I’m hoping someone with good experience can help me on this one. I’ve need a definitive process for creating all my sound effects for my iphone game.
I’ve tried Audacity and Garageband on Mac, Audacity seems buggy. Is there a good tool that most of you are using. When I create 8 bit .wav files they always seem to have a lot of hiss, no matter what file I use. Also I can’t seem to get audio to have 3d effects, must they be stereo or can they be mono?
What file format and frequency works best for sound effects? wav or aiff, bit rate, mono/stereo, etc.
I’ve tried everything and I’m losing my hair at a rapid rate. I would like to stop the guess work. I would think for the iPhone there should be one best practice (format/frequency) that should apply due to it’s limited capabilities. What software should I use?
.wav and .aiff are basically the same thing; either one is fine. Sounds need to be mono to have 3D effects. Use stereo for music tracks. Bit rate depends on the sound; low frequency can get away with lower bit rate. I’m not sure 8-bit is a good idea for most sounds.
–Eric
I’ve been creating my sounds in Garageband, then editing them in Audacity. I make the sounds mono and export as .wav without problem.
I separate the left and right tracks in Audacity, make both mono, then do a Quick Mix. I use Amplify before doing the Quick Mix, but with a minus value (experiment to see how big the value needs to be). This stops any clicks that can happen if the mix causes a sound to hit the top or bottom of the range at some point. I use Amplify again after the mix to bring the sound to the right level.
I don’t find Audacity very user friendly, but it works, most of the time…