little glasses full of tea for you.  These tea boys were very entertaining to watch as they navigated the busy halls at rapid speeds balancing the hot beverages.  I was constantly expecting them to crash or slip and send scalding tea all over an unsuspecting tourist, but these kids were pros and never spilled a drop. 

This is an example of the kind of tray the tea would be carried on through the busy corridors of the Spice Bazaar.

Another thing very different than in North America is the lack of music in every shop.  I was shocked to find the Spice Bazaar had almost no music playing in any of the stalls and shops.  This made for the possibility to record a great clean ambience of the environment.  So I got out my Sony D-50, with the rycote grip and windjammer, and did some semi-stealth recording.  Although the Bazaar is under a roof, the large ancient doors are left wide open and the wind can blow softly through the long halls making a windjammer handy to have.  I got a few strange looks as I roamed around with my recorder, but for the most part no one paid me any attention at all.

Along with me for this trip was my wife, Ehrin Albright, who was diligently snapping off some fantastic pictures with her camera.  Instead of just posting an audio clip with the ambience I recorded of the Spice Bazaar, I made a slide show of her photography.  Having it play alongside my ambience recording, it will also ba a virtual tour of the Spice Bazaar.  

There are a few places in this recording where you can hear glasses rattling, that is the sound of the tea boys whizzing past with the trays full of hot tea.  Also keep an eye out for the "Turkish Viagra" which we were told was a walnut & date based, all natural erotic stimulant?!?!  

Take a look and a listen:

Visual Resume For Sound Design??

Recently on twitter @colinhart, the man behind HartFX, threw out the following tweet:

This peaked my interest because I had never heard the term “visual resume” before.  So I googled it and got back a lot of different sites with a lot of different definitions of visual resume.  Some were for paper resumes that conveyed relevant information through charts, and images.  Others were for essentially elaborate powerpoint presentations to get across everything a resume needs to convey ( ex: Slideshare).  Really after spending quite a bit of time researching this topic, I still have no clear idea what the class Mr. Hart was attending was teaching him.

During this google roaming I came across a site that lets you make interesting animated presentations, called prezi.com, and started fooling around with it.  Before long I had made a little video that I thought might make a good intro presentation to put on the “About” page on this website.  So I captured the animation as a quicktime and started the process of doing a soundtrack for the thing. 

First up the video needed music.  I can play a few instruments, but I know my limitations as a composer.  While in college I scored a few student films but I am much happier doing effects editing.  So I reached out to my friend Jim Guthrie, who is a very accomplished musician and composer and asked if I could use a piece of his music for this little video and he graciously gave me permission.  The song is called “Popcorn pt 2” and is on his Children of the Clone album.  If you like it you can find it at Jim’s bandcamp page.  

Once I had edited the song to match the video, I started getting together the VO script.  I called in another favor and got a friend and colleague, Jason Charters, a television producer who also has lots of VO experience to come in and record the script for me.  We had fun getting a little campy in places and in only a few takes I had my VO in the can.

Next up was sound effects editing.  At first I tried some standard whooshes and swishes, but they quickly got annoying with so much visual movement happening throughout the video.  I needed to have sound effects that complimented the music track with out being a distraction to the narrative of the VO.  So I opened up the Stutter Edit plug-in made by Izotope and started playing around with Jim Guthrie’s song routed through the plug-in.  After trying a bunch of different settings I was able to find a few cool effects that twisted the song into cool synth-y whooshes, wind downs, bleeps and blops.  Here is a quick sample of the original song followed by some of the sounds that were made from it with Stutter Edit:

Once I started cutting to the picture with this new library of sounds I had created, they blended perfectly with the music (obviously since they were derived from the song to begin with).  Now I was able to add some audio movement to match up with all the crazy animated movement going on in the pictures.  

Next I did the final mix and added some cliched delay effects to the voice over for some comedy relief. 

Now here is the final version of my little promo video:

In the end I still have no idea what a visual resume is actually supposed to be.  I guess this was where my research lead me to and what I have done with the concept.

UPDATE: Jim Guthrie just won the Canadian Video Game Award for best Video Game Music, on the game Swords & Sworcery, beating out heavy hitters Dues Ex & Assassin's Creed.

SFX Library Review: SoundSnap

This instalment of the Azimuth Blog Indie SFX Library Review will be a little different, as I will be writing about a website/SFX service instead of the kinds of standard packaged libraries I've looked at in the past.  The usual guidelines still apply though; you can read about the basic standards and criteria I use in my reviews in this previous blog post.

SoundSnap.com is a website that hosts “140,000 sound effects and loops”.  I can't find an exact breakdown of how many loops they have vs SFX, but it appears they have about 30,000 music loops or samples... so simple math suggests they have in the ballpark of 110,000 sound effects on the site.  That is a fairly large library, one that SoundSnap boasts as being collected in part from Hollywood sound designers with big credits to their names.

