Hey!
I’m working on a game and have so far been using borrowed samples (for my private testing) and is looking to replace them with free or commercial samples.
Have you any ideas on where to start looking for quality sounds? It’s a “Syndicate”-style title with mostly sounds of weaponry and sci-fi drones.
If you’re willing to pay for them, look up “royalty free sound effects” on the Internet. If you’re not willing to pay, get a microphone, download Audacity (or some similar freeware sound editor program), and start making noises.
There are a lot of popups and ads, but also some good sound fx here:
http://www.grsites.com/sounds/
If you have a good wav editor, you can modify them to suit your needs.
SOmetime you can get limtied promo sets of extracts from commerical libraries for free.
I have a SoundIdeas sampler myself that is royalty free for the two dozen or so sounds that are on it.,
Thank you for your replies!
Although currently a spare-time kind of project, I am willing to spend money on it. So far sound rangers look promising http://www.soundrangers.com/sound-categories.cfm?cat_template=sound
Sound Rangers looks ok, but I would rather buy a whole cd of sound effects at once instead of buying them one at a time. Paying $20 for a cd with 300 sound effects (50 of which I want) seems better to me than paying $50 for 50 sound effects which I have to download individually.
As mentioned above, never forget the power of a good editor ( Audacity is good, easy to learn, and free ).
For example, you don’t need to shell out a lot of money for multiple collections just because you want several different explosions. If you have one or two “explosion” sounds you can use an editor to blend them, layer them, change the speed or pitch, etc. You can loop parts of the explosion and make them louder so you get that two- or three-stage blast that sounds really cool ( ka-KABOOM ).
And look for alternative sounds you can use for something unexpected. Do you want some sounds for monsters or aliens but are having trouble tracking down samples that were powerful enough to convey danger? Well, a lot of the dinosaur sounds from the first JPark movie were dogs, seals, walrus and whales ( again, blended and tweaked around with an editor ).
Unless you live alone or have REALLY good sound proofing, I would suggest also investing some money in a good set of headsets. 
When you start having fun messing around with sound editing you may find that not everyone around you shares your amusement ( from experience ). 
Be sure to read the license very carefully. 500 downloads is NOTHING.
Sample CDs are clearly the better (more appealing) option.
http://www.beachware.com/clip.htm
That CD for example is supposed to be alright (announcement thread). I would have bought it myself if they would offer paypal as payment option.
I agree 500 downloads is nothing, but that’s one of the licenses for music, not sound effects.
The sample CD you link to is 8-bit 22kHz mono samples, and more of the “if enough quantity, quality has to be in there, somewhere” kind. I rather spend more money and get less, quality samples.
So while I agree, finding a Sample CD with f.ex. weaponry sounds would be a better sollution, so far I haven’t found any one I like.