You have impact variations in a multi instrument.
You want to tightly line up the main impact point.
There is some minor variation within the design of each file (some have a whoosh in, some have small initial click before the main impact, some just bang right at the top.)
In my understanding, to tightly line up the main impact point, the main transient, I need to carefully bake in silence etc to sync different files. The time from head of file to transient point must be the exact same in the file.
However, I wish this could be controlled in the per Sound settings in the Multi-Instrument’s playlist.
Note: This is different from Start Offset as that would bring the transient forward. I want to do the opposite; I want Start Delay.
Is this possible? (If not, feature request! :D)
You could add Event Sounds into the playlist and have one variation in each, shifted on the timeline. But this all seems like a less practical solution than just lining up the timing in the WAV content itself.
As an aside, you could have a bit more variety by breaking the variations into two parts - in-whoosh variations, and impact variations, and randomize them on the timeline to create more combinations.
Thanks. Nesting events to use their timelines for sync seems like the current solution for me.
Baked timing is certainly the way I normally go, but in this case, it would create a production challenge.
I’m making these composite files rather than layering to limit voice count - and reuse some impact sounds.
All said, it would be nice to have Start Delay next to Start Offset.
Thanks again!
Multi instruments are not the tool for what you want to do. The random and shuffle playlist selection modes are designed tfor multi instruments where each of the playlist entries is an equally-viable alternative to each of the others.
If you want to assign different behavior to two different playlist entries, you could potentially use nested events, as Skaven252 suggests; or you could use one of FMOD Studio’s other methods of selecting between different pieces of content, such as logic markers or instrument trigger conditions.