What build settings for what platform

FMOD Studio
1

Hi, I can’t find really clear recomandations in terms of what build setting to use for what platform. There is obviously some topics and documentation about what codec to use when building for mobile, but I found nothing about building for PC and console (switch in my case). Also how can FADPCM have a smaller CPU cost, but also being less compressed than vorbis? Maybe I didn’t understand the documentation well.

Basically, the question I need to answer is what settings to use with PC and what settings to use for switch. What sounds best, and what performs best for those cases ?

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Information about which encoding formats are reccomended for various platforms can be found in the Compression and Encoding Settings section of Getting Events into Your Game chapter of the FMOD Studio User Manual. As you’ll see, we recommend using FADPCM format on Switch, and Vorbis on PC.

As for sample rate and quality, we do not make any specific recommendations, because there is no one “best” sample rate and quality that suits all games. Rather, every game project has a different resource budget and a different set of audio samples, and thus a different optimal sample rate and encoding quality. We therefore recommend starting with the default values that appear when you select an encoding format in FMOD Studio, testing to see if those values result in acceptable audio quality in your game, and adjusting them accordingly.

Without going into too much technical detail: Sample data needs to be decompressed into memory so that it can be played. The more compressed a piece of sample data is, the more CPU time is required to undo that compression for playback. As such, it is only natural that less-compressed formats require less CPU.

1 Like
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Thank you. That’s really helpful !

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Aside from that. Do you know why Vorbis is recommended over FADPCM on Desktop, as it seems to generally perform better ? Does it havea better audio restitution ?

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Vorbis provides better compression for the same level of quality as FADPCM. However, as a consequence, it requires more CPU at run-time.

Desktop computers tend to have more CPU power than consoles and mobile devices, making relatively-high CPU costs more affordable. As a result, we generally recommend Vorbis over FADPCM when developing for desktop platforms.

Of course, as I said above, every game has a different audio resource budget and different requirements. As such, FADPCM may be more appropriate than Vorbis for some desktop games.