Article by: Erling Hoff — Apr 15 2019

Up to Speed with Soundly's Rallycross and Formula 4 Sound Packs!

We’ll never stop updating the Soundly Pro Library, and today we are excited to reveal three new sound effect packs: Rallycross, Formula 4 and Crosskart / Gokart. The audio team at Storyline Studios expertly recorded the sounds, visiting iconic racing tracks such as Bugatti Raceway! Read the fascinating story behind the recording process and sound design below:

Cinemas across Norway are currently showing the new rallycross movie Born2Drive, to raving reviews from critics and audience. Recording and designing the sound for the movie was no easy feat, as we discovered when sat down and talked to sound designer and engineer Vidar Grande from Storyline Studios. In fact, in lack of existing rallycross and Formula 4 audio samples, Vidar and his team (Bård Farbu, Mats Lid Støten) recorded and produced a full set of new sound effects. We’re so excited to reveal that these sounds are now part of the Soundly Cloud Libray!

- Hi, Vidar, could you please tell us a bit about what Born 2 drive is about?

The movie documents how the 15-year-old Oliver Solberg, son of multiple world champion Petter Solberg, became the worlds youngest rallycross driver. We follow him through footage from his childhood up to the present, and we get a glimpse of the time he uses behind the wheel and how he and his team prepare for races. We also follow the relationship between Oliver and his family, and we see the love and admiration Oliver has for his father. And of course, we get to experience a lot of fast driving cars and action!

Born 2 Drive movie trailer

- We as sound designers know that sound is an essential part of a good racing movie and that cars can be challenging to record. How did you and your team prepare for the sessions? What were your thoughts on the sound design?

We’ll first off, it was essential for us to give an accurate representation of the sound. We knew that Born 2 Drive was going to be watched by a lot of insiders and fans within rallycross and Formula 4, so we did our best to impress them with authentic sounding scenes. It turns out that the noises these cars make are truly larger-than-life-sounding on their own, so we wanted to stay true to that. In fact, the rallycross and Formula 4 scenes have praised us for the meticulous sound design, and that means a lot for us.

When researching the movie, we investigated potential rallycross and Formula 4 sound libraries. We found none, so we decided to make a library of our own, and that turned out to be a fun and challenging task!

Oliver cramped in his formula 4 racing car

- Please tell us about how you decided to record.

Well, recording race cars is challenging, because they are so loud. We needed special microphones that could deal with sounds up to 140 decibels. Even with these microphones, we needed to redo takes, add sound-muter, move further away from the exhaust system, etc. There was a lot of trial and error, and we had only a single day to record all the sounds, as the team was testing the car for an important race the next day. We spent two days at the rallycross course in Denmark. Oliver’s car, a Citroën DS3RX, is his dad Petter Solberg’s former car, the vehicle with which he won the world cup in 2014. After the movie premiere, Petter came over to us and told us how happy he was that the film sounded authentic - “Finally an authentic-sounding car movie!”

We also spent a day in Le Mans, France, where Oliver goes to racing school, recording Formula 4 cars at the famous Bugatti Raceway. This was actually Oliver’s first ever day of Formula 4 driving! Getting to record the sound of these cars without any audience was not an everyday occurrence. Placing the microphones was a challenge on such a small car, but we were delighted with the results. And being as thorough when recording, we had an easy task designing the soundscape for the movie afterward.

Racing cars waiting at the Bugatti Raceway

-How did you experience collaborating with the rallycross environment?

It’s been a great experience. Oliver was dedicated to getting the sound right, for example when expressing the wish that promo clips for the movie highlight the car sounds and no music. That they all gave us time to mic up the cars, even though we were interfering with their training, was essential. They really let us do everything we needed to. I also believe the rallycross crowd has received the Born 2 Drive with great enthusiasm.

The Soundly team is thrilled to reveal that we now offer these sound packs directly in the Soundly Pro Library. They are divided into the following categories:

You can find each individual sound pack by entering its unique hashtag in the search field within Soundly

Thanks so much to Vidar Grande, Bård Farbu, Mats Lid Støten and Storyline Studios for their hard work on these excellent new libraries!

Download Soundly at getsoundly.com