On July 13, 2024, the sound and film community lost a legendary talent when Ann Kroeber passed away at the age of 77. Ann was a remarkable field recordist and sound designer who, along with her husband Alan Splet, was instrumental in crafting the sound of beloved films like Blue Velvet, Dune (1984), Lost Highway, and Dead Poets Society (just to name a few).
She was also a cherished partner of Pro Sound Effects, and we were heartbroken to hear of her passing. Today, we’re honoring Ann’s life and work by remembering her story and sharing tributes from those she impacted in the sound community.
Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1946, Ann Marie Kroeber got her start in the industry by landing a job with the United Nations film department in New York City. Her first experience working with sound came when she was tasked with recording the annual Chinese New Year fireworks display. Despite having no prior experience with the Nagra tape recorder she was given, Ann quickly overcame her trepidation and captured recordings that wowed her colleagues. When her department was forced to downsize, Ann’s supervisor encouraged her to seek out work in the film industry.
After moving to San Francisco and working as a picture editor for a news station, Ann applied for a position as an assistant picture editor on the film The Black Stallion. However, in a twist of fate, she ended up interviewing with the film’s sound supervisor, Alan Splet. The two bonded instantly over their shared passion for sound, forming a close professional relationship that eventually grew into a lifelong partnership and marriage.
Ann had a particular talent for recording animals. By approaching them with respect and communicating with them as equals - even going so far as to show them how her recorder worked - she was able to gain their trust and establish a rapport in order to capture sounds that others simply couldn’t. Ann’s animal recordings have been used to create some of the most memorable sci-fi and fantasy creatures in cinema, including films like Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Ann also excelled at capturing unique sound effects using innovative techniques. Notably, she collaborated with Arnie Lazarus, creator of the Flat Response Audio Pickup (FRAP) contact microphone, to design a customized version for sound effects recording. In Ann’s capable hands, the FRAP contributed many of the otherworldly sounds in David Lynch’s Dune, and many of today’s sound artists still rely on the techniques she pioneered.
After her husband passed away in 1994, Ann founded Sound Mountain and continued to work as a recordist and sound designer in addition to maintaining the extensive library she and Alan had spent most of their lives building. She became known as an acclaimed sound consultant, gifted at tuning into the specific feelings for each project and curating sounds that played a key role in many award-winning films and games.
With the help of many others, as you’ll read below, she slowly began digitizing her vast library - exceeding 100 hours of recordings from more than 200 reels. “I just have a huge collection that desperately needs somebody to help me organize,” she said in a 2014 Tonebenders interview. “I’m not the right person to catalogue, but it really does need to be kept for posterity and for other people to be able to access because, you know, it's pretty amazing.”
A couple years later, she became a trusted partner of Pro Sound Effects, and we began our process developing her sonic treasure trove into individual libraries. With more than a dozen releases now available under the Sound Mountain Collection, it has been an immense honor to collaborate with Ann in making these sounds accessible for all sound artists.
Ann’s intuitive approach to recording, open-minded collaboration style, and deep connection to the emotional power of sound won her the respect of many in the industry. Her mentorship and generosity of knowledge also left a lasting impact on the sound community and helped shape the next generation of sound artists.
Our friend Ann will be greatly missed, but her spirit lives on in her work and those fortunate enough to learn from her - and we hope that everyone can learn something from this one-of-a-kind artist.
"My whole way of recording is really to listen - to turn off my thinking and intently be there in the presence of the sound that I'm trying to capture. Just go there, and sometimes magic happens." – Ann Kroeber
Ann and Alan’s beautiful and powerful work on the sound design for The Black Stallion is iconic. When you mention it in the company of any great sound designer, they shake their head in awe.
Randy Thom, Director of Sound Design at Skywalker Sound
(The Revenant, Forrest Gump, The Incredibles)
Ann Kroeber was so much more than just a sound recordist. She was incredibly supportive - sharing so many wonderful stories, tips, and enthusiasm for the work that she did. I met her around 2001, very early on in my college days. I was introduced to someone named Derek Espino who was also in my sound program. He mentioned he was interning for Ann, and I thought that was really interesting since I was interested in sound for film. The first time I met Ann I just remember how much I enjoyed her as a person, as a human.
At that time she was trying to take on the task of digitizing, archiving, and cleaning up the library she had built throughout her career with her late husband Alan Splet under the banner of Sound Mountain, her company. So much influential work, so many wonderful things came out of their collaboration. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, you can definitely learn more about their collaboration. So myself and Derek and several others over the years would spend hours at a time, basically alone in a dark room with headphones on, listening to reels of her and Alan's work. It was a completely priceless time in my career.
The remarkable thing that finally happened after many years of trying to find a home for her library was that Pro Sound Effects formed a great relationship and trust with Ann and found a home for her library, the Sound Mountain library. I'm so happy that all the effort, work, and care went into those libraries to get them in shape for release. It's a remarkable, unimaginable task of trying to create some sort of legacy and share your work in a way that future generations can continue to use it. To me, that’s the most meaningful thing because Ann was someone who cared deeply about others, and her work, and her family. She'll be missed.
Michael Coleman, Founder of SoundWorks Collection
Paraphrased from SWC podcast episode Remembering Ann Kroeber
For me personally, trying to sum up what Ann Kroeber meant to me in a succinct manner is impossible. She's such a huge part of my story. I can say this much: I owe my whole career to Ann. Everything started with my internship with her at Sound Mountain. I remember when I moved to Los Angeles to look for work, Ann had graciously prepared some letters of recommendation to assist me in my job hunt. When the hiring manager at one studio asked one of their lead sound designers for his opinion on which candidate they should hire, he replied, "If that guy worked with Ann, hire him. He's gonna know some things."
Derrick Espino, Senior Sound Designer, Sony Interactive Entertainment
(Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us)
It’s hard to express how much Ann Kroeber has meant to me. She was a truly extraordinary sound artist, a giant inspiration, and a dear, dear friend. I miss her so much. David Lynch’s movies changed the way I thought about sound, and Ann’s collaborations with her husband Alan Splet on movies like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man are still a major influence on my work. Another milestone for me in film sound is The Black Stallion which Ann and Alan also did together. These movies are the epitome of everything I love about film sound. Expressive, emotional, experimental, original, bold, beautiful, poetic, musical.
I got to know Ann around 15 years ago when I was looking for some special sounds. She was really helpful and supporting and genuinely interested in the project I called her about. What started out as a request for sounds gradually turned into a deep friendship. She visited me in Denmark in 2011 and 2014 and I moderated seminars with her at the European Film College and the Danish Film School. She loved to teach and inspire new generations of sound people. She was really great at connecting sound artists worldwide, and sound people from all over the globe have been touched by her generous spirit.
Ann was a testament to the power of sound in cinema, and we are collectively in debt to her fantastic creativity in capturing and designing sound. I loved hearing her stories about how she fearlessly recorded some of the most unique animal vocals I’ve ever heard, or how she invented her special contact microphone setup for David Lynch’s Dune which has since become an integrated part of modern sound design. Her work will be with us forever, but I still miss this dear soul who always made me smile and opened my ears for new dimensions of sound.
Peter Albrechtsen, Sound Designer & Re-recording Mixer
(Evil Dead Rise, The Killing of Two Lovers)
Meeting Ann for the first time in Berkeley, sharing Thai food, and visiting her home to explore her incredible sound library are memories I’ll always treasure. I remember marveling at her massive collection of tapes, carefully stored in every corner, each one a testament to her life’s work. Ann was a true innovator; her work is a testament to the power and importance of sound, and her leadership and creativity left a profound mark on the field. On behalf of the entire Pro Sound Effects team, we are deeply grateful for the trust she placed in us to develop and release her sounds, starting with her very first library in 2017. Her legacy will always resonate deeply with us.
Douglas Price
Founder & CEO, Pro Sound Effects
For me, it’s not about recreating reality. It’s about what else the sound can convey, and how you can trigger the player’s imagination. That’s a quality I like about Ann’s sounds - you get a feeling that each sound is about much more than what it actually represents.
Martin Stig Andersen, Audio Director & Composer
(Cairn, Wolfenstein, INSIDE)
martinstigandersen.com
Around 2016, I listened to a Tonebenders episode featuring Ann Kroeber and was captivated by her stories. I absolutely loved hearing about her first experience with a tape recorder and the incredible descriptions of how she communicated with animals. A few weeks after the episode, I decided to reach out to Ann. I didn’t expect an answer - I just wanted her to know that I appreciated the interview. To my surprise, she responded within a few hours, and we ended up having a long, engaging conversation over Skype.
During our chat, she told me she had worked with Martin Stig Andersen on some projects and suggested that we meet since we both live in Copenhagen. She reached out to him on my behalf and helped arrange a meeting. A month later, I started as an intern, and today, I’ve had the privilege of working with him on several projects. Thanks to Ann, I got an opportunity and a connection that entirely shaped my career.
Ann will leave a lasting legacy not only through her recordings and passion for the craft, but also for her open-hearted desire to help. I will be forever grateful for her kindness and generosity.
