Urban & Suburban by BOOM Library Review
I have been in New York more than 30 times. What I do remember from my trips to the City are the fantastic people, countless great experiences and the sound of New York. The noise of NY is peculiar and always present. Now take any other city to be it Paris, Berlin, London or smaller cities even villages there is still noise in the background.
Sound designer and sound editor are always in need of an ambiance sound from cities and other places. BOOM library is addressing this gap in the market with Urban & Suburban and also with the launch of a sister product: Transportation.
The sounds of Urban & Suburban library are sitting in the background. You do not hear them as the main sound. However, when those sounds are missing the experience is similar to watching a city after an apocalypse, and you wonder why there are still people and cars. Boom Library did send a review copy with no strings attached.
Installation
After purchase, you download the files in an archive which you want to unpack locally on your hard disk. If you use database tools like SoundMiner or Basehead, add the data, and you are ready to go.
Sound
Urban & Suburban includes 140 sounds that are essential to creating a convincing city character. There are also additional libraries available from BOOM library if you need vehicle sounds, see our Transportation by BOOM Library Review for more.
With the included 140 files, which seem like a low number, you get the essential sounds to apply the need sounds for scenes that need traffic, people, buildings, animals, wind sonances, and communications. If you do have external plugins, take those sounds into visible effects tools to generate something new like a growling monster.
Within URBAN & SUBURBAN you find sound of urban, suburban, area, mowers, sprinklers, traffic, babble, people, cars, trucks, horns, sirens, light traffic, traffic echoes, train horns, traffic roars, electricity crackles, emergency vehicle sirens, car passes, cobblestones, celebratory car horns, car horns and shouts, shuttle bus, luggage wheels, footsteps, airport interior ambiences, security announcements, chair movements, food circus, TSA security checkpoints, train station entrances, toll stations, coin tosses, underground, rumbling, arrival, departure, backgrounds, trains, park morning, park day, sidewalk, cathedral bells, crowded indoor spaces.
The recordings come with the high quality as you are used to from products made by BOOM Library. The company went the extra mile and balanced the sometimes isolated sounds. With this aim for perfection, you get audios that can be used in concert with other sounds for a city scene.
User interface & Usability
With the included WAV files there is no UI. However, most important when it comes to the usability is how you can search for specific files. When you use a database tool like SoundMiner or BaseHead to manage the data meta-data, and well-defined keywords are key to find the correct sound in your database of several thousand files that go beyond this library.
Rating: Five out of five stars
Urban & Suburban is the advance sound library of sounds that need to be there in a scene. The included sounds fit well in the background for any modern cities. Your job is all about making sure that the pictures sound like it was captured in a city? BOOM Library’s Urban & Suburban sound library has what you need for the job.
