What Is Quiet Planet and What Nature Ambience Sounds Does It Provide?

Quiet Planet® is BOOM Library's nature ambience collection: pristine, rare nature recordings made by Gordon Hempton, known as The Sound Tracker®. It is aimed at projects that need high-quality natural ambience rather than designed or processed effects, and BOOM Library lists it as available as a buyout or subscription.

What makes Quiet Planet different from other BOOM Library products

BOOM Library's catalog is organized into distinct lines, and Quiet Planet sits apart from the rest:

The key distinction is intent. BOOM ONE and Signature Series are built for designing sounds; Quiet Planet is built for placing a believable natural environment underneath a scene. If your project needs a forest floor, a shoreline, or open wilderness rather than a manufactured effect, Quiet Planet is the relevant line.

The source: Gordon Hempton, The Sound Tracker®

BOOM Library credits the collection to Gordon Hempton, describing him as the world's foremost nature recording genius and noting the recordings were captured with "immaculate passion." The emphasis on "pure, rare and excellent" nature ambiences signals that the value here is in the recording itself — location, conditions, and the recordist's ear — rather than in post-processing.

For a sound designer, that matters in practice. Natural ambience is hard to fake convincingly: layered synthetic wind or generic forest beds tend to reveal themselves under close listening or in quiet passages of a mix. A collection recorded by a dedicated nature recordist is intended to hold up in those moments.

Where Quiet Planet fits in a workflow

Consider a concrete case: a documentary sequence set in old-growth forest, or a game level where the player spends several minutes in a wilderness area. You need a continuous background that doesn't loop audibly and doesn't draw attention to itself. That is the task Quiet Planet is positioned for — natural beds that sit under dialogue, score, and spot effects.

By contrast, if you need a creature vocalization, a weapon sound, or a UI click, those belong to the Signature Series or BOOM ONE, not Quiet Planet.

Licensing and access

BOOM Library states Quiet Planet is available as a buyout or subscription, the same two access models it lists across BOOM ONE, Signature Series, and BOOM Tools. The site does not publish specific pricing, subscription terms, or login requirements in the material available here, so check the product page directly for current terms before committing to either model.

A practical way to choose between the two: a buyout suits a project with a defined scope where you want the files permanently; a subscription suits ongoing work where you want continued access and updates. Which one fits depends on how long your production runs and whether you expect to need the library again later.

How to evaluate whether it suits your project

Before purchasing, listen to the preview material on the Quiet Planet page with your own project in mind:

• Check the environments covered. Confirm the collection includes the specific habitats your project needs — the site does not enumerate individual locations in the available material.
• Test against your mix. Play a preview under dialogue or music at the level you'd actually use it, not at solo level.
• Compare with your existing beds. If you already own general libraries, check whether Quiet Planet adds something your current nature recordings lack — rarity and recording quality are the stated differentiators.

If the answer to those checks is yes, Quiet Planet is the BOOM Library line built for that job. If you need designed effects instead, look at BOOM ONE or the Signature Series.