Sound quality for music and sfx for iOS/Android

Unity Engine
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1

Hi!

Could anyone give their recommandation regarding optimal sound quality versus memory usage for sfx and music (iOS/Android)? For instance:

  • Is 16 bit sound, but 22kHz and mono acceptable for uncompressed sfx? (would anyone go lower?)

  • How many overlapping compressed stereo sounds (mp3) would cause a considerable CPU load? Would e.g. ambience + music give a noticeable impact?

  • Are uncompressed sounds free of CPU load?

I’ve found partial and scattered info on this, but just wondered if anyone had any specific experience or recommandations. Cheers!

2

On iOS you can play only one mp3, not more at the same time. Don’t know about Android but I think it’s the same.
So use MP3 for music, uncompressed sounds for everything else.

3

Thanks for the feedback! It seems to be possible to play several mp3s at once (we did that for an iOS game we just made), but playing only one will take advantage of the hardware-optimized decompression on the device. Additional mp3s will bother the CPU, but not sure to which extent…?

Seems like a good idea to keep mp3 mainly for the music/ambience and uncompressed for all other sounds though. But then there’s the questions of which recommended quality level on the uncompressed (44kHz vs 22 kHz, 8bits vs 16bits etc.) :slight_smile:

4

Yeah, but I think it’s not possible in Unity, if you start playing another compressed file the first one stops playing.
But I may be wrong. :slight_smile:

Currently I’m using 16bit 44khz stereo for the sound effects, but I have memory to spare. :slight_smile: