In the FMOD Studio Preferences window, there is a Build tab with an encoding setting. If I set the “Quality” to 1% and build my banks, the bank file size is considerably smaller than when built with the default Quality setting. This gives a great advantage file size wise and there is no perceivable difference in audio quality that I can hear compared to the original audio files.
However, I want to know if there’s any drawbacks of doing this? Does it actually reduce the perceived quality of the sound in some cases? Does this affect performance in any way?
I am using FMOD version 2.02.05, and the .wav format for my assets.
Hi,
There’s no drawback to lowering the encoding quality besides its impact on the sound itself. Vorbis is a lossy compression format, so there will always be some data discarded when the file is compressed. Whether or not this reduces the perceived quality too much is ultimately something that you’ll have to judge - for me, the audio at 1% quality has a subtle perceivable difference, but this will vary by person. A imperceivable difference is still a difference though, and it’s impossible to account for the perception of every person who will listen to your audio, so you may want to only reduce the quality to a level needed to address any storage constraint you may have.
If you’re interested in technical details, you can find the specifications and FAQ for the the Vorbis format on xiph.org.
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Hi Louis,
Thanks for the reply - this helps a lot! I guess it depends on the sound itself on whether there will be a perceivable difference. I think I will set the encoding quality level depending on what type of sounds are in the sound bank.