Katrine Amsler, Audio Designer & Composer at IO Interactive
katrineamsler.com
I had the privilege to meet Ann when I was working as Audio Director on Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We had a need for authentic Amazon jungle, bird, insects, and amphibian sounds, but there was a particular dark and oppressive mood we were looking for. Ann was one of the first location sound recordists and archivists we reached out to and the only one to really engage and get involved on the mood part of what we were looking for. We spoke and collaborated over the telephone only as I recall. I would describe what we needed, and Ann would excitedly skim, in her mind, through the huge archive of sounds that she and Alan Splet had recorded, and describe moods and possibilities. I think by being the recordist of these sounds and actually going to these places, working on all these projects over the years, it gave her a very unique ability to understand the feelings and emotions that were required of the sounds I was describing.
After the phone calls, I would email over links to videos of the game environments, with Lara Croft walking through the dense jungle environments of the game. Ann would watch these and respond by combining various recordings from her library - and sending those over. The main design elements were the insect sounds and the way they layered and played in the locations. Playing with the sounds and seeing what felt right for the location and the tone and mood of what was onscreen was an important part of the sound selection process for Ann. It was not just sending over any sound she had that was tagged as belonging to the jungle - it was always about the feeling… and the sounds were perfect.
Rob Bridgett, Senior Manager, Sound at PlayStation
(Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Prototype 2)
robbridgett.com
I discovered David Lynch, and Ann's work, when I was young. Her sound work in Lynch's films and others have long been an inspiration to me. I didn't know Ann very well, but I got to chat with her a few times over the years and she was a strong argument for meeting your heroes: she was kind, friendly, and full of passion and joy for her craft.
Mark Kilborn, Audio Director at Certain Affinity
(Forza, Call of Duty, Singularity)
I first met Ann in 1997 when I was working as a Sound Designer at Earwax Productions in San Francisco. She immediately struck me as an incredibly kindhearted artist who was willing to share knowledge and experiences, and was willing to supply Earwax with some ambiences that we could use for some commercials we were working on at the time. She then asked me if I would be interested in helping her restore her incredible sound effects library, which existed only on reel-to-reel Nagra Tapes.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw what she had to go through to make all of her beautiful older tapes play correctly on a given tape machine. She built a contraption from odd parts to essentially “create an oven” where she would literally cook her tapes… I remember absolutely feeling my heart stop when I observed what she was doing. The trick was to make sure to get the tapes between a certain narrow set temperature, basically just before they would melt. She had a strange box with vent holes, hairdryers, and a large turkey thermometer to make sure the temperature was correct. After a certain amount of time, she would then shut off the hairdryers so the tapes would cool down and play without sticking on tape heads for about a week. I immediately would take the tapes back to Earwax and digitize them in Pro Tools, so that they would be archived and ready for editing. I digitized and edited many tapes for her, and to be honest it’s been so long I can’t even remember how many, but I want to say well over 75. Hearing all those beautiful sounds as they were being digitized for the first time was very inspiring and incredibly thrilling…
I never got to meet her husband Alan, but I feel like I got to know him in a fascinating way from just listening to him talk on the tapes and how he slated things. They were such creative people, and I learned so much from helping Ann with her restoration project. The experience also resulted in me meeting Derrick Espino, which spawned a wonderful working relationship that continues to this day. Ann opened our eyes and ears to recording techniques neither of us knew about, especially using her FRAP contact microphone. I will never forget hearing her talk about how she used the mic to make the sounds for the sand worms in Dune (1984). Working with Ann was like an endless kind of graduate school, and I think back to our endless talks with an immersive smile. I am so grateful for the time I got to spend with Ann Kroeber.
Jeff Darby, Senior Sound Designer, Sony Interactive Entertainment
(Spider-Man 2, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart)
It was an incredible opportunity to collaborate with Ann and work directly with both her and Alan’s sounds. There are a number of memorable stories I have of working with Ann, but the one that stands out happened in the lead up to an early Sound Mountain release. As you might imagine, we always have a brainstorm session with the team to try and find the most fitting title for a library. After coming up with a list of options for a library featuring unique and quite foreboding machine sounds, we landed on the very boring library title of "Industrial Sounds." When presenting it to Ann, she countered by suggesting "Industrial Sounds with Soul". Considering the heavy nature of the material, that made us giggle… but I believe that through this, Ann helped us realize the value of being playful and light, especially in service of balancing out the weight of perceived darkness… and a looming release deadline!
