Recording Traffic Sound Effects In Bali!

If you fly into Bali and you leave the airport you can already imagine what it’s coming. A flood of cars, trucks, and motorbikes trying to find its way to there final destination and it’s getting more and more busy on the streets.

Now its high season in Bali and many tourists having holidays in their home countries and coming to Bali. We spent another 3 weeks in Ubud and it is the fifth time I am in here in the last 3 years but never had such a huge amount of cars and motorbike seen before.

We normally go in February. March or the end of September in the so-called “low season” and I am not a travel blogger but I would recommend coming around this time. Not only the number of people are less, also the weather is better.

Its actually dry season but the dry season is far away. We had so much rain in Ubud and needed several layers of clothes because it was so cold.

While I was walking around I thought about making an album of all the traffic around Ubud and other parts of the Island. I wasn’t able to get further than 2 hours because Bali is unpredictable right now because of all the earthquakes that happen and we experienced four of them plus the rain. I wished I have gotten to the north and the west coast but I save this for another time.

About the traffic sound effects.

I recorded sounds on 15 different areas and different parts of the day and night but later on mostly in and around Ubud. The album includes almost all vehicles you can think of. Cars, trucks, buses, motorbikes, scooters with super loud exhausts and also what I like is the sound of several very old Vespas.

You will listen to people walking by the recorder, chatting and a group of children starts to sing what is really nice and different.

If you have a lot of traffic you need sometimes Police officers and they like to use the whistle. So I am glad I got some of the sound effects as well. Of course, I recorded several honking sounds but that’s how you can see that you are in different countries. Also, the surface is different. Sometimes is just concrete, then asphalt or paving stones. All these different factors changing the sounds and give them a different vibe.

Let’s say somebody makes a movie in Vietnam and the dialogue is on a busy street and later you bring traffic sounds from Bali or Thailand into the background that wouldn’t be authentic because in Vietnams traffic is honking a form of telling the others I am here it is all the time an. People honking in Thailand or Bali only if its necessary and not just for fun or without any reason.

I am in Singapore right now and I saw somebody honking on a truck driver and he stopped the truck and freaked out. So weird to see that. In some countries its normal in others offensive. I am from Germany and honking at somebody can end in a fight.

The album has 15 tracks with a total length of over one hour. For the recordings, I used my Zoom F4 with the DPA 4060 and for in Denpasar I used the Zoom H6 with the XY microphone. If you have already access to my “Complete Library” you will find all sounds with all already edited 32 GB of Indonesia Sounds in the Indonesia Category.

I hope you enjoy these traffic sound effects and I created the album with Bandcamp.

NOTE: If you can’t see the Bandcamp Media Player here make sure to turn off your ad blocker or choose a different browser. Also, don’t be confused if you are don’t know how Bandcamp works. Super easy. The album is free so if you want it for free just type in “0”. I recorded in 192-24 kHz WAV. After you typed in “0” you need to choose “WAV” for the high-quality files if “mp3” is visible. Just click on that and you are chance the settings. “Please don’t use a Download Manager, One download can spike up to 50 downloads in the statistics of Bandcamp and then I am running out of download credits very quick”.

Category: Sounds Of Indonesia, Traffic, Cars, Vehicles, City Soundscape

Type: street traffic sound effects, passing by sound effects

Specs: 15 files • 24 bit / 192 kHz/96 kHz • 4.0 GB

Duration: 60 min

Equipment: Zoom F4, Zoom H6, DPA 4060

Delivery: Instant Bandcamp download or Complete Library Download

License types: standard license, royalty-free & license-free license