How to make a Fire Sound Effect – Free and Easy

Get your creativity cooking with this toasty, royalty-free fire sound effect pack, containing high-quality WAV samples to level up your productions.

Fire noise is a highly sought-after asset among sound designers, and for good reason: many visual media productions and video games include fire in one form or another, whether it’s an ambient, background fire pit, or a building set alight by a notorious on-screen villain.

If you find yourself in need of some professional fire sounds, you’ve landed in the right place. You can download our free fire sound pack below, and below that we’ll show you how to make a custom fire sound effect for free using Krotos Studio.

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These sounds are smoking hot and royalty free! That means that if you can stand the heat of these 24-bit, 48kHz sounds, you can add them straight into your film, video and game productions as soon as you download them.

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But Wait! Blaze your own Custom SFX with Krotos Studio

Krotos Studio is a powerful sound design tool for filmmakers and sound designers. You can think of it as a Foley studio in your computer. It enables you to design and perform original sound effects without any need for expensive microphones, or a recording studio. You can literally perform the perfect fire sounds for the task at hand using your mouse or a MIDI keyboard, and drag the result into your project – no slicing or dicing required.

Creating a blazing fire sound effect in Krotos Studio

Krotos Studio is a sound designer’s best friend, coming jam-packed with numerous sound assets, including a free whooshing fire preset to assist you in crafting professional soundscapes.

Let’s jump into the trial version of Krotos Studio together and find out just how easy it is to create our own, unique fire sound effect.

Step 1: Open Krotos Studio

First, open up Krotos Studio (as a standalone app, or within your preferred editing software). Then, head to the Whoosh category and select the Fire preset.

Step 2: Select your preset

Next, you’ll be able to adjust your settings using the two X/Y matrices. The fire preset contains two controls: one allows you to control the whoosh of the fire from left to right in the stereo field, and the other allows you to alter the mix between four different fire sound types.

When interacting with the controls, Krotos Studio will start recording automatically and any changes you make will be recorded into your custom fire sound effect live. You can restart your recording as many times as you like until satisfied.

Step 3: Export your custom FX file

Once happy with your sound effect, you’ll be able to click and drag the custom file into your favourite editing software for use in your production, or save it as a file on your computer.

And, it’s as simple as that! You’ve learned how to make infinite custom fire sounds using the Krotos Studio Fire preset.

Different types of fire sounds

There are many instances where fire sounds are needed when working with visual media or video game design. For instance, you could need to incorporate the sound of a flamethrower as a weapon type in a video game, or you could need to layer many sounds to design a raging wildfire destroying an on-screen village.

Whatever the case may be, it’s important to think about how different types of fire will affect the sound. If we use the flamethrower example, you’ll need to consider that the fire will usually be caused by a gas canister, and you might also pair the sound with a suitable gas valve and electric ignition sound effect. The same can be said if designing sound for an oven hob.

Small details like this will make your productions more realistic and immersive–setting your productions aside from the amateurs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRcriqEbNX0

The great thing about Krotos Studio is that all of the presets have been designed to provide modular sounds that can be applied to different scenarios. If you haven’t downloaded the trial version yet, check out the Fire preset in action in the clip above.

2002 Spider-Man burning building battle

When we think about iconic Hollywood fire scenes, it’s hard to forget the scorching battle between Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man and Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin in a burning building, from Sam Raimi’s 2002 classic film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx6PDVD65CI

Watching it back now gives an unmatched sense of nostalgia! But, Spider-Man isn’t the only thing spectacular about this scene… the sound design is flawless, from the sizzling and crackling of the fire noises to the rubble crashing down from the burning building. We can’t forget those pesky Green Goblin razor bats. This is a great example of impeccable sound design.

Krotos Studio comes with 200+ sound effects, from ambience presets to single foley sounds–all capable of giving your productions a professional varnish. The great thing about them is they can be combined to give you a near-endless pallet of possibilities. Maybe you can create a burning building scene from some of the assets included!

FAQs

Why does fire sound so relaxing?

Fire has always been something humans find fascinating. There’s something mystical about it that draws our attention to it entirely. This shift of mental focus is what allows fire to take our mind away from our everyday anxieties and internal stressors.

This shift of focus caused by our fascination with fire can be caused by shifting our visual attention to fire, or by tuning our auditory sense to the equally-mystical fire sounds.

What does fire sound like?

Fire sounds aren’t always soothing though. They can just as equally indicate danger, as an out-of-control, raging fire can be loud, fearsome, and sound like a roaring jet engine. This is contrary to the serene crackling and popping of a controlled and contained campfire.

Why does fire make sound?

The crackling of a fire is caused by trapped gases escaping from the material being burnt. Wood (the most common material we burn) contains water, so when it’s heated up, the water turns to steam which gets trapped inside of tiny pockets inside the wood. These pockets eventually release the trapped steam as the wood decays.

Can we create fire sounds artificially?

Creating the sound of fire artificially (that is by using sounds that aren’t organically from a fire) can be a challenging feat, however, with the right mindset, tools, and know-how, it can be done, albeit not as realistically as a natural fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuDSKfiERC8

Check out Cactuzz Sound’s video above to see a pretty ingenious way of tackling the task at hand.

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