Thunder sound effects
Distance decides how thunder sounds. Close thunder is a crack and distant thunder is a roll. Pick one in the prompt.
Listen: 10 samples from the thunder collection
Every clip shows the exact prompt that produced it. The render script reads its prompts from the same file as this page. Copy one, change a word and generate your own.
Rolling storm
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxdistant thunderstorm rolling across a wide valley, low sustained rumbles overlapping, open outdoor
Overhead crack
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxlightning striking almost overhead, violent splitting crack into an immediate deep chest-hitting boom
Sheet lightning
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxsoft sheet lightning rumble, low broad thunder without a sharp transient, slowly decaying, distant
Strike and split
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxlightning striking a tree, electric crack with splintering wood and a rolling thunder aftermath
Storm approaching
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxthunderstorm approaching, thunder growing louder and closer over successive strikes with rising wind
Dry storm
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxdry desert thunderstorm, sharp cracks echoing off canyon walls with no rain, wide open reverb
Mountain echo
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxthunder echoing repeatedly between mountain walls, multiple decaying reflections, vast outdoor space
Window rattle
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxthunder heard from inside a house, muffled boom with window panes rattling in their frames
Sub rumble bed
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxpure low frequency thunder rumble with no high transient, slow swelling sub bass bed, seamless loop
Cinematic thunder hit
via audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfxcinematic thunder crack designed for impact, hard transient into an enormous processed low tail
Prompts that work
These models respond to physical description. Name the material, the action and the space.
Distant rumble
distant thunder rumble, low continuous rolling boom, no sharp crack, far away and muffled, 3 seconds
"No sharp crack" keeps distant thunder distant. Without it the model tends to add a transient that sounds close.
Close strike
close lightning strike crack, sudden sharp high-frequency snap immediately followed by a deep rolling boom, loud and dry
"Snap immediately followed by" the boom matches how a close strike sounds, with almost no gap. That gap is what tells the ear the distance.
Long roll
long thunder roll, sustained low rumble that swells and fades unevenly over 4 seconds, no distinct crack, outdoor space
"Swells and fades unevenly" avoids a smooth, synthetic rumble. Real thunder has irregular peaks as the sound bounces off distant terrain.
Double crack
double thunder crack, two sharp cracking impacts close together followed by a long low rumble tail, dramatic and loud
Give the count ("two sharp cracking impacts") so the number of cracks is not left to chance.
Thunder over rain
thunder crack over a steady rain bed, sharp crack rolling into a low rumble, rain continues underneath at moderate volume
"Continues underneath" keeps the rain at a constant level through the crack, as in a single continuous recording.
Making thunder sounds that fit
Set distance with the crack-to-rumble ratio
Close thunder is dominated by a sharp high-frequency crack. Distant thunder has lost the crack and arrives as low rumble, because high frequencies fade over distance faster than low ones. Set the distance by describing this ratio: "no sharp crack, far away" for distant, "sharp snap immediately followed by" a boom for close. "Loud" and "quiet" do not set distance.
Real rumbles are uneven
A peal of thunder rolls, because the sound reflects off clouds, hills and buildings at different delays and the loudness rises and falls irregularly. Ask for it to "swell and fade unevenly". A clean rise and fall sounds synthetic.
Decide if rain is part of the take
Real recordings of thunder almost always include rain. To control the layers in your edit, generate thunder alone and add rain separately in your mix. For a single continuous ambience clip, prompt them together and say the rain "continues underneath at moderate volume" through the crack so the bed doesn't duck or disappear.
Why generate locally
The models run on your machine, which changes the cost, the privacy and what you can automate.
Offline after download
Weights are fetched once. After that, generation, the library and the API all work with the network off. Everything lives in one SQLite file and one folder of WAVs under ~/.soundbox, and nothing is uploaded.
Your agent can use it
Soundbox runs an MCP server in the same process, with tools for generating and listing sounds. Generated files come back as absolute paths, so an agent can copy them into a project.
Licences stated up front
Every model's terms are shown before you download it, and non-commercial weights need an explicit confirmation. Soundbox is MIT. The licence of the model that made a sound governs what you may do with it.
claude mcp add --transport http soundbox http://127.0.0.1:17494/mcpcurl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:17494/api/generate \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"model":"audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfx","prompt":"8-bit coin pickup blip","duration_s":1}'Frequently asked questions
- Can I use these sounds in a commercial video or game?
- It depends on the model that made them. Soundbox shows each model's licence before you download its weights. The Stable Audio 3 models use the Stability AI Community License: commercial use is free below USD $1M annual revenue, and above that Stability requires an enterprise licence. ACE-Step 1.5 is MIT. MiniMax's models allow commercial use under a revenue cap and require an attribution notice. Some voice and stem-separation models are non-commercial only. Soundbox itself is MIT, but the audio is governed by the licence of the model that made it. Read that licence before you ship; this summary is not legal advice.
- Does this run offline?
- Yes, once the weights are downloaded. Soundbox runs the models locally and stores everything in one SQLite file and one folder of WAVs under ~/.soundbox. There is no account, API key or upload step. Only the initial model download needs the network.
- What hardware do I need?
- An NVIDIA GPU with 8 GB or more. CPU-only is supported, but each generation then takes minutes. That is fine for a few short clips and slow for a large batch.
- Can my coding agent generate these for me?
- Yes. While Soundbox is running it serves MCP at http://127.0.0.1:17494/mcp, with tools for generating and listing sounds. An agent can generate a sound as part of the task it is already doing and gets back an absolute file path to use in your project.
- How is this different from downloading a sample pack?
- A thunder pack gives you a fixed distance and crack-to-rumble ratio chosen for someone else's storm, and it won't line up with your rain bed. Generating lets you set the distance, sharpness and duration your scene needs, and layer it against a matching rain track. It costs time and a GPU.