What level of sound quality does everyone use?

[BantamCityGames]

My new game is using standard wav files for music and sound fx. (I know there are more memory efficient forms, but put that aside for a min) My question is: What quality music/sound does everyone use?
from 8khz mono -> 44khz stereo?

[ggambett]

22KHz mono for simple effects, I believe 22KHz stereo for music, extremely ogg-encoded

[James C. Smith]

22KHz mono for most effects and stereo for the few that can really take advantage of it. 22KHz mono for music. All audio is extremely ogg-encoded (sound and music)

[Anthony Flack]

22k mono, ogged to the hilt. It's not the prettiest, but the best compromise between quality and size I think.

[Reactor]

Same as everyone above... 22KHz mono for sound, ogged music (at I think 22KHz as well).

[stan]

Smart Lines has music in ogg/vorbis format, 44kHz, encoded in quality -1. (yes, that's a minus sign ;) .)

IIRC it takes less space in 44kHz than in 22kHz. I recall reading that ogg/vorbis is optimised for 44kHz.

I wish I could use some MOD format though, but cross platform considerations and the expertise of my musician currently prevent that. (4 min of OGG music take 1.2MB, which isn't a lot compared to MP3, but isn't good for including several musics in a downloadable game...)

As for the sounds, I'm not sure... probably something between 22 and 44 kHz in 16 bits mono.

[princec]

44KHz stereo 16 bit OGG at quality 0 generally.

Cas :)

[oNyx]

>4 min of OGG music take 1.2MB, which isn't a lot compared to MP3, but isn't
>good for including several musics in a downloadable game

Most games (even AAA ones) use rather short 25-45 second loops.

Well, guess it's also 44/22 khz oggs for me. Not sure tho which one I'll pick at the end.

[stan]

Hm, maybe the solution is in creating a very simple tracker to play big ogg samples one after the other indeed... that's an idea :)

[Vectrex]

Hm, maybe the solution is in creating a very simple tracker to play big ogg samples one after the other indeed... that's an idea :)

thats what i did, a simple 1 track sequencer to play back chunks of the song in a less obviously looping way. works nice

ps I also believe there is little to no benefit to ogging at 22khz compared to 44k, do some tests

pps if you must include wavs either uncompress oggs at install time or use something like Monkeys audio lossless wav compressor

[Mike Boeh]

There are a couple cross platform mod players, including fmod.
22 khz here too, 16 bit, mono...

For music I like oggmod (.oxm for fmod, .mo3 for bass), which is just like a .xm tracker file, but the samples are ogg encoded. You can do some pretty great songs in just 200k. For example, the 3-minute Cosmo Bots theme song is 159k in .mo3 format and sounds really nice.

[tolik]

There are a couple cross platform mod players, including fmod.
22 khz here too, 16 bit, mono...

For music I like oggmod (.oxm for fmod, .mo3 for bass), which is just like a .xm tracker file, but the samples are ogg encoded. You can do some pretty great songs in just 200k. For example, the 3-minute Cosmo Bots theme song is 159k in .mo3 format and sounds really nice.

Doesn't samples get decompressed and take the full size of XM in memory?

[oNyx]

Doesn't samples get decompressed and take the full size of XM in memory?

Sureley. Otherwise it would take quite a lot cpu power. However, it's not as bad as it seems. Tracker modules are already pretty small in their uncompressed state (0.5-4mb and you only get modules that "big" if you use 16bit 22/44khz samples).

[BantamCityGames]

Great. 22k mono seems like the minimum I will use then. Thanks everyone!

[elund]

Great. 22k mono seems like the minimum I will use then. You can go lower depending on the sound. Deep sounds without high notes will encode very well at rates lower than 22k, you may even be able to get down to 8k if it's bass-heavy enough.

[3dben]

Has anyone ever or have thought about including as small as you can get away with sound in your game and then offering a free optional high quality sound pack to download and install (same thing could be done with gfx)? I'm not sure if its worth the hassle, however the average casual gamer might be just fine with it yet a user with a little bit of dedication and a fast connection might see it as a nice benefit.. Just food for thought.

-=ben