# Strange Behavior Related to Encoding Settings

**URL:** <https://qa.fmod.com/t/strange-behavior-related-to-encoding-settings/24133>\
**Category:** FMOD Studio\
**Created:** [March 24, 2026, 9:15am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/strange-behavior-related-to-encoding-settings/24133 "2026-03-24T09:15:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![woong\_abutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ee7513/32.png) [@woong\_abutton](https://qa.fmod.com/u/woong_abutton)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2026, 9:15am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/strange-behavior-related-to-encoding-settings/24133/1 "2026-03-24T09:15:34Z")

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![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/uploads/fmod/original/2X/f/fb850fb9b57fbbc1a1c1624772a0e95085a617a4.png)

This is a spectrogram of a footstep sound encoded in PCM 6 kHz, played back in a standard windows media player and then recorded as-is via loopback.

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/uploads/fmod/original/2X/5/50fa757890820040aee631b99c39a84835f9dcd0.png)  
This is a spectrogram of the same footstep sound encoded in PCM 6 kHz, played back in FMOD and recorded via loopback without applying any compression.

I’ve recently been having a hard time with an FMOD mixing issue. I just can’t get a clean mix, so I ran a few tests and found something strange. I confirmed that a footstep sound set to 12 kHz was being played all the way up to 48 kHz. I tested it further and ended up with results like the screenshots above. It looks as if FMOD is generating extreme harmonic distortion.

Why is this happening? Is this a bug? Or could it be related to the Resampler?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![woong\_abutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ee7513/32.png) [@woong\_abutton](https://qa.fmod.com/u/woong_abutton)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2026, 9:31am UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/strange-behavior-related-to-encoding-settings/24133/2 "2026-03-24T09:31:29Z")

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Additionally, even though I set the sample rate to 4kHz, the sound event in the Event Editor does not play back at 4kHz. (Of course, I made sure to enable the “compressed” button.)  
However, when I listen to the same file in the Audio Bin or after building and running the game, it does play correctly at 4kHz. Is this a bug? i uploaded a video.

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**Author:** ![jeff\_fmod](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/qa.fmod.com/jeff_fmod/32/1766_2.png) [@jeff\_fmod](https://qa.fmod.com/u/jeff_fmod)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2026, 11:14pm UTC](https://qa.fmod.com/t/strange-behavior-related-to-encoding-settings/24133/3 "2026-03-24T23:14:08Z")

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This would be caused by aliasing as a result of resampling the 6kHz asset to FMOD’s internal sample rate of 48kHz. There isn’t currently a way to configure a resampler in FMOD Studio, though we do have plans of addressing this in a future FMOD version. In your game you can select an [`FMOD_ADVANCEDSETTINGS::resamplerMethod`](https://fmod.com/docs/2.03/api/core-api-system.html#fmod_advancedsettings_resamplermethod) to reduce aliasing.  
Here I have a 200hz sine wave playing back in the FMOD API encoded at 48kHz, then at 4kHz with different `resamplermethods` selected to demonstrate the difference in aliasing:

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/uploads/fmod/original/2X/d/d174df2c39815729ed081d0456d4b49317cd8efa.jpeg)

As you can see, Spline is the most effective at reducing aliasing.

> [@woong\_abutton](#):
>
> the sound event in the Event Editor does not play back at 4kHz.

Auditioning the asset with compression is a feature of the [Asset Preview](https://fmod.com/docs/2.03/studio/instrument-reference.html#asset-preview-graphic) and does not currently affect compression in the Event Editor- we have a feature request to add it to the Event Editor as well, which I have registered your interest to.