Strange audio playback behaviour

Questions & Answers
1

I am loading and playing an .ogg file from the harddisk. To do this I use the method described in the WWW documentation:

WWW www = new WWW(url);
audio.clip = www.audioClip;

This seems to work, but when I start the clip after checking if clip.isReadyToPlay it starts playing but after a second or so it will start sound really weird, like it's played at too slow and inconsistent framerates.

To add some more weirdness, if I start the game in the editor and then tab to another application, so the editor runs in background the file plays back at a consistent framerate, but the rate seems to be too high, as the file is faster/higher pitched.

Any idea what might be causing this strange behaviour?

EDIT: The strange behaviour is a result of the audio clip being played back as a 3D sound per default, because my listener (which is attached to the camera) moves very fast and the AudioSource doesn't. I guess that's also why the behaviour is different when running in background as the listener does not move then.

Is there a way to mark the created clip as NOT being a 3D sound via scripting? I know I could circumvent this by attaching the audiosource to the camera/listener, but I'd rather not...

4

Set doppler effect to 0 and see what happens.

2

If the sound is stereo you uncheck the 3D sound checkbox for the sound, if sound is mono, it's always played 3D positioned.

--- Reaction on comment:

In that case I don't think you have many other options than add a sound source component to the camera and use this for playing back non-positioned sounds.

3

Not tested but setting the rolloff to zero may be help.

5

I found the problem to be “dopplerLevel” myself, adding some setup code to my audio source alleviated the problem:

// setup the audio source
AudioSource source = audioPoint.GetComponent( );
source.volume = volume;
source.dopplerLevel = 0f;  // <---- Set dopplerLevel to 0 and all should be well!
source.PlayOneShot( clip );
6

I just had this exact problem in Unity 5.5. Changing Doppler to zero seemed to fix it. I also moved ambience and music audiosources to the cam (just in case).