Royalty free sample sources?

What are some good royalty free (public domain/CC, etc) sample sources on the web? I'm mostly interested in quirky, interesting recordings and so on that can be sampled from/mashed up in commercial recordings.
posted by frenetic (5 comments total)

Many of the downloadable sample sites I've seen are fairly conservative and predictable in terms of what they have on offer: breakbeats, kicks and snares, you know the drill... not sure if this one is much different, but sampleswap might be worth checking out.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:22 PM on December 15, 2008

Freesound is the best I've come across.
posted by ludwig_van at 9:03 PM on December 15, 2008

http://www.freesound.org/

also:
i have a huge list of useful audio links on my site here.

I created that page for students i was teaching how to records and the such. Also The internet archive is good now and then.

Anyways those links and more are on my sites educational audio link page.

hope that helps good sir!

If anyone reads this and knows of more good links let me know and i will update my page to be more useful and inclusive. peace.
posted by 5imian at 2:02 PM on December 27, 2008

Not entirely what you are after, but I just discovered sfxr. It's basically a small synth engine, optimised more for games developers than musicians, but it's a great and quick source of an infinite number of little blippy noises and explosions.
posted by motty at 1:07 PM on January 7, 2009

Works by the U.S. government are (theoretically) copyright-free, so any US Army training video you get your hands on should be mashable.
posted by lekvar at 5:09 PM on January 13, 2009