BBC Sound Effects Downloader
This program downloads all 16,000+ sounds from BBC's Sound Effects library, found at http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/. The samples downloaded by this program are BBC copyright and subject to the RemArc License. BBC also offers licenses for commercial usage of these samples.
Usage
This program requires Python 3. Download and extract the repository ZIP and with Python installed, run download.py by double-clicking the file or entering python download.py or python3 download.py in a command prompt or terminal window. The downloaded samples will be saved in the sounds/ directory of the folder containing download.py. The total size of the sample library is 284GB.
By default, the program will download 10 samples at a time. This amount figures to be a safe value to avoid sending too many simultaneous requests to BBC's servers, but the value can be easily modified by changing the value of THREAD_COUNT in the code. When determining what to download, the program first checks what already exists in the sounds/ directory to avoid redownloading samples (i.e. if any downloads fail or the program is stopped without downloading the entire library).
Tested on Windows 10, macOS High Sierra, and Ubuntu 18.04. Uses only Python's standard library—no additional packages need to be installed. I have only tested this program up to a few hundred downloads, so please report any unexpected bugs/problems by opening Issues.
Torrent
Feeling kind to BBC's servers? Use this torrent instead. Thanks @willemcvu for creating and seeding the files.
https://archive.org/details/BBCSoundEffectsComplete
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:277UI76DIYAAPS2LQC3R3XF4PXCS5X5H&dn=BBCSoundEffectsComplete