The site was started by Tasos Frantzolas, a professional sound designer working out of Athens, Greece.  When launched, it was the amalgamated library of a community of 20 sound designers, encompassing 30,000 SFX.  It has grown from there with a focus on professional-quality SFX.  Big-name contributors include Coll Anderson (5904 downloadable SFX), Chuck Russom (400 downloadable SFX), Blastwave (32105 downloadable SFX), SFX Source (3150 downloadable SFX), Frank Serafine (1358 downloadable SFX), Paul Virostek/Airbourne Sound (13800 downloadable SFX) and many more.

There are other websites that offer downloadable SFX files but SoundSnap is special because of two features: its 'Royalty Free' license and its annual subscription.  A similar site is freesound.org. While freesound.org offers its SFX for free, there is a catch.  Most of the sounds have an “Attribution” creative commons license.  This means you have to give credit for each sound you use from the site.  In 99% of the projects I work on this is not possible.  The credits on some of the series I work on are so compact that there are many occasions that I don’t even get a screen credit as sound editor.  If I went to the producer and told them they had to add 200  credits for each sound I grabbed from a website I would get laughed out of the room.  It's simply not an option.  SoundSnap's standard 'Royalty Free' license does not require attribution so this is not an issue with their sounds.

While freesound.org obviously has the advantage of being free, SoundSnap has an interesting pricing structure.  When buying in small amounts it's not particularly cheap.  SoundSnap sells its sounds in packs, with the smallest pack being 5 sounds.  A 5-sound pack lets you pick any five sounds hosted on the site for $9, or $1.80 per sound (all prices listed in US dollars).  That is still cheaper than most sounds on Sounddogs.com, but if you intend to pull down a lot of sounds it will start to add up quickly.  But SoundSnap has a pricing structure that encourages bulk purchasing. If you purchase a pack of 100 sounds the price drops almost by half, to 99 cents per sound.  Still not super-cheap but getting more reasonable.  Yet here is the feature that really sets SoundSnap apart from the competition: the annual subscription.  This lets you download an unlimited number of sounds over the course of a year for $249.  On this plan, you are looking at a hypothetical price of 0.002 cents per sound.  When looked at from that perspective, you might say SoundSnap’s annual subscription is actually almost free. (Well... don't think about that too hard...)

Now, in order to hit that 0.002 cent price point, you'd have to download the entire library in one year - an undertaking that would require a level of discipline and patience that I don’t possess.   Downloading sounds from the site is rather easy but there is a protection mechanism in place to stop someone from setting up an automated download routine to grab all the sounds.

In order to download sounds you first have to sign up with a user name and password and then pick a download pack. Payment is easy and handled either through Paypal or credit card.  If you get the annual subscription, all you have to do for the rest of the year is log into the site and you are set to pull down all the sounds you need, never having to worry about paying again until your year is up.  Auditioning is straightforward, and the site responds to searches very quickly. You can search using a global search function or you can browse by categories.

I have a few criticisms of the site.  One complaint is that the site only loads 10 sounds per page.  So for example, if you search the word “monkey” you get 75 hits but they are spread out over 8 pages.  So auditioning them all involves a lot of browser navigation from page to page. It's nowhere near as quick as using Soundminer to find sounds (Not sure if that is a fair comparison though since one is online and the other is local).  Another drawback is a lack of consistent metadata for the downloaded sounds.  When I download a batch of sounds and load them into Soundminer for future use I find some sounds have a fully detailed set of metadata while others have just the file name and hard attributes (file length, bit rate, number of channels, etc.)  It would be fantastic if SoundSnap had a metadata policy that required everyone to include more detailed metadata for the sounds.

All these files were downloaded from SoundSnap. You can see the varying amounts of Metadata.

In terms of the quality of the actual sounds - I have found them to be really great.  Obviously I have not listened to every sound on the site but with very few exceptions the sounds have all been up to quite high standards.  This makes sense since since the contributors all seem to be professional sound editors and have their own high standards to meet.

This is what the auditioning pages look like.

I've also found this site to be a life-saver on occasions when I'm freelancing or at a mix without my personal SFX library handy.  You can simply log onto SoundSnap wherever you are and hopefully find what you are looking for, without having to carry a hard drive, laptop and Soundminer key with you every where you go.  

I would not recommend anyone attempt to treat an annual subscription to SoundSnap like a fully-functional stand-alone SFX library. I have found that SoundSnap can be an excellent emergency backup option though.  In cases when you have exhausted your own library and you are at a loss to find that perfect sound a quick search on SoundSnap can offer a great find or a new perspective on what you are trying to find.  I've never used it as a first resort, but SoundSnap got me out of more then a few jams when my primary library searches came up empty.  

All in all, SoundSnap - with or without the annual subscription - is a great tool to have in your back pocket as a compliment to an on-site well-rounded professional SFX library.