FAQ/Audio

One decision you will need to make during your project development is the type of audio you would like in your final product.

Lossless vs Lossy

One concept of audio is the difference between a lossless and a lossy format.

Lossless stores data uncompressed, storing all of the frequencies in the audio. The file is significantly larger as a result. A popular choice is WAVeform (.wav).

Lossy compresses the audio, which deletes top and bottom frequencies depending on the bit rate. The file size is significantly smaller as a result. A well known format is MP3.

To maximize the audio quality of your project, you should consider keeping the original and converting a copy based on your needs. Regardless of how much you sacrifice file size over quality, by keeping the original, you can re-convert later if desired.

For some runtimes, Fusion may convert the file to a different format. As with the case with HTML5, as different web browsers support different sound files.

Format Comparison

File Extension	Format	Type	Supported by Fusion?	License
.wav	Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE)	Lossless	Yes	No license
.ogg	Ogg Vorbis	Lossy	Yes	Free software
.aif / .aiff	Audio Interchange File Format	Lossless	Yes	No license
.mod / .it / .s3m / .xm	Amiga Music Module File	Sequencer	Yes	No license
.mp3	MPEG-2 Audio Layer III	Lossy	Yes	Licensing ended
.mid / .rmi	MIDI Sequencer Files	Sequencer	Windows EXE only	No license
.wma	Windows Media Audio	Lossy	DirectShow only	Licensed

See the Sound Object for compatibility across exporters.

A sequencer only stores musical notes, instruments or both. This type of format does not contain any streams and is played "on the fly".

Choosing the Compression Ratio

If you opt for a lossy format, choosing the amount of compression is likely to vary depending on your music and sounds.

Bit Rate	Label
64 kbps	Poor Quality
128 kbps	Good Quality
160 kbps	Better Quality
192 kbps	High Quality
256 kbps	Very High Quality
320 kbps	Excellent Quality

Low bit rates will sound terrible and devalue your project's quality, but may have its uses. For instance, it can simulate a voice over a telephone (at 64 kbps)

Positional Audio

If you are using positional audio (for sound effects), you will also want to convert your sounds to mono to half the file size and prevent interference on panned channels.

MP3 vs OGG Vorbis

File Size

The Ogg Vorbis format is superior is MP3 as it can store more frequencies (thus, higher bit rates) at a smaller file size to that of MP3.

Comparing a 30 second 440Hz sine wave:

Bit rate	MP3	Ogg Vorbis	Difference
64 kbps	201.5 kB	45.9 kB	+22%
128 kbps	319.6 kB	48.8 kB	+15%
192 kbps	327.0 kB	54.5 kB	+16%
256 kbps	347.4 kB	58.5 kB	+16%
320 kbps	369.5 kB	60.8 kB	+15%

For reference, a 16-bit signed PCM WAV and AIFF file would be 2.6 MB.

Portability

Ogg Vorbis is natively supported by Fusion, and is compatible across all runtimes whereas MP3 is available for selected exporters (such as HTML5).

Contributors to this page

Advaith (18.5%), Lh37 (81.5%)