Dan D’Errico
Library Manager, Pro Sound Effects
Ann Kroeber was the most curious of listeners, opinionated about everything, and full of stories. Her ears were full of life, and she demanded that her sounds be too… whether it was her FRAP universes, animal sounds full of personality, or atmospheres full of depth, space and motion.
I first met Ann in about 2001. She had an office lined with ¼” tape reels in the Saul Zaentz building in Berkeley where, amid her other work, she was digitizing her prodigious Splet/Kroeber Sound Mountain library. As I was something of an expert at the time with digital sound effects organizing using FileMaker Pro-based systems I’d developed, I helped devise filenaming, foldering, and cataloging practices in support of this effort. And what a wealth of rich material from legendary films! The Black Stallion, Dead Poets Society, Blue Velvet… And such a great crew of interns and helpers.
Ann was a wonderful human I am proud to call a friend - idiosyncratic in delightful ways, supportive and generous with an instinct to help the underdog - and above all ALWAYS real. It was a joy to listen with Ann on many occasions, from Nature Sounds Society to Bay Area Sound Ecology to her own studio. She is sorely missed.
Jeremiah Moore MPSE
Sound Designer & Re-recording Mixer
In 2018 when she retired and moved from California to Arizona, she reached out and asked me if I could come down to Tucson and set up her studio gear. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet one of the nicest, kindest people in my life (and one of the most interesting and talented sound recordists to boot). In the years that followed I would check in on her and occasionally make the 2 hour drive down to take her out to lunch and get a chance to hear her tell stories of the magic of capturing sounds. Her advice, told with a twinkle in her eye, was “Let go of yourself and be one with the sound.”
My favorite story was at our first lunch. She told of recording gorillas in Africa. She started describing how she laid out the recording gear in front of the alpha ape. Then she told how she spent the next half hour explaining the gear to him and what she expected from this big ape. At this point, I totally thought I was being punked but after a few minutes, I believed every detail she was sharing. Only Ann.
Rick Allen, Sound Designer & Audio Educator
rickallencreative.com
I had experience working with Ann on Alexander Sokurov’s film Faust. I was really missing the life around and inside the medieval city in the film. I wanted to convey a full landscape, yet remain in a dark and mystical tone. Animals, birds, sounds of human activity - I let her listen to my work, and Ann added options from her wonderful sound library with amazing accuracy. She and her husband Alan had excellent taste and artistic vision. Not a formal capture of sound, but a search for its reflection in the acoustic space, finding a recording “angle” that reveals the character. Their amazing sounds recorded by FRAP contact microphones fascinated me long before I dared to approach her, and I was amazed at how simply and friendly she communicated.
After long conversations and discussions of scenes by phone, I got wonderful crows, wolves, thunderclaps, tonal pauses, and winds. Ann really helped me expand the palette of ambiance in this film. After this work we tried to keep in touch, called, and wrote. I was always enchanted by the timbre of her voice, optimism, and ability to feel such small details in sounds, to be inspired by them. With her, an entire era is leaving, designed for a different approach to work and a different level of sound perception by the viewer. Film made for the theatre, not the iPhone.
Pavel Doreuli, M.P.S.E. (Union of Salvation)
dearsilence.studio
I never met Ann in person, but I had the pleasure of connecting with her through social media back in 2010. By then, I had already read countless interviews and articles where she shared stories about her adventures recording the voices of animals and nature. Her innovative methods and passion for sound have inspired field recordists and sound designers worldwide, myself included.
At the time, I was just starting out in my career. I didn’t have any film credits or connections to Ann’s world - only a shared passion for sound. I was cat-sitting and struggling to record a very vocal house cat who would go silent whenever I brought the microphone close. It felt like such a small and silly question to ask someone like Ann, but I decided to reach out anyway, seeking her advice. To my surprise, she responded almost immediately. She didn’t just offer advice - she treated my question with respect, shared her wisdom, and gave me ideas I’d never considered. A few days later, she even followed up to see how things were going. That kind of thoughtfulness meant so much to me, especially as someone just starting out. Even after that, Ann continued to show kindness in little ways. Every year, I’d get a warm birthday message from her. These small gestures showed how much she cared, even for people she barely knew.
Ann’s influence on the sound community is enormous - not just through her groundbreaking recordings but also in how she inspired and supported others. She wasn’t just a pioneer in her craft; she was a mentor and a friend to many. What I’ll always remember most is her generosity and humanity. I wish I’d had the chance to meet her in person, to sit down over a cup of coffee, and hear her stories. She will always hold a special place in my thoughts.
Chris Procopiou, Sound Designer
chrisprocopiou.com
Explore more interviews and talks from Ann Kroeber.