Music (best practices)
gamesfua
Member Posts: 723
I know this has been covered. I've done my research. But I never found a true concrete answer. Thought ya'll could help out (if you'd be so kind). My game is huge. About 100mb (lots of graphics. Like, LOTS). Anyways my music guy has made some great music that ranges from 30 seconds to one minute and thirty seconds. Curious what's the best quality/settings i should tell him to output (without destroying game performance)? At this point im not concerned with game size. Just performance. I dont need the music to be cd quality but id love for it to sound as good as possible. Any thoughts? And should i import them as aac or as uncompressed and let gs do the conversion (ive read conflicting views on this). A trillion thanks!
Comments
I would then convert the files externally (ie: don't let GameSalad do it) and directly place (or replace) them in the sounds folder of the project file.
As for the best settings that's a matter of taste:
For high quality recordings 128kbps is a good starting point, you may be able to get away with a lower bit rate on some pieces of music.
I'd keep the sampling rate at 44.1kHz, but again some tracks might survive perfectly well at lower sampling rates, but don't go too much lower than 32kHz as you start to hear aliasing (things get 'crunchy').
For bit depth 16bit is ideal, higher bit depths like 24bit are largely pointless at the playback stage (although they have their uses in recording) - again same story as above you can get away with lower bit depths on some tracks, but go too low and the track turns into cornflakes.
Some tracks (occasionally) will survive being rendered in mono, especially a track with little stereo content, a mono file is half the size of a stereo file (unsurprisingly).
Playing with all the above parameters will be a waste of your time unless you use the direct to the audio folder method (rather than allowing GS to convert on import).
Actually I need to correct one thing I said, the 'you must use the direct to the sound folder method' warning doesn't apply to M4a files, all other audio files types are converted by GS to what it thinks is best, but if you drag an M4a file into GameSalad (and not into the sounds folder of the project) it does no conversion at all.
So . . .
A 320 Kbps M4a imported into GS results in a 320 Kbps M4a.
A 64 Kbps M4a imported into GS results in a 64 Kbps M4a.
. . . etc etc
Whereas MP3s, WAVs, AIFFs (etc) when imported as 'music' will all be converted to 128 Kbps M4a files. Even if they were 64 Kbps or 320 Kbps to begin with GS will make them 128 Kbps.
On a side note you can also sneak some otherwise GS 'incompatible' file formats into GS using an Apple .caf container.
hi @anatomyofdreams adding your music/sounds via the plus sign is fine of course, but as @Socks says, you can also drag the sound files from your desktop/folder straight into the Sounds Library in GSC.
""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps
Music is .m4a format
Sound Effects are .ogg format
Does anyone know why two different formats are used for audio in Gamesalad ?
Hi @Socks interesting question...that thought crossed my mind at some time or other too... I don't know the answer but maybe there's a clue in the fact that m4a is recommended for 30 seconds or more, the ogg files for 30 seconds or less...
""You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike." - Zork temp domain http://spidergriffin.wix.com/alphaghostapps
I'm trying to add a looping music track into my game, but it seems that upon researching an m4a track actually adds 1/10s silence to the beginning of the track.
Which basically makes looping seamlessly impossible. Is there anyway around this?
Thanks!
Have you tried doing a test to see if its true? Have you tried different methods and format inputs (even though i believe gs translates it back to m4a anyways)?
http://www.mediafire.com/?xnexc44t46hwsen
Hold your mouse down on the white square to compare how 'Sound' loops in comparison to 'Music'.
(the actual loop is a little 'grabby', but that's just my quick shoddy editing rather than the 'Sound' looping accuracy - but you can still hear that the gap is gone whereas it's fairly obvious on 'Music').