[Help] Trying To Understand Sound.

UI UGUI
1

Hello Guys,

I have been playing around with sound and tearing my hair out - there’s not much left :p. At the moment I am playing around with 2D and UI projects in Unity 4.6.

Anyway, I found a number of free SFX (and other music samples) that I liked and wanted to use in my project and ran into a problem with them. It didn’t matter if I tried Importing them into my project the proper way or dropping them into the Assets/Sounds folder I created they didn’t work, of course, if I clicked on the soundwave pattern they worked just fine. And it also didn’t matter if I created an AudioSource on the gameboard or through code none of these music samples worked. That was until on a whim I unticked the “3D sound” option and clicked the “Apply” button. And I would like to know why I had to do this? And why this wasn’t made clearer by the documentation - it would’ve solved hours knowing that if you want to use sounds in a 2d environment the default 3d option should be turned off.

I would also like to know if I would run into problem using 2D sounds in a 3D environment and should leave the default 3D option on?

Sorry for the rant, but, an explanation would be really appreciated.

Thankyou and Rgards,
Vaughan.

2

I will be assuming this is the msot usual issue people find with this so I’m sorry if it isn’t.

If you are playing sounds in 3D they have an attenuation over distance.
That means that the position of the audiosource compared to the listener will in fact affect the volume of the sound.

you have 2 chances here, either you define in the curve that exists in the audiosource component that your sound will never be attenuated or you drop the audiosource in the same position of the listener.

3

Thankyou for your detailed reply. I think, repeat think, I am finally coming to grips with these sound problems!

EDIT: I finally found it - it was hidden in the Pan settings! Somewhere where I never would’ve thought to look especially seeing as I come from a beginner music recording background! And I only found it through the inspector as the project was running because the sound is being played through a script. So now I’ll need to find the code equivalent to set this.

Deprecated in Unity 5, but, I’m using Unity 4.6.x, oh Unity is just a barrel of laughs today:(.

Cheers,
CK.