Diffuse City is the unique urban ambience sound effects library you didn’t know you were missing. It captures the urban environment in its many forms… all based around the idea of diffuse ambience.
This SFX library is purpose-built for the times an environment needs to be felt, but not be distracting. Every track in Diffuse City was recorded with some sort of real life “filter” in mind; be it distance, elevation, time of day, physical material… Anything to provide the feeling of city life with out the specificity of many urban ambience libraries. No distracting close car pass-bys or people talking; only great natural ambience beds:
Diffuse City was recorded in big cities, suburbs, small towns, and rural settings over a span of two years. It was largely recorded over very late nights, when very few people we’re around. Occasionally, however, a car would pass by… a gun would go off… While these were edited out of the recordings, they are included as “extras” in the library. Perfect for adding some flavor to a moment that’s authentic to the environment it was recorded in.
In addition to thorough metadata, each ambience in Diffuse City is embedded with markers highlighting unique moments that aren’t easily visible in a waveform. Software like Soundminer v4.5 and Reaper can display these markers, making it easy to identify distinct sonic moments in an otherwise nondescript waveform. Learn more about software support for markers.
There are 10 areas of focus in Diffuse City: Elevated City, Distant Highways, Underground City, Distant City, Under Bridges, City Rumble, Empty Parking Lots, Alleys, Industrial, and Window Contacts:
Elevated City
City life from above. Spanning from 12 to 30 stories up, these ambience tracks provide the unmistakable feeling of elevation in the urban environment. The city was recorded from rooftops, balconies, and windows during both day and night.
(9 locations/80+ min/1 “Extra”)
Distant Highways
A great variety of distant interstates and highways. Covering sparse pass-bys to constant traffic. Locations up to a mile away from highways were specially picked to have minimal unwanted “close” sounds… only fast far away traffic.
(15 locations/160+ min/2 “Extras”)
Underground
The underbelly of the city. Nothing can quite match the deep rumbling of a city overhead, pulsing of fans, reverberant cars in the distance, or even far away yelling of the homeless. These are authentic recordings of the gritty and ominous atmosphere of the urban underground.
(8 locations/65+ min/8 “Extras”)
Distant City
Cities in the distance have an aura that’s quite difficult to capture on its own. Diffuse city offers just that: the humming drone of distant city life. Perfect for that “outskirts of the city” sound.
(9 locations/80+ min/6 “Extras”)
Under Bridges
Bellowing bridges from below. Mics were placed under interstates, highways, and other roads in places that may or may not have been legal. The result: massive rumbling tones and impacts from short bridges to entire raised interstates.
(12 locations/105+ min/1 “Extra”)
City Rumble
The perfect city base. Rumbling of urban environments with no specific traffic. Cities were recorded from their core extremely late at night, when almost no one was out driving around. Without the traffic, what’s left is the natural resonant rumble of the urban background.
(11 locations/90+ min/11 “Extras”)
Empty Parking Lots
The sounds of deserted parking lots. A combination of wind-blown debris, buzzing lights, and humming transformers embody the feeling a wide open parking lot.
(5 locations/45+ min/2 “Extras”)
Alleys
Urban alleys. Residential and downtown areas. Humming air conditioners and hissing gas lines permeate the city’s rumble in narrow alleyways.
(4 locations/25+ min/2 “Extras”)
Industrial
A distant airport, train yard, factory… a nice collection of diffuse industrial ambience.
(5 locations/55+ min/1 “Extra”)
Window Contact
City ambience… as heard via glass. The resonance of windows provides a very unique perspective of the urban environment. While intended for design, it could also be used for city bleed into an interior environment.
(3 locations/25+ min/1 “Extra”)
Benjamin Morris –
“Diffuse City” is my favourite sound library of all time. Even though I live in Western Australia (which is a vastly different environment than wherever Diffuse City was recorded), I end up layering in sounds from that library all the time, especially when I’m trying to inject some mood into the shots. All the ambiences are so good!
Many of the local editors around town use that library too, and it commonly gets brought up in conversation.
Anyways, just wanted to let you know that you have some big fans down under 🙂
Daniel Timmons –
There are libraries for sale, and then there are libraries that are actually useful. It’s immediately evident that the Collected Transients SFX were created by an artist who is using these effects on the daily. Diffuse City, Rotation, and MaK have become go-to libraries for me, and in addition, they contain zero filler and are ergonomically organized to boot.
Timothée Bost –
Amazing sounds to design any movie! Diffuse City is my go to library for every city night/skyline sequence! I always find great material in any Collected Transients library I buy, and the metadatas are clear and detailled.
Benoit Riot-Le Junter –
I really appreciate the quality of these sound effects. Not only there are well recorded, but also very well edited and chosen when it’s a question of variations. When available, the 192kHz format is a real benefit for sound design !! I’ve never been disappointed whit extreme pitch shifting. Another proof of the very good recording expertise !!
I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the ambiences of the “diffuse city” sound library, each sound is so easy to integrate, long enough without being boring, and the markers are real timesavers, nice job !
Justin Dolby –
Diffuse City is a brilliant library. I use it all the time to create the base layer for city amiences. The recordings are sparse enough to drop straight in without editing and provide the perfect starting point for building up an atmos tracklay. Would highly recommend.
John Wong –
Love “Diffuse City”. It’s got a lot of dark tones to it so I can create some fantastic city night scenes.
Luke Smiles –
Collected Transients is definitely one of my goto producers for highly detailed libraries for my sound design work. Incredible libraries like rOtation, thermal flux, combustion and machine emanation provide sounds you can’t even imagine and are absolutely perfect for bending and twisting into all kinds of sound design possibilities. And for all of the subtlety, energy and eventual destruction of an urban environment look no further than diffuse city, we are the people, along with implosion. The outstanding quality within every Collected Transients library makes them an indispensable part of my toolkit.
Joe Barrucco –
Meticulously edited, superb sound quality! Collected Transients Diffuse City has become my “go to” when looking for those quiet city landscapes devoid of a lot of human activity, which is very hard to find in other libraries and is often needed a lot for building out a film’s soundscape.
Geraldo Gutierrez –
Diffuse City is my favorite ambience library to use on any and every project I have to cut Backgrounds on. The library has long audio files which is perfect to find a great section to trim and fit into a scene. I love the metadata that comes with each sound files of the little accents in each of the recordings noting “Car Pass by, Car Alarm, Airplane”. Its help to either pick those environment accents or to avoid them. The best part about the diffused ambience is that you get clean sounding ambiances, when you need to fill a city ambience this should be your go to library.
James Feltham –
Two recent film projects ( Killers Anonymous – Gary Oldman & Twist – Michael Caine) both included a lot of roof top scenes. I purchased ‘Diffused City’ specifically for those projects and found that it provided many atmosphere tracks that suited the film and unique locations. The sounds in this library work well for most city environments. The files include embedded artwork and lots of Meta Data which really speeds things up when editing.
Janne Laine –
Diffuse City I use quite a lot actually, the sounds have a quality that I find both myself and many directors I work with respond to in a good way, kind of every day stuff but not.
Thomas Vertongen –
When doing urban backgrounds, I always find interesting and highly useable sounds in the Diffuse City library.