To The Sea
The challenge is well-known to sound designers everywhere. How can one do justice to the beauty and power of the ocean without ending up with something like white noise?
Lucien Balibar’s answer in this collection is straightforward: you have to move. To launch yourself. To navigate and break the waves.
TO THE SEA is a modular sailing and ocean sounds library where these two dimensions intertwine and dissolve into one continuous motion. What emerges is an original approach to a universal theme.
Start exploring by checking out our FILE LIST and complete UCS compliant METADATA CHART.
From as far back as Homer’s Odyssey, stories of navigation have been told and passed down from generation to generation. They speak of our desire to explore and discover — even if at the cost of facing unknown perils and immeasurable forces. They stand as a testament to both human fragility and resilience.
TO THE SEA offers the source material for sound designers to tell these stories in their full arc.
Sailing is, naturally, at the heart of this collection. Different types of vessels were recorded in LCR or with a custom 5.0 set up: monohulls, trimarans, and even a large historic ship. The variety of textures crafted by Balibar is unheard of, and all the sounds were carefully mastered to highlight their unique character. « Dry » isolated hard FX such as winches cranking, anchors being raised, sails flapping, hull and rope creaks are also a key part of the material.
The wind, sea currents, waves (from subtle ripples to colossal swells)… These are some of the forces that will shape the course of your journey. It’s up to you to harness them and create striking sonic dynamics — shifting between gentle lapping and the furious roar of the ocean or building from a soft breeze towards a howling gale as you approach the heart of the storm.
Your journey will be full of new places to discover. Whether it’s a lively harbor bursting with activity or a peaceful haven on a deserted tropical beach, we’ve got you covered. To the Sea features seaside and beach ambiences recorded in the most diverse locations — from the sunny shores of Martinique to the coast of Norway. The beach ambiences include general surf sounds and individual waves as well, recorded with different perspectives. The latter are meant to give you that extra detail that is often hard to achieve when dealing with the ocean. Well, not anymore.
We tried to break down the sound of the ocean and sea waves to give you as much flexibility as possible while editing. We recorded hose sprays, recreated different aspects of sea waves ourselves on an isolated lake (such as different versions of watery impacts that you hardly get from a “real wave”), used the old Alka-Seltzer trick for close fizzing, and even faced a geyser big watery explosion — among many other things. These elements can be used as sweeteners or can work on their own for building more complex sounds.
For Soundminer users, the fun goes even further with a range of Radium patches included in the library that grant you the power of Poseidon.
Balibar was faced with many challenges while working on the film Flo, about the life of pioneering French sailwoman Florence Artaud. Not only did he have to record dialogue in very complicated conditions, but he also had to create most of the sound effects used in the film. In many cases, the main obstacle was logistical; in others, it was an aesthetic challenge: how to render a more expressive sonic representation of the sea?
Only through experimentation was he able to get some answers. Balibar soon found himself mirroring the film’s main character, heading closer and closer to the water — searching for very specific elements, moving his microphone over the passing waves to capture sounds so dynamic and detailed that they could finally convey the rush of sensations one feels when facing the ocean.
Agency was key.
TO THE SEA is the extrapolation of that first experience. At a time when the very notion of agency is at risk in multiple domains, this collection chooses to make it its main theme — our message in a bottle to old sailors and sound designers alike.
Production sound mixer and sound editor with over 30 years of experience, Lucien Balibar has collaborated with some of the most important names of French cinema.
He is also the inventor of the small footprint LCR setup that eventually became the gold standard for film sound in France. An evolution of this setup in 5.0 was recently conceived and used to record some of the sounds of TO THE SEA.
Balibar is known among his peers for his passion for sound and the excellence of his recordings, always aiming to connect what happens on set to the post-production stage. This collection makes his work available to a larger audience.
We would also like to thank the following sound designers for their collaboration on this library: Guillaume Bouchateau, Pascal Villard, Théo Serror, Grégoire Chauvot, Mélia Roger, Thibault Noirot, and Côme Jalibert.
A very special thanks also goes to Géraldine Danon and Philippe Poupon for welcoming us aboard the Fleur Australe for an unforgettable recording session.
Sound is a journey.
96 & 48 kHz / 24 bits
30 GB / 13+ Hours
454
89 5.0 + 245 LCR + 70 stereo + 50 mono
96 & 48 kHz / 24 bits
18 GB / 13+ Hours
454
404 stereo + 50 mono
454 files / over 13 hours / 30 GB
24 bits / 96 & 48 kHz
Extensive metadata
UCS compliant
Easy way to navigate in Soundminer with Open Tier
Radium presets
Microphones : DPA 4041 / DPA 4006 / Sennheiser MKH 8040 / Sennheiser MKH 8050 / Cortado MKIII / Schoeps CCM 4 / Schoeps CCM 41 / Aquarian H2a / Soundfield SPS200 / Oktava MK 012
Recorders : Cantar X3, Sound devices 833, Scorpio, Mixpre 6, Zoom F6
