London Skyline: Urban High Street - SFX Library

The perks of smoking on the top-floor balcony of a busy high street. After many hours of recording, then editing, mastering, and adding metadata, I finally quit smoking and released a sound effects library called London Skyline: Urban High Street that’s now available for purchase.

The scene setup was simple. I had access to a narrow balcony on the top floor of a building with a panoramic view of central London, right above a busy high street. A great location to capture those bustling city vibes. My smoking habit was accompanied by another, much healthier habit: recording. The setup was straightforward but limited—an elevated point of view with the microphones facing one direction. What made the recording interesting was how quickly the soundscape changed, from dense traffic full of scooters, horns, buses, and sirens to calm stretches of long car pass-bys, mixed with crowd shouts, brake squeals, and lengthy sirens. It was like a symphony of the city.

Early on, I realised that editing these recordings would be a mammoth task—not just the editing, but adding metadata to all the files as well. With that in mind, I started devising ways to keep track of what was happening and figuring out how to approach it all. The first thing I knew I had to do was be more precise with my voice slates at the end of each recording. When the time came to add descriptions, I didn’t want to be overwhelmed by the similarities in the sounds—there are only so many ways to describe traffic. I knew that slating after the end of the recording would give me a refreshing view of the recording rather than trying to come up with new descriptions after editing hours and hours of recordings.

And I was right. Hours and hours of traffic to edit and describe. To manage it, I divided the recordings into groups that made sense to me as a Sound Designer and Sound Effects Editor—but also for others who might use the London Skyline: Urban High Street library. When it comes to city life, the time of day matters. As with all soundscapes, a city sounds different during the day than it does at night. Dense daytime traffic is different from nighttime traffic. So, my first split was day and night. This proved useful when adding metadata.

Taking it a step further, I broke down the ambiences based on their intensity, giving more options to match the sound to a scene. This led to further divisions: CALM, BUSY, and DENSE. These gradually became the core structure of the ambiences: DAY/NIGHT and CALM/BUSY/DENSE. This organisation allows users to quickly find the exact ambience they need, whether it’s a calm night or a busy daytime scene, saving time in the editing process.

Since this library is aimed mainly at creating atmospheres, ambiences, and backgrounds for a scene, I wanted to offer some flexibility. Sure, it’s great to have a pre-recorded ambience you can drop into a scene and call it a day, but that’s hardly ever the case. I wanted users to be able to build atmospheres from the ground up, with creative freedom. Whenever the recording allowed me to isolate a scene-specific element, I’d separate it and use it on its own. This gave rise to a new category called Scene Elements—small snippets from longer recordings, further divided into groups like horns, sirens, and vehicle sounds. Additionally, having most sirens as scene elements or markers makes the library more adaptable for use in non-UK scenarios and locations.

Transfer Pro Tools markers to iZotope RX | Soundminer▶ Play Video

Of course, all ambiences naturally include scene elements, but I wanted to highlight them within the recordings, giving users an additional tool to either use them or avoid them altogether. While editing in Pro Tools, I dropped markers for each scene element I couldn’t isolate. These markers were then transferred to iZotope RX, embedded in the files, and made viewable in Soundminer. (See the video for how this was achieved.)

With all the information, group divisions, markers, and everything else, staying consistent with metadata was becoming a challenge. It was fun interacting with a chat assistant throughout the process—asking things like “Hey, how did we name that long car horn?” and getting options from previous markers. Fun times!

Soundminer users will find all these features available through OpenTier, with the option to choose between ambiences (DAY/NIGHT) and Scene Elements (HORNS/SIRENS/VEHICLES). Other users will have access via the folder structure. Markers will be visible in the waveform and in Soundminer V6’s Marker List window, making them easy to navigate.

SoundScene Build Up — Walkthrough Session▶ Play Video

I learned a lot by putting this library together. It got me thinking about how to approach thematic libraries in terms of recording, editing, and curating metadata while staying consistent. The London Skyline: Urban High Street sound effects library is available through A Sound Effect. If you find it useful or have any thoughts, feel free to reach out—I’m always happy to hear from others!

London Skyline: Urban High Street — Trailer▶ Play Video

Get London Skyline: Urban High Street from A Sound Effect: Link

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